《藝術學研究》 2006 年 6 月，第一期，頁 103-128

在英雄殞落之後的英雄： Géricault 的《梅杜莎之筏》

Gregor Wedekind*

摘要

在1819年，沙龍展出由Géricault所畫的《梅杜莎之筏》，呈現了對歷 史繪畫的抨擊，而歷史畫類主要是將英雄形象概念化的繪畫類別 。 Géricault 的繪畫違反了所有歷史繪畫不可或缺的美學範疇，這類的範疇 確立了廣泛且普世隱含的寓意。然而在同時，巨幅的型式以及Géricault對 於人體獨具風格的處理，無疑地使這幅畫意圖達到歷史繪畫的高尚情 操。縱使Géricault筆下的新英雄激起了觀賞者的同情，他這些新英雄絕非 是供人認同的嶄新形象。畫中對立的美學結構並不允許以如此單一明確 的解讀。他英雄化了一種人類企圖透過藝術去激發的特定情感，而此種 情感並非以傳統的英雄再現便可以達成的。這已經不再是以往那些著名 的英雄人物，甚至也不是單一的無名英雄，取而代之的是英雄式人體的 聚合，企圖展現英雄式苦難，並使人信服。實際上，這樣的效果是由圖 畫整體所達成的。有鑑於此，圖畫本身的美學價值便躍然眼前。從一開 始，這幅畫的評論便來回於超人的尺寸與力量的描繪，以及創作本身必 備的超人尺寸與精力，也就是擺盪於主題與創作過程之間。Géricault在此 巨幅作品當中呈現的宏偉姿態，乃試圖超越歷史繪畫的傳統。他所選擇 的篇幅和構圖，將富有爭議性的主題擴大為傑出的藝術，這些都傳遞了

* 現職於德國駐法藝術史研究中心。 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）

別出心裁的訴求，直接傳達了他對於功成名就的渴望。作品的創作者， 也就畫家本人，儼然顯現於畫作之後，成了真正的英雄。 （翻譯：李鎧伊）

關鍵字：Théodore Géricault、梅杜莎之筏、英雄

104 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

Gregor Wedekind*

I. Théodore Géricault’s painting, The Raft of the Medusa [Ill. 1],1exhibited in the Salon of 1819, is a decisive case for the entire question of heroic images, the question of the representation of the hero in history painting. But to begin, let us start with the problems posed by this work: at issue here is a painting that in the classical sense is neither a history painting nor a depiction of a hero. First of all, there’s the subject of the work: the painting represents a calamity that took place during a colonial expedition to Senegal. Due to human error, the captain’s incompetence of character and seamanship, and the inhumane cockiness of French government officials, one hundred fifty people, largely soldiers, were sent out to sea on a rickety timbered raft after the Medusa, a ship leading a small colonial fleet, went aground off the coast of Africa. In the following twelve days on the open ocean, one hundred thirty five of the shipwrecked died under the most miserable, horrific, and brutal conditions. Drifting across the sea, they were subjected to sun, hunger, thirst, strife, murder, revenge, and cannibalism: only fifteen survived the ordeal. Are they heroes?

* The author is currently a researcher at Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte/Centre Allemand d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris. 1 Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, Oil on Canvas, 491 x 716 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre.

105 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）

No, not by any means—they are victims. People who by coincidence or by accident become the victims of a senseless crime and are forced to suffer to their deaths or to the last minute of their rescue are not heroes. They provide nothing in terms of a model worthy of emulation. Belonging to the category faits divers—violent, bizarre, anecdotal subjects from the events of the time—depictions of a crime or a catastrophe like this were known as ocassionelles or canards. But, as the art historian Robert Simon has noted, this picture of the drifting raft represented an immensely enlarged canard, an exaggeration of this genre of anecdotal illustration.2 As a depiction of a shipwreck, The Raft would have rather required the genre’s mid-sized format. Accordingly, contemporary art criticism only saw in the image—ce tableaux monstreux3—a mere apologue of the lowly and the ugly, and criticized the lack of a moral message and of a heroic protagonist or a positive heroic figure. As one critic put it in 1819 in the Gazette de France, everything about this picture is horribly passive; there is nothing honorable about this scene for moral humanity.4 And a critic in the Conservateur complained about the painting’s display of franticness and hopelessness, pointing out that the egotism

2 Robert Simon, “Géricault und die Faits divers,” in Bilder der Macht, Macht der Bilder. Zeitgeschichte in Darstellungen des 19. Jahrhunderts (Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts für Kunstgeschichte, 12), ed. Stefan Germer and Michael F. Zimmermann (München and Berlin: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1997) pp. 192-207. 3 N.N., “Exposition de 1819. Deuxième article,” in: Gazette de France, no. 243, 31. August 1819, p. 1050. 4 Ibid.: “Il [Géricault] a cru qu’il pouvait se passer d’un sujet, d’une action et de toutes les combinaisons dramatiques imposées par les muses à leurs desservans sur tous les sentiers qui conduisent à la gloire; point de figures principales, point d’épisodes, tout est ici hideusement passif; rien ne repose l’âme et les yeux sur une idée consolante; pas un trait d’héroïsme et de grandeur, pas un indice de vie et de sensibilité, rien de touchant, rien d’honorable pour l’humanité morale.” Cf. Germain Bazin, Théodore Géricault. Étude critique, Documents et Catalogue Raisonné, (Paris : Bibliothèque des arts, 1987), I, no. 140, p. 44.

106 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

of the shipwrecked would deny them any recourse to divine assistance or mutual solace.5 Secondly, there is the painting’s composition: its centrifugal plan violates the convention and is unique in the classical tradition. The ensemble, arranged like a St. Andrew’s cross, was perceived by a critic writing in the Indépendant as “confused.”6 And another critic asked, “Where is here the center? Which figure should one concentrate upon, and what is the general expression of the subject? A few corpses…a few dead men…a few men left to despair and a few others that hold onto a weak beam of hope, these are the elements of the composition, which the artist—despite his talent—did not know to arrange in a satisfactory manner.”7 Thirdly, there is the question of narrative: contrary to the narrative nature of history painting, Géricault breaks up linearity as the narrative ordering of all action: the image is built up on a hiatus, and has a void as its

5 Le comte O’Mahony, “Exposition des tableaux. (Troisième article). Suite des tableaux d’histoire,” in: Le Conservateur, V, 1819, 56e livraison, p. 190: “Sur un radeau qu’une vague va submerger, le peintre a accumulé tout ce que le désespoir, la rage, la faim, l’agonie, la mort, la putréfaction même offrent de plus repoussant et tout cela est exécuté avec une surabondance de verve, une vérité de dessin, une énergie de touche, une hardiesse de pinceau et de couleur qui en centuple les épouvantables effets; et rien, absolument rien ne tempère tant d’horreurs. Tous vont périr, nulle chance de salut ne leur reste; car aucun d’eux n’a les mains levées vers celui auquel les mers et les vents obéissent. Renfermés en eux-mêmes, de l’abîme des eaux ils vont tomber, sans y songer, dans l’abîmé de l’éternité; et comme ils ont oublié Dieu, ils se sont aussi oubliés l’un l’autre: aucune consolation n’est donnée ni offerte; chacun ne voit que sa mort , ne regrette que sa vie; c’est l’égoïsme à sa dernière heure.” Cf. Bazin, Géricault, I, no. 149, p. 47. 6 D., “De l’exposition de 1819. (Deuxième article),” in: L’Indépendant, Nr. 112, 29. August 1819, p. 3: “mais l’ensemble est confus.” Cf. Bazin, Géricault, I, no. 139, p. 44. 7 Charles Paul Landon, Salon de 1819, 2 vol., Paris, 1819 (Annales du Musée et de l’École Moderne des Beaux-Arts), vol. 1, pp. 65–67, p. 67: “Où en est le centre? à quel personnage paraît-elle se rattacher principalement, et quelle est l’expression générale du sujet? Des cadavres à moitié submergés, des morts et des mourans, des hommes livrés au désespoir et d’autres que soutient un faible rayon d’espérance, tels sont les élemens de cette composition, que l’artiste, malgré le talent distingué qu’on lui reconnaît, n’a pu ordonner d’une manière satisfaisante.” Cf. Bazin, Géricault, I, no. 146, p. 46.

107 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06） center. The visual narrative is frozen, fragmented; instead of narratives, we are left with figures, without a hero anywhere in sight. To speak of a heroic protagonist in the face of Gericault’s painting is difficult, if not nonsensical. In his preliminary studies, Géricault had still placed the brig, the Argus, which on the thirteenth day would finally, but accidentally, find the shipwrecked, in the raft’s vicinity, in any case as a concretely visible object [Ill. 2 and 3].8 The decision to minimalize it and push it off into the distance as a tiny point on the horizon that seems to disappear as soon as we catch sight of it, as in the final version of the picture, entails an additional refusal of the narrative content of the image. Another critic professed that his disgust when confronted with the image was caused by the oppressive uniformity of skin color, gesture, and expression, all attesting to one and the same suffering.9 With this he was not only referring to the monotonous and thoroughly monochromatic color—making the painting into something of a chaotic mishmash—but also to the violation of the theory of representing a gradation of manifold emotions in the tradition of Le Brun. As these bodies wavering between life and death lose all the coloration that would make up the stuff of living history, they also sacrifice all sense of character and individual, personal expression. The image thus violates or negates all the aesthetic categories that are an essential to history painting, the components that guarantee the genre’s generalizing and universalizing connotations: cohesion (ensemble), order (ordonnance), expression (expression), and unity (unité). The structuring relations that hold the world together are thus abandoned. The picture is thus

8 Théodore Géricault, The Sighting of the Distant Argus, 1818, Oil, 37,5 x 46 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre. Théodore Géricault: The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, Oil, 65 x 83 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre. 9 Cf. Gault de St.-Germain, Choix des productions d’art les plus remarquables exposées dans le Salon de 1819, Paris [1819], pp. 27–28.

108 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

not dedicated to the moral virtues or glory of the French nation—the proper task of history painting—but the nation’s shame. It illustrates an ordinary crime, a tragedy without heroes, a scene of physical suffering without redemption. The traditional demands made of history painting—unity and focus—are not fulfilled in any way: not spatially, nor in terms of narrative or psychology.

II. The canvas format chosen by Géricault—five meters by seven meters—leaves no doubt about what the painting is intended as: a painting of the grand genre, a history painting. Such a format was exclusively reserved for history painting, and could only be justifiably used for a subject of extraordinary moral or national significance. In fact, despite all the missing other characteristics, art history has repeatedly perceived and described Géricault’s work as a true history painting.10 This is also due to the fact that Géricault, especially in his treatment of the sailors’ bodies, engages in a stylization that evokes the classical muscular

10 See for example Henri Zerner, “La problématique de la narration chez Géricault,” in: Künstlerischer Austausch – Artistic Exchange, Akten des XXVIII. Internationalen Kongresses für Kunstgeschichte Berlin, 15.–20. Juli 1992, ed. by Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Berlin: Akademie, 1991), II, 569-578; p. 569: “Le Radeau de la Méduse est le seul tableau totalement narratif de Géricault, son unique contribution à la peinture d’histoire, unique mais d’une singulière importance. Malgré le sujet peu orthodoxe, il respecte assez scrupuleusement les lois du genre. [...] Géricault s’est conformé aux préceptes de la tradition classique, et en particulier de Lessing. [...] Il en respectait l’idée de l’instant fécond; tout dans le tableau converge, tout prend place par rapport à l’épisode central. Géricault a choisi le moment où les rescapés virent le brick l’Argus à l’horizon pour disparaître de nouveau. […] Le peintre a bien différencié les efforts de ceux qui espèrent encore, la déception de ceux qui voient la futilité d’attirer l’attention du brick, et enfin le désespoir profond du père dont le fils est mort et pour qui l’espoir même n’a plus de sens. Il a contrasté aussi ceux dont la réaction est tout impulsive, et ceux qui raisonnent, Corréard et Savigny en discussion près du mât. Tout cela est conforme à ce qu’on attendait d’une peinture d’historie et tout à fait intelligible pour les contemporains comme pour nous, même le sujet va à l’encontre des habitudes. Le Radeau de la Méduse s’inscrit sans heurt dans la série des grands tableaux d’histoire depuis David.”

109 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06） body of the hero. The nudity of the figures thus results by no means from Géricault's quasi-journalistic faithfulness to “real events”—which indeed led him to collect all the information on the calamity that he could get his hands on.11 On the contrary: while the first published report in 1817, written by two survivors—the ship’s engineer, Alexandre Corréard, and the ship’s surgeon, Henri Savigny—described extensively the condition of the corpses of the shipwrecked, including horrific details about their skin, which had burst from unprotected exposure to sunlight and salt water and was torn by axe and bite wounds resulting from skirmishes that had taken place on the raft, nothing of the kind can be found in Géricault's image, although it was this report that led the artist to address this subject.12 Furthermore, Géricault ultimately reduced the details of military costume that still dominated in the earlier drawings [Ill. 4],13 emphasizing in the final version the heroic nudity of his figures. The nudity of these ideal, anatomically precise muscular bodies approaches that of academic anatomical studies. It must be read as an explicit heroification, as heroic nudity, committed to the convention by which nudity is used to remove the represented figure from the world of ordinary reality, withdrawing him or her to a timeless, lofty sphere. Thus, the individual is to be represented by his type, or, as Quatremére de Quincy put it in his 1823 Essai sur la nature, le but et les moyens de l’Imitation dans les Beaux-Arts, formulated on the nudité heroique: “This is a way to communicate to both contemporaries and future epochs that this individual has ceased to be an individual of this or that city,

11 Cf. Charles Clément, Géricault. Étude biographique et critique avec le catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre du maître, Paris, 1879, (Reprint Paris: Laget, 1973), p. 130. 12 Jean-Baptiste Henri Savigny and Alexandre Corréard, Naufrage de la frégate la Méduse, faisant partie de l’expédition du Sénégal, en 1816 (Paris: Hocquet, Eymery, Barba, Delaunay, Ladvocat, 1817). 13 Théodore Géricault, Mutiny on the Raft, 1818-19, Graphite, pen and brown ink, aquarelle, 40 x 51 cm, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum.

110 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

this or that time, that it is a person of all times and all nations.”14 Heroic nudity thus appears as an atemporal and supraindividual ideal. This heroification takes place most strikingly in the case of the black man, who with the help of his comrades has climbed onto a barrel, pushing himself towards the fore of those frantically waving to the ship approaching in the distance on the horizon. As part of his preliminary sketches for the painting, Géricault produced a study of a black nude that was possibly inspired by the Belvedere Torso [Ill. 5].15 But while the figure of the black man might thus well be in part of classical provenance, it also violates eighteenth century aesthetics, whereby the notion of an idealized body relies on its being purified of all signs of cultural specificity. Already in the nineteenth century, individual beholders drew their own conclusions about Géricault’s unique strategy of heroification. For example, in 1842 Charles Blanc, in pre-revolutionary fervor, commented that Géricault, in his placement of the black man, had helped to express the spirit of his age: It is a Negro who at the top of the canvas exerts all his efforts trying to give signals with the rags left in his hands. […] This Negro is not found in the depths of the hull of the ship, and it is he who will save the crew! Is it not remarkable how this great calamity has in a single blow reestablished equality between the races? It will be a poor slave who will free all these men who subjugated him and despised him, and this

14 Quatremère de Quincy, Essai sur la nature, le but et les moyens de l’Imitation dans les Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1823 (Reprint Bruxelles: Archives d’Architecture Moderne, 1980), p. 408: “C’est véritablement la manière la plus claire de faire dire par les signes corporels, que tel homme a cessé d’être l’individu de tel lieu, de tel temps, et qu’il est devenu l’homme de tous les âges et tous les pays.” 15 Théodore Géricault, Torso of a Black Man, 1819, Chalk and oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm, Montauban, Musée Ingres.

111 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）

happens off the coast of Senegal, where one will kidnap one’s brothers to lead them into slavery. What a noble inspiration to reverse roles!16 Since the 1980s, the literature on this painting—especially in the US—has adopted this reading of the black man as a hero in the struggle against slavery and towards the emancipation of all mankind from all forms of racial and social prejudice or restriction. Hugh Honour, Albert Boime, and others have interpreted the picture in this way, reconstructing in great detail the colonialist and racialist discourse linked to the incident and the painting and pointing out Géricault’s liberal ideas.17 Also along these lines, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby in her subtle analysis of the discourse on cannibalism woven into the painting concludes that cannibalism in Géricault takes on a utopian content as a radically inclusive and democratizing trope. Where white and black are placed in the same conditions, and all man becomes flesh, Grigsby argues, all become equal.18 Albert Alhadeff goes so far as to write a veritable hymn in honor of the black hero at the end of his 2002 monograph on the painting: Géricault’s exalted figure is all of us, he is black and white, he is our self, our semblable. And if his skin, sa peau, is to suffer the lash, so is ours. After all, to reverse the situation […] if our skin is noble so is

16 Charles Blanc, “Études sur les peintres français. Géricault,” in: Le National, 28. August 1842, pp. 1–2 and 30. August 1842, pp. 1–3; p. 1: “C’est un nègre qui est peint au sommet de la toile, s’èpuisant à faire des signaux avec des lambeaux de draperies. [...] Ce nègre n’est plus à fond de cales, et c’est lui qui sauvera l’équipage! N’admirez-vous pas comme ce grand malheur a tout à coup rétabli l’égalité parmi les races! C’est un pauvre esclave qui va déliverer tous ces hommes qui l’ont asservi et dédaigné, et cela se passe sur cette même côte du Sénégal où l’on va prendre ses frères pour les conduire en servitude! Noble idée que celle d’avoir renversé les rôles.” 17 Hugh Honour, L’image du noir dans l’art occidental. De la Révolution américaine à la Première Guerre mondiale (Paris : Gallimard, 1989), I, 119–126; Albert Boime, “Géricault’s African Slave Trade and the Physiognomy of the Oppressed,” in Géricault, ed. by Régis Michel, (Paris: La Documentation Français, 1996), II, pp. 561-593. 18 Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 224: “By rendering all men ‘flesh’, cannibalism is a radically inclusive and democratizing trope.”

112 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

his—and that thought, one that ennobles all men, surely underlies Géricault’s intent as he painted his apical figure on the Raft, un homme de tous les couleurs.19 In this way, the picture presents the politically correct, radically democratic vision of a collective body that shines through in its heroic martyrdom, in order to elevate the most marginalized members of society and to place them at its apex. This interpretation can integrate another, older line of interpretation, one that was already contained in Corréard and Savigny’s report and also expressed by a poet named Brault in an 1818 ode on the peril: a reading that stylized the scene as one of courageous Frenchmen resisting their doom as modern Argonauts.20 Jules Michelet did something similar in his Collége de France lecture on the painting in 1848: arguing that the raft represented France’s calamity, the downfall of the nation under the awful rule of the Bourbons, against which the body of the downtrodden people rebels.21 In other words, The Raft of the Medusa is thus a modern history painting with new heroes, that in order to represent the heroic body of the true nation, the glory of the good, true France, no longer depicts the body of the king, but the suffering, albeit rising people, turned toward a better future. No longer is the absolute ruler the reference point for presenting the historical, but the people’s body. And if, in the nineteenth century, this was at first still the national body, the more recent interpretation of art historians has expanded this

19 Albert Alhadeff, The Raft of the Medusa. Géricault, Art, and Race (München et al.: Prestel, 2002), p. 185. 20 Louis Brault, “Ode. Sur le désastre de la frégate la Méduse,” in: Le Mercure de France, 10. January 1818, pp. 49–53, p. 50. 21 Jules Michelet, “Cinquième leçon. (13. Janvier 1848),” in: Idem: Cours au Collège de France, vol. II: 1845-1851. ed. by Paul Viallaneix (Paris, Gallimard, 1995), pp. 319-329; p. 324: “En 1822 [sic], Géricault peint son Radeau et le naufrage de la France. Il est seul, il navigue seul, pousse vers l’avenir...sans s’informer, ni s’aider de la réaction. Cela est héroïque.”

113 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06） to include the globalized body of exploited humanity, the body of the suppressed races, impoverished peoples, and ethnic refugees. Even if Géricault himself explicitly rejected a political reading of his painting, his heroifying elevation of a historical event today appears to be a turn towards universal truths that transcend the political events of the day using atemporal formulations of pathos.22

III. But, if we consider this alongside what I discussed at the beginning of my essay, we have a contradiction: If on the one hand, nothing remains of the hero, the second reading claims that the painting is an image of modern heroism. The general rejection of the possibility of representation of the hero on the one side is opposed by the apologia of the new democratic hero on the other. But Géricault’s picture, in its antagonistic composition, is constructed so that it seems impossible to choose between these two mutually exclusive interpretations of the painting. The group of hope defying their fate is opposed on the left by the group of mourners around the so-called father, sunken over the dead youth on his lap with an expression of complete and utter resignation. Taking recourse to the neo-classical figure of the old man as seen in Guérin’s

22 Cf. Théodore Géricault, “Lettre à Musigny,” in Bruno Chenique, Les cercles politiques de Géricault (1791-1824) (Ph. D. diss., Université de Paris I, Lille, 1998), II, pp. 513–514: “Cette année [1819], nos gazetiers sont arrivés au comble du ridicule. Chaque tableau est jugé d’abord selon l’esprit dans lequel il a été composé. Ainsi vous entendez un article libéral vanter, dans tel ouvrage, un pinceau vraiment patriotique, une touche nationale. Le même ouvrage, jugé par l’ultra, ne sera plus qu’une composition révolutionnaire, où règne une teinte générale de sédition. Les têtes des personnages auront toutes une expression de haine pour le gouvernement paternel. Enfin, j’ai été accusé par un certain Drapeau blanc d’avoir calomnié, par une tête d’expression, tout le Ministère de la marine. Les malheureux qui écrivent de semblables sottises n’ont sans doute pas jêuné quatorze jours, car ils sauraient alors que ni la poésie ni la peinture ne sont susceptibles de rendre avec assez d’horreur toutes les angoisses où étaient plongés les gens du radeau.”

114 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

1799 Retour de Marcus Sextus [Ill. 6],23 Géricault mobilizes a typical figure of reflection from David and his school that vividly communicates the effect of the emotional content of the subject for the beholder.24 But other models were also integrated into the despairing group: female models, like Melancholia or the Pieta, underscoring still further the sense of expression.25 A melancholic side, that collects the horror, that seems to approach an all-consuming final wall of waves on the left, and opposite it a phallic side of hope, built up with a baroque pathos. Both stand across from one another with no mediation—absolutely incommensurate. The image thus falls apart into two halves that link up in neither a thematic nor a compositional sense; a rift separates the two. In compositional terms, the pyramid of hope is again taken back, and the visual message of the painting is not left to it, but rather left in an uncertain groundlessness. Hence, readings that would like to see this image as a kind of apotheosis of suffering, that see a better future coming on the horizon, that in all the suffering and destruction still want to see Géricault’s revolutionary hope, thus miss the fundamental aesthetic structure of the image, which of course is the ultimate bearer of meaning. For the image offers no resolution towards the hope of the one side at the cost of the other side. The center of the image, traditionally reserved for the hero, offers nothing more than a void: the image thus becomes a metaphor for standstill. Géricault’s painting does not take sides, but represents an antagonism that encompasses both readings. With an anonymous black figure, which in

23 Pierre-Narcisse Guérin: The Return of Marcus Sextus, 1799, Oil on Canvas, 217 x 243 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre. 24 Cf. Stefan Germer, Historizität und Autonomie. Studien zu Wandbildern im Frankreich des 19. Jahrhunderts. Ingres, Chassériau, Chenavard und Puvis de Chavannes, Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, 47 (Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Olms, 1988), pp. 57–60. 25 Cf. Klaus Heinrich, “Das Floß der Medusa,” in: Idem, Floß der Medusa. 3 Studien zur Faszinationsgeschichte mit mehreren Beilagen und einem Anhang (Basel, Frankfurt/Main: Stroemfeld, 1995), pp. 9-74, p. 16.

115 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06） addition can only be seen from the back, in the compositional position of the hero, the audience, trained to keep its eye out for a heroic figure in a history painting, is offered nothing to hold onto: contemporary critics hardly made note of this figure. In the long search for such a hero, the beholder comes upon the resigned patriarch. But this figure as well, through his isolation and inactivity, the lack of direct contact with the other survivors, is equally removed from the sphere of the heroic, as are the officers, Correard and Savigny, who passively endure their fate behind the mast. The image thus nowhere offers hierarchies to structure the differences significant to liberals and conservatives alike. Géricault’s attempt to obtain recognition with a critical painting in the salon of the restoration period could only expect success by referring to a higher third party, superior to the political parties of the day. But what is this higher third party? Clément, the author of the first large monograph on Géricault, provided an answer to this in 1879, arguing that more than that of any other artist, Géricault’s work represented a profound shift in the way art was to be understood. “Ideas of sympathetic suffering, benevolence, and solidarity, fully new at least in terms of their accentuation, breathe in this image, and I cannot look at it without a word escaping my lips: humanity! We suffer with these unlucky men, and we hope with them.”26 This means that at issue is not the expression of hope, and thus “humanity,” but humanity in suffering. Having reached its lowest point, humanity is simultaneously elevated. And it is the task of the beholder to provide all this with meaning. Géricault responds to this tendency towards humanization with a heroification of the human, expressed in the image’s

26 Clément, Géricault, p. 161: “Ces idées toutes nouvelles (à ce degré d’accentuation tout au moins) de pitié, de charité, de solidarité, respirent dans son tableau, et je ne puis le voir sans qu’un mot s’échappe de mes lèvres: humanité! Nous souffrons avec ses malheureux, avec eux nous espérons.”

116 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

almost exhibitionist nudity, an exaggeration of muscles, an excess of energy, an emphasis on expression and superhuman pathos. But in so doing, the aesthetic achievement itself is placed at the center of attention, the accomplishment of the artist. When, for example, Lorenz Eitner sees the merits of the image in having formed the event into an image of superhuman greatness and energy that can stand alongside the works of Michelangelo and the Old Masters, this observation already alternates between the moment of superhuman greatness and energy in the figures represented and the superhuman greatness and energy necessary to create this very depiction.27 The grand gesture carried out by Géricault in making this huge painting thus seems to surpass the tradition of history painting. The immense effort of this gigantic format was supposed to correspond to the unconventionality of the issue. The format chosen, the composition, and the elevation of this subject, politically quite provocative, to the status of great art, communicate a claim to genius that directly refers to the artist and his uncompromising drive towards fame and greatness. In 1848, Michelet had already referred to Géricault in his self-staging gesture as an artist as a hero and a grand homme, saying that all his paintings were instructive on matters of heroism.28 In 1870, Henry Lachèvre described this in the following way: “More and more, the preliminary studies of Géricault on the Raft of the Medusa peeled layer for layer towards the personal moment,

27 Lorenz Eitner, Géricaul:. His Life and Work (London: Orbis, 1983), passim. 28 Cf. Michelet, “Cinquième leçon,” , p. 327: “Il vécut seul, mais rien n’était plus loin de lui que l’école solitaire, égoïste, drapée d’un orgueil insensé. Il était né pour être l’interprète, l’organe d’une société libre, et, pour risquer ce mot, le peintre magistrat, dont chaque tableau eût été un héroïque enseignement.”

117 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06） ultimately arriving at the majestic canvas in which each brushstroke is the great impression of a lion’s paw.”29 The spiritualization of the hero into heroic energy refers back to its painter, towards the person who created the image. It is instructive that the early literature on Géricault ultimately solved the difficulties that the Raft of the Medusa presented for the conventions of heroic representation by replacing the missing hero with the heroification of the artist himself. Clément summarized this in the following words: “He loved glory and he prepared to attain it with the greatest effort.”30 This is quite concretely true of the actual process of creating this work in particular: as has been recounted until quite recently, still true to the first biographies on the artist, in order to isolate himself from society, the artist had himself shaved bald in an act of symbolic self-castration. He then worked for eighteen months shut away in his studio, surrounded by parts of corpses that he had obtained from the morgue as models and then forgot about in his creative delirium, so that they began to rot, the rats scurrying about them. Thus, oblivious to the world and his surroundings, with complete dedication, he summoned all his powers to create an absolute masterwork—The Raft of the Medusa. An immense gesture of potency that reckoned with all fathers and forefathers, but, in its exaggeration, also referred to its predecessors, proving itself equal to them. This is echoed, moreover, by the way Géricault’s biography mobilizes topoi of the heroic: physical beauty and power, superiority of mind and character, recognition in society and social elevation, courage and passion, and a willingness to take on solitude. On the one hand, there is the line of reception

29 Henri Lachèvre, “Détails intimes sur Géricault,” in: Le Nouvelliste de Rouen, no. 60, 1. mars 1870, p. 3. Cf. Pierre Courthion, Géricault raconté par lui-même et par ses amis (Genève-Lausanne: Cailler, 1947), pp. 197–198. 30 Clément, Géricault, pp. 41–42: “Il aimait la gloire et il s’était préparé à la conquérir par les plus sérieux efforts.”

118 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

that describes Géricault as a man of great physical well-being and prowess, a man of decisiveness: this is then seen in his deeds, which, besides the painting of gigantic paintings, included horse riding, in which Géricault the horse-fanatic did not shy away from any difficulty or danger. In a text from 1887, Barbey d’Aurevilly named Géricault one of the “most manly geniuses painting that one ever saw, and that is the reason why this virile man in his paintings especially engaged with the man.” He added, “It was said of him that he was not born of woman, but of a centauress… or at least an Amazon.”31 Then there is the other side of the biography, which focuses on suicide attempts, depression, and unrequited love, his love for his married aunt, a love to the death. An artist that fled from the world, who was plagued by visions and madness—as was long thought could be deduced from his portraits of the mentally ill—an artist hounded by demons, the peintre maudit, the misunderstood genius, suffering in solitude, dying alone. Both aspects embody almost paradigmatically the modern tradition that combines the ancient tropes of the vita activa with that of the Christian vita contemplativa. Both use topoi that can be traced back to antiquity, as well as the myth of the hero and the artist. The attempt is made not only to encounter again the biography in his work, but also, conversely, to draw conclusions from the work about the artist and his character. Accordingly, in a work without a genuine hero, but depicting the heroic energy of suffering, we have an artist of unforeseen heroic energy and capacity to suffer. The absolutization of the private in the stature of the historical leads in Géricault’s case to the fact that no longer is a hero of any kind made the

31 Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, “Géricault,” in: Idem, Les Œuvres et les Hommes. Vol. VII: Sensations d’Art (Paris: Quantin, 1887), pp. 83–96, p. 87: “[…] Géricault est […].un des plus mâles génies de peintre qu’on ait vus, et pour cette raison, c’est de l’homme que ce Viril se préoccupe le plus. […] On dirait qu’il n’est pas né d’elle, mais d’une Centauresse, – tout au moins de quelque Amazone…”.

119 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06） representative of the beholder, as had been the case for Reynolds’ Ugolino or David’s Brutus [Ill. 7].32 Rather, the artist himself, with his emotion, his capacity for suffering, his life, so to speak, serves as a stand-in for the beholder, serving to existentially underwrite a notion of modern heroism, a notion that, like modern history painting, can only be guaranteed with this backing. We should thus not simply dismiss the stylization of Géricault’s biography—to which he himself contributed, along with his early biographers—by way of a gesture of ideological critique, but consider the essential role it played in the production and reception of his art. Returning once more to the reading of the biographer, Clément, from 1879, who argued that Géricault’s work, more than that of any other artist, represented a profound shift in the way art is understood, manifesting in his picture the idea of suffering, benevolence, and solidarity in a new form, then this indicates a new quality of the pictorial form. In artistic terms, this undertaking can be explained by arguing that the artist sought to evoke certain emotions that could no longer be achieved with the representation of a conventional hero. Now it is no longer a hero known by name, not even an individual, anonymous hero, but a conglomerate of heroic bodies, an orgy of skin, nerves, tendons, and muscles that illustrates an amazing pain, a heroic act of suffering, making it plausible to the beholder. The individual hero is no longer able to achieve this effect—a collective of bodies that stands for human nature can. To arrive at this higher level, the painter had to ensure that no single specific hero was represented. If the immediate predecessors of Géricault in the modernization of history painting still staged the dying hero or hero as victim—think here of Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe [Ill. 8], Copley’s Death of Chatham, or Guérin’s Marcus Sextus—Géricault now went

32 Jacques-Louis David, The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of his sons, 1789, Oil on canvas, 323 x 422 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre.

120 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

a step further. In his effort to satisfy his own need for a hero—and that of his audience—Géricault had to undertake a further abstraction. The task that he set himself in the Raft of the Medusa was ultimately to isolate the essence of the heroic and to distill it in the form of a heroic effect. Only then could the artist ensure that the representation of heroic suffering was not limited to a historical person in his or her public role and model stature, but available for all to experience and perceive in its universal content. The task that thus presented itself was in a sense to paint a painting without a subject, which as we know, Delacroix, referring to other paintings of the artist, isolated as one of Géricault’s achievements; the depiction of an image that, in presenting its subject, simultaneously transcends it in its specific delimitation. What was then to have an impact was the image as a whole, its aesthetic achievement, and the modernization of the visual form. The work as a whole must address an interiority that fully involves the beholder. But we should be careful about concluding that these accompanying alterations of visual form, the modification and modernization of this artistic technique, entailed the death of the hero and the end of history painting as such. Such formulas, with their Hegelian premises, found all too often in the discussion of history painting, voice a teleology that is unable to account for the continuing existence of the hero in countless mass cultural manifestations. It is here that Géricault’s painting of the Raft of the Medusa represented an important step in Western culture’s efforts to privatize the classical epic hero, subjectivizing and spiritualizing him. It is also clear that in accompanying conceptualizations of the heroic, the effort of the artist serves to secure the artistic medium’s capacity to present the hero or the heroic, allowing its traditional moral claim to move into the nineteenth century. Géricault’s image brings the inversion of the artist to the hero into view, because it proves art’s ability to take on a heroic quality. Yes, even events that are not heroic, like the

121 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06） shipwreck before the coast of Senegal, can be lent a heroic dimension not granted to the real protagonists of the drama, the few survivors of this tragedy. But it is also clear that this art’s universal claim also belongs to a specific cultural context. In using such techniques, Géricault placed himself in the tradition of Christian humanism, picking up in the spirit of Montaigne’s neo-stoicism, in which the greatness of humanity is no longer judged according to a glorious life, but according to what a person is able to bear. Indeed, in quite a general sense the realism of Western art can be attributed to a Christian anthropology that attempts to absolutize the contingency of its standpoint by way of universalizing aesthetic abstractions. This Christian anthropology of suffering represents an ethical demand, and communicates an image of the world in which normative claims are inherent, claims that apply both to life and art. This culminates in an ethic of suffering; art is then the medium that allows the individual, as a distinct person and a member of the human species, to encounter the abyss separating the two. It is the bearing of the hopelessness of this abyss, the emotional exploration of it, and its retention in our consciousness that then appears heroic.

122 Gregor Wedekind, Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

Gregor Wedekind

Abstract

Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, exhibited in the Salon of 1819, represents an attack on the picture genre in which the image of the hero is primarily conceptualized: the history painting. Géricault’s painting offends all aesthetic categories that indispensably belong to history painting, categories that guarantee it its generalizing and universalizing connotations. Yet at the same time, the tremendous format and Géricault’s stylistic treatment of the bodies depicted leave no doubt that this is a painting that would like to attain the dignity of history painting. Even if Géricault’s new heroes arouse the sympathy of the viewer, they are in no way any use as new figures of identification. The antagonistically aesthetic structure of the picture does not allow for such an unequivocal reading. Géricault’s heroicizing of that which is human intends to trigger certain emotions by way of art, emotions that would not have been attainable with the representation of a conventional hero. It is no longer the hero known by name, no longer even the single anonymous hero, but instead a conglomerate of heroic bodies which are meant to demonstrate heroic suffering and make it plausible. In fact, it is the picture as a whole that achieves this effect. For this reason, however, the aesthetic merit of the painting itself comes into view. From the start, the reception of the painting switched between the statement of superhuman size and energy as a depiction and the superhuman size and energy that were necessary to create this depiction. The

123 《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06） magnificent gesture that Géricault makes with his enormous painting was intended to surpass the tradition of history painting. The chosen format, the composition, and the inflation of the scandalizing subject to great art refer directly to the artist and his absolute desire for fame and greatness. The creator of the picture, the artist himself, becomes visible behind the depiction as the actual hero.

Keywords: Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, hero.

124