Cultural Denial – as, power: shifts
Painted with acrylic, this piece depicts the idea of cultural denial.
Denial of the rich to the poor.
I titled it in this way (“Revolution’s Forgotten”) to draw in the political conversations about the French Revolution; you know the one – about wreckage and the breakdown of the social order of things, violence and civil unrest.
All due to elite decadence. Or so it is claimed.
This painting was inspired by a trip to Paris in the early 2000s. I was affected by the stories of France’s revolutionary past when visiting The Louvre. I saw such artistic representations of the struggle for “Equalité, Liberté et Fraternité” and found it breathtaking. Being French of course probably had something to do with it!
I also saw Les Misérables at the Savoy theatre, in London, at that time, so that might have had something to do with it as well. The epicentre of elitism. Today, such exertions are impossible. Leisure is for the rich only.
My impressions are conveyed below:
A painting, like this, is supposed to illustrate the traditionally understood notion of juxtaposition. Explored here on-a canvas. For example the wide gap between rich and the poor. It can be polarized as an image in the mind’s eye and when depicted in art it becomes a truth telling. Dilapidated ships juxtaposed with pretty little women in ostentatious dresses, with onlookers, meddlers and thieves ever so close; everyone preying on what can be gotten.
Hopefully that’s what the painting captures for you.
I tried to paint this idea of two-dimensionality, trying to be a copy-cat of, say, Chagall’s style. My theme is of course aristocratic decadence gone awry. Totally Defeated of course!
But all but momentarily (as we know from history) three socialite ladies remain. Dressed in their once prefect-and-fancy wears they are now tattered and yet still, the ladies absorbed only in themselves.
This is contrasted against soot-covered street men, looking ever so devious. Like a fresh mob. On the make; just waiting there, watching, happy for the looting that’s just taken place. This; surrounded by but a backdrop of broken grails and damaged railings of what was once a classic Courtyard, in the distance; capsized and ruinous boats symbolize the squandering of the rich.
These are signs of the ruins of the revolution. A suffering of the people and a society in a power transition.
Somehow amidst all this devastation, there is a boy (a sort of French version of the Oliver Twist character).
Looking right out.
Peering out from the surreal – to us, the viewer. He is the only active subject, perhaps signaling the days to come. Not necessarily good days but hard days to come.
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