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‘The Death of Marat’ Defined the French Revolution. Here Are 3 Things You Might Not Know About Jacques Louis David’s Masterpiece
In 1793, Jacques Louis David, the official artist of the French Revolution, painted the Death of Marat as a tribute to his slain friend, the revolutionary propagandist Jean-Paul Marat, in the wake of his assassination. The painting, which is today in the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, remains one of the defining images of that era. Most museum goers are at least cursorily familiar with the image and the story behind it.
So you probably know that the assassination in question took place during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution, and that David’s depiction was used as Jacobin propaganda. You may know that Marat was killed by one Charlotte Corday, who gained entrance to his house by promising to give Marat dirt on enemies of the Revolution, then stabbed him. You may know that Marat is pictured in a bath tub because he had a skin condition that he was treating, and that the note shown gripped in his hand is meant as evidence of Corday’s trickery, showing a message from her asking for his help.
Here are three facts about the painting that go a little deeper.
1) It May Be His Tribute to Another Revolutionary as Well: Caravaggio
Caravaggio, Entombment of Christ (1603). Collection of the Vatican Museum.You may not think of austere Neoclassicism as connected to the bombastic Baroque. But scholars have called the Death of Marat David’s “most intense masterpiece of Caravaggism.”
As a student, David was likely very inspired by Caravaggio, who was not the most fashionable reference in France at the time. With its draped arm and stigmata-like, bloodless wound, the figure in Death of Marat echoes Caravaggio’s Entombment of Christ (1603). Marat’s dramatically lit, slack-jawed face also echoes Caravaggio’s Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy (1610).
Caravaggio, Mary Magdalen in Ecstasy (1610). Image via Wikimedia Commons.The French Revolution rebelled against the church, and thus made religious iconography forbidden during this period. But the reference to Caravaggio’s works helped David render Marat a Revolutionary martyr. Since Marat’s newspaper was called “The Voice of the People,” and Caravaggio was famous (or infamous) for inserting images of the common people into Biblical scenes, the influence really makes sense.
2) Corday, Not Marat, Would be Celebrated in Art for Decades After ‘The Death of Marat’
Jean-Jacques Hauer, Charlotte Corday (1793). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.Charlotte Corday, the assassin, is not depicted in David’s picture, which is part of what gives Marat’s figure its beautified, otherwordly status. During her trial, an unrepentant Corday stated she had acted to stop Marat from further fueling the Reign of Terror, saying, “I have killed one man to save a hundred thousand,” before being sent to the guillotine.
Corday’s dying wish was that her portrait be taken. National Guard officer Jean-Jacques Hauer, who had already taken some sketches of the prisoner, created her likeness in the hours just before her execution.
In the decades that followed, opinion on the Revolution turned, and so did opinions on the Death of Marat. David had to have the painting hidden away when he was exiled to Brussels. Meanwhile, Corday continued to be the subject of paintings and poetry that pictured her as a heroine, earring the nickname the “Angel of Assassination” by the mid-19th century.
Paul Jacques Aimé Baudry, Charlotte Corday, posthumous (1860). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.Paul Baudry’s 1860 image of the same scene, made during the Second Empire, paints Corday into the image, as if flipping David’s image by 90 degrees to open up the view on the event.
But Jean-Joseph Weerts’s The Assassination of Marat (1880), featuring a steely Corday faced by a musical theater style explosion of angry French revolutionaries, has to take the cake for alternative renditions of of the scene.
Jean-Joseph Weerts, The Assassination of Marat (1880). Image via Wikimedia Commons.3) Charles Baudelaire Brought ‘Marat’ Back to Life
The painting lingered in relative obscurity well after David’s death in 1825. The family even tried to sell it, unsuccessfully.
Charles Baudelaire, considered one of the first art critics as well as a modernist poet, gets credit for reinvigorating public enthusiasm for the painting. In 1846, upon seeing it in a small exhibition of works of David and Ingres in Paris, he penned an ode to the work that specifically placed its emotional truth above the politics of the day, and so set the stage for it to be revered beyond its immediate Revolutionary context:There is something at once both tender and poignant about this work; in the icy air of that room, on those chilly walls, about that cold and funereal bath, hovers a soul. May we have your leave, you politicians of all parties, and you too, wild liberals of 1845, to give way to emotion before David’s masterpiece? This painting was a gift to a weeping country, and there is nothing dangerous about our tears.
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Rashid Johnson, Anicka Yi, and Other Art Stars Twist Reality and Truth in This East Hampton Show—See Images Here
As galleries and art institutions around the world begin to reopen, we are spotlighting individual shows—online and IRL—that are worth your attention.
“Friend of Ours”at Rental Gallery, East Hamptonthrough July 30
What the gallery says: “‘Friend of Ours’ presents leading contemporary artists who bend reality in such a way as to make the viewer question their own lying eyes. Who even knows what is real anymore? Beyond any pedestrian sense of ‘fake news,’ we drift in an epoch wherein no one seems to agree on any basic premise. Everything we look at is presumed to have always already been face-tuned and photoshopped, and when our brains attempt to decode art objects they are filtered through our presumption that they have been ‘fixed in post.’
Using a variety of strategies, all of the artists included in ‘Friend of Ours’ complicate the reading of reality. Many of the artists in the exhibition make objects that seem to have been digitally altered when in fact they are what they are. Others use form and scale to confuse our ability to read what is before our eyes in subtler ways. The line where craft and After Effects meet is blurred and rendered moot. As a whole, the works in the exhibition operate as a new form of trompe-l’oeil, confusing our digitally native brains’ perceptive abilities.”
Why it’s worth a look: If you’re lucky enough to be out east this summer, there’s no shortage of gallery shows offering (socially distanced) viewing experiences. At Rental Gallery—which set up shop on Newton Lane long before it was pandemic trendy—a group show of quirky, thoughtful, and timely works is the perfect re-entry into IRL art exploration.
Some of the works are clearly reflections on the current state of the world, including Rashid Johnson’s Untitled Anxious Red Drawing (2020), a frenetic red canvas produced during quarantine, and Sayre Gomez’s Untitled (2020), a gray canvas painted with “BLM” and “I can’t breathe” and accompanied by an illustration of the grim reaper. Other works are more ambiguous, though it seems like everything these days has new meaning, such as Mungo Thompson’s Snowman, a bronze-cast sculpture of three Amazon delivery boxes, the new omnipresent accessories of life in lockdown.
The show is curated by Joel Mesler, who owns the gallery, and Benjamin Godsill of the art advisory Curatorial Services. It features artists Farah Al Qasimi, Sayre Gomez, Henry Gunderson, Hugh Hayden, Alex Israel, Matt Johnson, Rashid Johnson, Josh Kline, Fredrick Kunath, Robert Longo, Tony Matelli, Borna Sammak, Mungo Thomson, Austyn Weiner, Jonas Wood, and Anicka Yi.
The gallery is donating a portion of proceeds from exhibition sales to Black Lives Matter and Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s Healthcare Heroes Fund for COVID-19.
What it looks like:Installation view, “Friend of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.
Josh Kline, Keep the Change (Texas Roadhouse Waiter’s Head with Cap) [detail] (2018). Courtesy of the artist.
Friedrich Kunath, For the Last Time, Hello (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Matt Johnson, 3 Intersecting Books (Henry Moore, Michelangelo, and Bonsai) (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Installation view, “Friend of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.
Jonas Wood, Shelf Still Life (2015). Courtesy of the artist.
Alex Israel, Casting (2015). Courtesy of the artist.
Farah Al Qasimi, Curtain Shop (2019). Courtesy of the artist.
Anicka Yi, Cascade of Failure (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Austyn Weiner, Working Through Not Knowing a Damn Thing About Any Thing (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Sayre Gomez, Untitled (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Installation view, “Friend of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.
Installation view, “Friend of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.
Installation view, “Friends of Ours” at Rental Gallery, July 2020.
Rashid Johnson, Untitled Anxious Red Drawing (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
Robert Longo, Study of Rio Cops, Baltimore (2016). Courtesy of the artist.
Henry Gunderson, Henry Sux #3 (2020). Courtesy of the artist.
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Egypt May Have Broken Its Own Antiquities Laws by Lending Dozens of King Tut Artifacts to a Touring Blockbuster Show
A traveling blockbuster exhibition featuring the treasures of King Tutankhamun, the famed boy pharaoh, may have breached Egyptian laws meant to protect antiquities.
In a new documentary, BBC News Arabic investigates the legality of the show, billed as the largest collection of King Tut’s treasures ever to leave Egypt. It was organized with the help of Egyptologist Zahi Hawass, formerly Egypt’s minister for antiquities, and a controversial figure in the field of archaeology.
“Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharaoh” is the work of Exhibitions International, an events company that specializes in sports, entertainment, and fashion. The show, which celebrates the 100th anniversary of the discovery of King Tut’s tomb, debuted at the California Science Center in Los Angeles in March 2018 as part of a 10-city tour. Following a stop in Paris, it was most recently on view at the Saatchi Gallery in London.
When the show was planned, Egypt’s Antiquities Protection Law permitted the international exhibition of ancient artifacts provided they were “not unique” and were “exchanged with states, museums, and scientific institutions”—but not commercial companies.
Tutankhamun’s Wishing Cup in the Form of an Open Lotus. Image courtesy Laboratoriorosso, Viterbo, Italy.The law was amended in 2018, allowing Egypt’s council of antiquities to approve international artifact loans without restrictions. But Exhibitions International signed its contract with the government in September 2017, before the legal amendment.
An Egyptian lawyer, Sayed Said, has filed a lawsuit against the country’s ministry of antiquities over the exhibition, arguing that the show contains unique artifacts that have been unlawfully lent to a commercial business.
IMG, the parent company of Exhibitions International (and Frieze Art Fair), told the BBC that the artifacts in the King Tut show were not unique, but part of a series. Hawass says that “these touring artifacts aren’t of any importance,” a claim that directly contradicts a promotional quote he offered for the show in 2017, in which he claimed that “each object is unique.”
Gilded Wooden Bed (Reign of Tutankhamun 1336-1326 B.C.E.)© Laboratoriorosso, Viterbo/ItalyThere is precedent for shutting down international exhibitions of Egyptian artifacts. In 2011, a court in Cairo found that Cleopatra exhibition in Ohio, also organized by Exhibitions International, was unlawful, and demanded the artifacts’ return. (The Cleopatra show took place prior to IMG’s purchase of Exhibitions International in 2018.)
The London show, originally scheduled to run through May 3, 2020, has been closed indefinitely since March. It will not reopen, according to the Art Newspaper, and subsequent stops on the tour have been suspended indefinitely.
The show attracted 1.4 million visitors in Paris and 580,000 in London, and brought in approximately $57 million. Los Angeles attendance figures were not available. Admission ran as high as £37.50 ($46) at Saatchi, which is normally free.
Colossal Statue. Image courtesy of Laboratoriorosso, Viterbo, Italy.At the tour’s end in 2024, the 150 artifacts are slated to return to Egypt, where they will go on permanent display at the long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum near the Pyramids of Giza, where construction underway. The museum, which has struggled financially, is slated for completion in 2021—which means it will debut without the works in the international exhibition.
The touring show is supporting the $1 billion new museum, with contractual earnings of at least $5 million in each city, and bonuses to be paid out after 400,000 visitors at each stop. IMG has reportedly paid the Egyptian government $20 million to date.
Mostafa Waziry, the secretary general of Egypt’s antiquities ministry who approved the current show, told the BBC that “holding exhibitions abroad yields huge results, not just economic, but political and touristic results.”
As head of the council of antiquities, Hawass previously coordinated Exhibitions International’s 17-city blockbuster “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” on tour between 2004 and 2011 and featuring 50 artifacts. (Venues included the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the de Young Museum in San Francisco, Chicago’s Field Museum, and Discovery Times Square in New York.)
Gold Inlaid Canopic Coffinette of Tutankhamun Dedicated to Imseti and Isis(Reign of Tutankhamun 1336-1326 B.C.E) ©Laboratoriorosso, Viterbo, ItalyKing Tut’s first international outing was the famed “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibition that ran from 1972 to 1981, fueling an Egyptomania craze. The show, which contained 55 pieces from Tut’s tomb, became an international sensation, including stops in seven US cities.
The current exhibition includes 60 works that have never before left Egyptian soil. King Tut’s tomb, the only pharaoh’s burial site found intact, had over 5,000 objects.
John Norman, the head Exhibitions International, told the BBC he was not concerned about a legal challenge to the show.
“We have legal documents that were done by the government,” he said.[embedded content]
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Photographing America’s Threatened Wetlands, Catherine Opie Makes a Case to Not Drain the Swamp—See Images Here
As galleries and art institutions around the world begin to reopen, we are spotlighting individual shows—online and IRL—that are worth your attention.
“Catherine Opie: Rhetorical Landscapes”at Lehmann Maupin, New Yorkthrough July 26
What the gallery says: “This exhibition, featuring large-scale photography and stop motion animations, examines our current climate, both political and ecological, through digital collages of magazine clippings and photographs of the Okefenokee swamp land. Taken together, these works create a portrait of contemporary America—plagued by the divisive and violent rhetoric used by our current administration and facing looming ecological destruction due to climate change, which is especially threatening for the wetlands Opie features here.
One of the most significant American photographers of her generation, Opie has produced over two decades of work that examines and often exposes the ideals and norms surrounding American identity and the concept of the “American Dream” while giving visibility to communities overlooked within those narratives. She first gained recognition during the 1990s for her series of studio portraits titled ‘Being and Having,’ in which she photographed gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals drawn from her circle of friends and artists. Opie has also traveled extensively across the country exploring the diversity of America’s communities and landscapes, documenting quintessential American subjects including LA’s freeway system, high school football players, the 2008 presidential inauguration, and US National Parks. In her portraits and landscapes, Opie often establishes levels of ambiguity—of identity and place—through manipulating the focus of her images through cropping, blurring, intense close ups or distance shots, and playing with orientation, often swapping landscape and portrait formats.”
Why it’s worth a look: At first glance, it might seem strange that photographer Catherine Opie’s new body of work focuses on swamps. After all, Opie is best known for her intimate and unflinching portraits that challenge stereotypes of beauty and gender. But upon closer examination, Opie is traversing similar territory here, taking as a subject something that is often misunderstood: the swamp, which is riddled with negative connotations (“drain the swamp,” for instance, one of President Trump’s favorite rallying cries). For Opie, though, swamps are necessary and under-sung ecosystems that the current administration is literally threatening with its changes to the Environmental Protection Agency.
In these large-scale photographs of Okefenokee swamps throughout southern Georgia and northern Florida, Opie turns her lens on a diverse community of creatures—owls and alligators appear hiding amid the dense foliage—and exposes its raw beauty. Juxtaposed with the swamps are a suite of Opie’s self-described “political collages,” stop-motion animated films based on cut-out images from contemporary magazines. The films are projected on hand-painted grids, harkening back to Opie’s series “The Modernist,” and riffing on the actual politics of landscapes in cities across America.
What it looks like:Installation view, “Catherine Opie: Rhetorical Landscapes” at Lehmann Maupin. Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein.
Catherine Opie, Untitled #3 (Swamps) (2019). © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul.
Catherine Opie, Untitled #2 (Swamps) (2019). © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul.
Catherine Opie, Untitled #7 (Political Collage), (2019). © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul.
Catherine Opie, Untitled #8 (Political Collage), (2019). © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul.
Installation view, “Catherine Opie: Rhetorical Landscapes” at Lehmann Maupin. Photo: Elisabeth Boernstein.
Catherine Opie, Untitled #1 (Swamps) (2019). © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul.
Catherine Opie, Untitled #4 (Political Collage), (2019). © Catherine Opie. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul.
Installation view, “Catherine Opie: Rhetorical Landscapes” at Lehmann Maupin. Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein.
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‘I Was Brought to Tears’: Watch Artist Edgar Arceneaux Reinterpret a Tragically Misunderstood 1980s Performance
In 1981, actor Ben Vereen was invited to perform at a gala to celebrate the inauguration of President Ronald Reagan. His act was an homage to renowned vaudevillian Bert Williams, the first Black man to have a lead role in a feature film.
The two-part performance began with a minstrel show featuring Vereen in blackface, followed by a critique of such racist acts and a tribute to Williams’s perseverance. But as artist Los Angeles-based Edgar Arceneaux explains in an exclusive interview with Art21, that’s not what Americans saw when it aired on live television.
“ABC edited out that second part,” Arceneaux explained in the 2016 interview. The station “only showed him doing a minstrel show for Ronald Reagan and 25,000 white Republicans.” In short order, Vereen’s friends and peers abandoned him for what they saw as an unforgivable act. But Arceneaux wondered, even if they had seen the second part of the show, would they have understood?Production still from the “Chicago” episode of “Art in the Twenty-First Century,” Season 8. © Art21, Inc. 2016.
That question is at the heart of a play Arceneaux staged called “Until, Until, Until,” commissioned for Performa 15 and based on Vereen’s original performance. Arceneaux told Art21 that ambiguity like that at the center of the Vereen controversy is the fuel that drives his art practice.
“The power of what art is, which is distinctive from other fields, is its unruliness,” he said. “Art is not inherently good. It’s not inherently bad. But it is inherently contradictory. Its nature is to ask new questions.”
Before he staged his rendition of the tragically misunderstood 1981 performance, Arceneaux spoke to Ben Vereen himself. “I was brought to tears during the call,” Arceneaux said, imagining how Vereen must have felt having his work so taken out of context. “I could sense from [Vereen] that, he knows there’s people out there that care now about what he tried to do 30 years ago. Maybe now is that time.”Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s series Extended Play, below. This week, Performa is re-broadcasting the play “Until, Until, Until” online.
[embedded content]This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org.
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Photographer Ming Smith’s Dreamlike Portraits of Everyday Life From Harlem to Ethiopia Are the Subject of a Tender New Online Show—See Them Here
“Painting With Light: The Photography of Ming Smith”Online at Pippy Houldsworth GalleryThrough July 25 What the gallery says: “Containing works from the start of the 1970s to the present day, including a number of never-before-seen archival prints, the exhibition explores the painterly quality of Ming Smith’s photographic work. From photographs taken in the New York neighborhoods […] More
ArtPrize, the Biggest Biennial in the United States, Has Cancelled Its 2020 Edition and Furloughed Its Entire Staff
ArtPrize, the biggest contemporary art exhibition in the US, which features up to 1,500 artists competing for $500,000 in prize money, has cancelled its 2020 edition. The organization has “decided to put the entire staff on furlough with no clarity about when or if that will end,” Kevin Buist, ArtPrize’s artistic director, wrote in a post […] More
