The Delacroix style chest | Understand + with History

It seems that the soufflé of the controversy over the Benidorm Festival. Like everything that grows bloated by the heated microclimate of social networks, this topic has expanded and dissolved at the speed of light. One of the most acclaimed songs by the public was ‘Ow mom’ from Rigoberta Bandini. The lyrics contain a pictorial evocation: “Let’s stop the city, sticking out a chest in the pure Delacroix style & rdquor ;.

The song refers to the painting ‘Freedom guiding the people’, Painted by Eugene Delacroix to commemorate the revolution that took place in France in 1830 against the king charles x The one with her chest out is a woman waving the tricolor flag and holding a rifle. But in reality it is the allegory of that freedom that marks the way for the rebels. Our readers who have visited the Louvre will perhaps remember the canvas, because it is one of the stars of the Parisian museum which, like most of its level, is monopolized by paintings signed by men. It is easy to respond almost instinctively that this happens because there were no women to pick up the brush. Lie. I invite our readers to visit the blog of the National Museum of Art of Catalonia and read the article that Ingrid Vidal published in March 2020 about women artists in museums. More than a text, it is a recital, in which it dismantles all the topics that most of us have used to varnish our poorly concealed ignorance.

Vidal explains that museums are one more tool of power. They offer a partial vision, chosen subjectively, where some themes and authors are prioritized over others. For example, in the 19th century, history painting such as Delacroix’s was the best valued because it had a desire for moral pedagogy towards the public. There was only one small problem: women could never paint it. For this type of painting it was essential to know anatomy to represent human bodies correctly. Well it turns out art student girls couldn’t attend anatomy classes because they were made with real models and that would have forced them to contemplate naked bodies, which was considered indecency for the bourgeois mentality of the eight hundred. In consecuense, female artists were relegated to painting subjects considered minor, such as landscapes or still lifes, where the most anatomical thing there was was a basket of figs or a bouquet of tuberoses. However, some managed to break barriers. In Catalonia, for example, the painter Lluisa Vidal Puig. The only female artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries who established a publicly recognized career.

What’s more, the feminine ideal of the time reduced the condition of a woman to being a wife and mother. It was unthinkable that a girl could dedicate herself professionally to art. A painter, therefore, could never make a painting like the one signed by Delacroix and extolled by Bandini in his song, where the woman who appears is not even real, but a simple allegory that has no identity.

In recent years, the voices of specialists have begun to be heard calling for museums to a new look at art and don’t just let Western white men monopolize it. In this sense, the institutions have initiated acquisition policies to expand their collections. They especially look at contemporary women artists. This ensures that in the future, when the 21st century is studied, there will be a more limited vision of reality. However, there is still a major challenge pending: to explain that this variety also existed in other centuries and that during the Renaissance, the Baroque or the Enlightenment there were also painters in the courts of the nobles who earned a living from the commissions they received, such as the case of Angelika Kauffmann, famous for her portraits. If now we do not know his name or that of so many others, it is because his artistic production has deliberately ended up in the abyss of warehouses and warehouses, instead of presenting it to the general public by hanging his canvases in exhibition halls. There they still reign the chest of Delacroix and company.

out of canon

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Museums are not petrified spaces, where works of art remain unchanged. Little by little, those responsible are correcting the old-fashioned speeches and efforts are being made to make visible artists who in other times would have been considered outside the canon. But this is only possible when society pushes and leads change.