Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité

800px-Flag_of_France_(1794–1815,_1830–19

This project began last summer when I visited Mass MOCA to see Anselm Kiefer's Women of the French Revolution installation. Using images from a November 2019 exhibition of my works, as well as a newly embroidered tapestry based on "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité," three ideals that appeared during the French Revolution, I share my fascination with this period of French history from a feminist perspective. I must also acknowledge the influence of Krzysztof Kieślowski's films: Red, White, Blue - Three Colours trilogy (1990s). The flags of both France and the US share red, white, and blue and maybe on a good day, we share (as allies) not just the colors, but the ideals of liberty, equality and brotherhood/sisterhood .

Detail of my Tricolor Tapestry (Mme Roland)

Revolution/Revelation

Women of the Revolution, an installation (1992/2013) by German artist Anselm Kiefer, became embedded in my memory after visiting Mass MOCA in July 2019. The twenty lead beds, with scraps of paper tacked on the wall above each bed were inked with women’s names. What was Kiefer memorializing? I discovered that Jules Michelet’s 1854 study Les Femmes de la Revolution was Kiefer’s inspiration. Lest we forget the brave women who died for the radical idea of replacing the monarchy with a democracy, Kiefer’s installation suggests they live on in values we continue to cherish today.

I chose three women to study: Madame de Genlis, Madame Roland and Mademoiselle Corday. I combined Public Domain images of them with my own photos of Kiefer’s installation. I also created superimposed images from Jacques Louis-David’s The Death of Marat and Eugene Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People because these paintings by male artists are easily recognizable to most art lovers, however, the names of the women are not. This pairing of images addresses the veiled history of the women of the French Revolution. Had Marat’s Jacobins been less eager to wipe out the aristocracy (Girondins), the French people could have avoided senseless mass murders (including both Roland and Corday) that were enacted in a mad rush to establish “liberty, equality and fraternity.”

Charlotte Corday (27 July 1768 - 17 July 1793) is remembered as the woman who stabbed Jacobin Jean-Paul Marat who was soaking in his medicinal bath.

Although Corday was demonized in her time, her actions today are viewed with sympathy. At her trial she defended herself by saying she killed one man to save 100,000. She was referring to the fact that anyone connected with the aristocracy (a Girondin) was added to Marat’s hit list and sent to the guillotine for beheading. She and other Girondins were beheaded for proposing a constitutional monarchy that would allow for a peaceful transition of power.

Charlotte Corday (27 July 1768 - 17 July 1793)
At age 24, four days after Corday stabbed Marat in his bath, she was executed by the guillotine in the Place de Grève wearing the red overblouse denoting a condemned traitor who had assassinated a representative of the people.

Male artists, specifically, Jacques Louis-David and Eugene Delacroix, have always been featured in art history books about the French Revolution. That we don’t know these women’s stories suggests that history does, indeed, celebrate the actions of men over the actions of women.

Charlotte Corday stabbed Jacobin Jean-Paul Marat who was soaking in his medicinal bath. Art history burns Jacques Louis-David’s image into our collective memory with his Neo-classical depiction of the dead Marat, lying in a Christ-like pose. We know David waffled politically, as he eventually left the radicals to become Napoleon’s court painter.

Madame Roland (17 March 1754 – 8 November 1793) was associated with sunflowers in Kiefer’s mythology. Kiefer sees sunflowers as representing the cycle of life. The dead sunflower holds many seeds, that when planted, sprout new life. Roland established herself in Paris as a leading figure within the Girondins. The salon she hosted in her home was an important meeting place for politicians, however she eventually alienated Robespierre. In June 1793, she was the first Girondin to be arrested during the Reign of Terror and was guillotined a few months later.

Just before she was guillotined, she uttered the famous words “O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”

Le dernier Jour de Madame Roland
Jules Adolphe Goupil 1880

The image I chose is from an 1880 painting of Madame Roland’s final day by Jules-Adolphe Goupil (1839–1883).

Mme Roland was arrested on the outbreak (May 31, 1793) of the Jacobin-inspired insurrection that led to the expulsion (June 2) of the leading Girondins from the Convention. During her five-month imprisonment she wrote her memoirs, Appel à l’impartiale postérité (“Appeal to Impartial Posterity”). Just before she was guillotined, she uttered the famous words “O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”

Madame de Genlis ( 25 January 1746 – December 31) was an influential writer and educator appointed to oversee the education of the children of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Chartres (later Duke of Orleans). This was the first time young boys were instructed by a woman rather than a man. Jane Austen was both influenced and repelled by her novels. De Genlis fled Paris to save her life, returning when Napoleon came to power. Kiefer suggested Madame de Genlis’s creativity by embedding an artist’s palette into her lead bed.

From the Brooklyn Museum Sackler Center for Feminist Art:
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis was a writer and educator whose work included the well-received novel Adèle et Théodore; ou, Lettres sur l’éducation (Adele and Theodore; or, Letters on Education, 1782). Genlis was also head governess and tutor to the children of the duke and duchess of Chartres, during a period when it was unheard of for a woman to tutor sons of a royal family. Genlis wrote extensively, publishing more than 100 books; she lamented the limited opportunities for female writers, but was not radical in her ideas about expanding opportunities for women in society, as she advocated a primarily domestic role.

Like Jacques Louis-David, Eugene Delacroix, who painted “Liberty Leading the People” in 1830, was inconstant in his support for equality for all. As Philip Kennicott wrote in the Washington Post (April 12, 2018) “despite liberal views, [Delacroix] remained wary of the political mob and the volatile streets of Paris that produced precisely the event he memorialized in “Liberty Leading the People.”

Women, ironically, were a large part of that fearsome “mob.”

Le 28 Juillet.
La Liberté guidant le peuple

The irony of Delacroix depicting a violent mob being led by "Liberty" is that he feared the very mob that he painted.

Anselm Kiefer The Women of the Revolution

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Anselm Kiefer

The Women of the Revolution (Les Femmes de la Révolution), 1992

Lead beds, photograph on lead