Theme and Variations: Raft of the Medusa

1818
Theme and Variations
Relating Music and Art
Curated by Becky Reilly

Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818



I might be biased because I played this piece for a piano recital, but I love Chopin's music.  He searches for technical perfection and yet still conveys the unbridled emotion characteristic of the Romantic period.  His "Op. 10 No. 4 (Étude in #C Minor)" and Théodore Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa actually have much in common.  The roiling, disquieting left-hand rolls that begin at 0:18 are the same waves that rock the raft, and both the piece and painting are painstakingly composed but still violent and sweeping.

Géricault's The Raft of the Medusa was inspired by a shipwreck off the coast of Mauritania.  Only fifteen members survived, engaging in cannibalism and shocking the public upon their return.  Géricault shows a moment in which the desperate sailors finally see their savior.  The artist went to great lengths to forge an accurate rendering of the event, speaking with survivors, visiting morgues to learn to paint the dead, verifying the raft's exact dimensions, reading newspaper articles, and attending the captain's trial.  For all his research, he still romanticizes some aspects.  Many of the figures look uncharacteristically healthy, and the poses and chiaroscuro echo earlier movements, almost like a history painting.  But the mix of utter despair and hope are shocking and real.

Chopin's études, like other musician's, were designed for students to study and practice certain techniques -- in this case, velocity.  There are few sustained notes throughout the piece.  He opts instead to write lines of rapid sixteenth notes.  Mastery of an étude means executing it with perfect technique.  The expression comes from the speed, accents, and dynamics.  I find these two works related and interesting because of the intricacies of their creation and careful composition that, opposite the restrained Neoclassical style, instead builds into emotional maelstrom.

  • 7:00 AM

Water Graves - Raft of Medusa

Gericault
Water Graves 
Reflections on the Illusions of Drowning in Art
Curated by Taylor Schwartz


Théodore Géricault, The Raft of Medusa, 1818-1819
Gericault’s figures in The Raft of Medusa are drowning. Not in their subconscious or any other metaphorical substance as discussed in prior analyses, but physically drowning. I have examined many illusions of this type of death in my previous posts, but none have dealt with the tremulous fear of an actual drowning. Confronted with cannibalism, rotting flesh, and fading hope on a life-sized canvas, the viewer himself feels as if he is struggling to stay alive on the condemned Méduse. This canvas is not an illustration of a piece of literature, a mythological interpretation, or a projection of the creator’s fantastical mind. Gericault, after months of intense research, recreated the historic wreck of the frigate Méduse. All of a sudden, the viewer is forced to grasp that Gericault’s shipwreck hanging on a red wall in the Louvre, a monstrous amalgamation of rotting flesh and salty water, happened. Drowning, and in a more general sense, death, becomes instantly palpable, as the eye moves across dismembered limbs and green bodies up to a wind blown piece of fabric floating in a dark and shadowed sky.

I have seen many disturbing paintings as an Art History student, but for me, Gericault’s Raft of Medusa is perhaps the most unsettling. I assume my fear of it comes from my own diluted aquaphobia. Who else would focus an entire collection around drowning? This collection has allowed me to investigate the cruel, yet at times forgiving, nature of the sea, and how artists and fictitious characters entrap themselves in illusions of drowning. The ocean can be a marvelous place, but with beauty always comes sadness.

The arms of the ocean, so sweet and so cold. All this devotion I never knew at all. And the crashes are heaven, for a sinner released, let the arms of the ocean deliver me.

Never Let Me Go, Florence and the Machine
  • 12:00 AM

After Death: study of the head of a corpse and The Tell-Tale Heart

After Death
After Death: study of the head of a corpse, Theodore Garicault, 1819
Theodore Gericault became one of the most influential French artists during the Romantic period. He began to succeed early in his artistic career when his first painting, The Charging Chasseur, was displayed in a Paris Salon in 1812. This was just the start to his success in the arts. Only a couple years later, still youthful in the game of art, he painted Wounded Cuirassier, which displayed in the same salon in 1814. In 1819, Gericault painted a not so successful painting, After Death: study of the head of a corpse.
     
Edgar Allan Poe wrote in "The Tell-Tale Heart": “I talked more quickly -- more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men -- but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed -- I raved -- I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder --louder -- louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not?”

Guilt is an emotional state in which a human being regrets an action that one completed, but believes that it should not have been done. This emotion also has the power to motivate human beings to make amends and attempt to fix what they feel guilty about. A person can be driven mad by the thoughts that go through their head, making them see and hear things that might not be there. “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe displays a perfect example of the unique power that can almost control a guilty human entirely.

  • 1:30 AM

The Raft of the Medusa

Gericault


Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819
Géricault contemplates alone for hours over his newest work. The year is 1819, and Géricault has just returned from a long trip to Italia. He has viewed many artistic wonders by Michelangelo that have inspired him, but he cannot seem to find an event worthy of his talent. Suddenly inspiration strikes Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa. Waves crashing, figures begging and praying, hope just over the horizon, this horrific drama truly captures the eye of the public. The Medusa was a clumsy 40-gunned French frigate that was decommissioned and converted into a ferry. Of course this misfit ship needed a captain, who better than Hugues Duroy de Chaumarevs, who had not been at sea in over 20 years. Needless to say, Chaumarevs was a little rusty at the whole captain thing. On his journey to Senegalese he commanded the Medusa and a convoy of other ships carrying a load of citizens. The goal was to return to Senegal after its return to French control.

In attempt to arrive at a reasonable time, Chaumarevs steered the Medusa far ahead of the other ships in the fleet. In addition to this, Chaumarevs conceived the brilliant idea to beach the ferry on a sandbar far from the African coast. Finally Chaumarevs re-thought his brilliant plan. “Well, I guess we should fix this,” Chaudmarevs probably said to the crew who were certainly overjoyed with the situation. Many attempts to free the ship failed, so a makeshift raft was constructed as transport to the shore. Like the captain of the ship, this raft couldn’t do its job. So when a storm begins to hit, the people panic. The few lifeboats are taken and the raft is filled. Seventeen men stay behind on the Medusa as the raft bobs to its doom. Only 15 suvivors are found from the raft. This chaotic tragedy was just what Géricault needed. When one views one of Géricault’s greatest works they can feel the suspense of rescue. Unfortunately, hope doesn’t come for everyone.

  • 12:00 AM

Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct

Evening
Theodore Gericault, Evening:Landscape with Aqueduct, 1818

Gericault completed Evening during the summer of 1818. This painting is one of the four landscapes painted to portray different times of day.
It highlights the ruins of an aqueduct in the Italian countryside, which Gericault visited in 1817. During his visit to this site, the weather started to become turbulent and sun started to disappear as pitch black clouds invaded the sky. This scenery was quite fitting for the personal turmoil that Gericault had at that time, as he had fathered the son of his uncle’s second wife.
However, Gericault saw this as a sublime scene of beauty and action, which he felt compelled to paint rather than wallow in. Despite his short life of 32 years, it was with this stormy aesthetic that Gericault fathered the styles of emerging Romanticism.
Some critics say that the painting is unusually large for a landscape from that era, and depicting an ambiguous scene, cast in slanting light, of swimmers bathing near a hill town. However, many argue that like other Gericault paintings, Evening is energetic and brilliantly colored.
Unfortunately, Gericault was able to only finish two out of the remaining three landscape paintings (Morning: Landscape with Fishermen and Noon: Landscape with a Roman Tomb) due to the family conflict with his illegitimate son.
  • 1:00 AM

Insane Woman

Gericault
Thedore Gericault, Insane
Woman, 1822
Théodore Géricault's Insane Woman greatly opposes Enlightenment ideology. Géricault bases his portrayal of the insane on his continuous study of the mentally ill. The subject's contorted face reveals what people of the 1800s considered insanity. The piece greatly contrasts Géricault's typical subject matter of extreme situations.

One of twelve commissioned pieces, all portraying the mentally unstable, Insane Woman depicts the artist's fascination with the brain and its condition.

People at the time thought that a person's facial structure and appearance revealed their mental state and character. After visiting numerous mental institutions and observing the patients, Géricault formed the face of Insane Woman. The woman's gaze, slightly crooked, contains harsh eyes along with an almost smirk. Her aged and speckled face with slack muscles would have been tell-tale signs of mental illness.

Many as well believed that an other true display of a person's character was at their moment of death. It was for this reason that Géricault also studied heads severed by the guillotine. The combination of bodiless heads and mentally ill patients created the perfect grounds for his portrayal of the Insane Woman.
  • 4:21 PM

Study of Two Severed Heads

1818
Theodore Gericault, Study of Two Severed Heads, 1818

Over the course of his career, Theodore Géricault created countless sketches and studies of executions in France, England, and Rome, but none so carefully crafted or thoroughly unsettling as his oil painting collection of severed limbs and heads just prior to his infamous entry of The Raft of Medusa into the Salon of 1819. Perhaps the most unsettling of these preliminary paintings, Study of Two Severed Heads not only prepared Gericault to craft his masterpiece, but also reflects his staunch opposition to capital punishment.

Though the work appears to be a pure study piece, some scholars have made claims that the painting may have been meant to stand on it’s own, citing the piece’s arrangement and the sketches which Gericault created in preparation for the “study.” Furthermore, neither of the two heads in the painting appear directly within Raft of Medusa, and though they likely assisted Gericault in depicting the limp lifeless form of the human corpse, the figures in each clearly share emotional as well as visual qualities. The artist acquired the male head in the painting from the Parisian hospital prison, Bicetre, the noggin having once belonged to a thief in the city. However, for the female head, Gericault hired a living model to pose for the painting, likely requesting her to emulate the expression of the head already in his possession. So, technically speaking, a more proper title might be Study of a Severed Head, and A Woman Playing Possum.

The use of a live model in a supposed study further suggests the possibility of social and political undertones within the piece. Gericault also likely exaggerated or even fabricated the blood stains that cover the sheets upon which the heads are placed, for the severed head would have been drained of blood by the time it came into his care, and the woman, given that her head was very much attached, would also have shed no blood. Despite its title and its label as a study piece, the painting subtly decries the use of the guillotine.
  • 1:00 AM