《藝術學研究》
2006 年 6 月，第一期，頁 103-128
在英雄殞落之後的英雄：
Géricault 的《梅杜莎之筏》
Gregor Wedekind*
摘要
在1819年，沙龍展出由Géricault所畫的《梅杜莎之筏》，呈現了對歷
史 繪畫的 抨擊 ，而歷 史畫 類主要 是將 英雄形 象概 念化的 繪畫 類別 。
Géricault 的繪畫違反了所有歷史繪畫不可或缺的美學範疇，這類的範疇
確立了廣泛且普世隱含的寓意。然而在同時，巨幅的型式以及Géricault對
於人體獨具風格的處理，無疑地使這幅畫意圖達到歷史繪畫的高尚情
操。縱使Géricault筆下的新英雄激起了觀賞者的同情，他這些新英雄絕非
是供人認同的嶄新形象。畫中對立的美學結構並不允許以如此單一明確
的解讀。他英雄化了一種人類企圖透過藝術去激發的特定情感，而此種
情感並非以傳統的英雄再現便可以達成的。這已經不再是以往那些著名
的英雄人物，甚至也不是單一的無名英雄，取而代之的是英雄式人體的
聚合，企圖展現英雄式苦難，並使人信服。實際上，這樣的效果是由圖
畫整體所達成的。有鑑於此，圖畫本身的美學價值便躍然眼前。從一開
始，這幅畫的評論便來回於超人的尺寸與力量的描繪，以及創作本身必
備的超人尺寸與精力，也就是擺盪於主題與創作過程之間。Géricault在此
巨幅作品當中呈現的宏偉姿態，乃試圖超越歷史繪畫的傳統。他所選擇
的篇幅和構圖，將富有爭議性的主題擴大為傑出的藝術，這些都傳遞了
*
現職於德國駐法藝術史研究中心。
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
別出心裁的訴求，直接傳達了他對於功成名就的渴望。作品的創作者，
也就畫家本人，儼然顯現於畫作之後，成了真正的英雄。
（翻譯：李鎧伊）
關鍵字：Théodore Géricault、梅杜莎之筏、英雄
104
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
Heroes after the Death of the Hero:
Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
Gregor Wedekind*
I.
Théodore Géricault’s painting, The Raft of the Medusa [Ill.
1],1exhibited in the Salon of 1819, is a decisive case for the entire question of
heroic images, the question of the representation of the hero in history painting.
But to begin, let us start with the problems posed by this work: at issue here is a
painting that in the classical sense is neither a history painting nor a depiction
of a hero.
First of all, there’s the subject of the work: the painting represents a
calamity that took place during a colonial expedition to Senegal. Due to human
error, the captain’s incompetence of character and seamanship, and the
inhumane cockiness of French government officials, one hundred fifty people,
largely soldiers, were sent out to sea on a rickety timbered raft after the Medusa,
a ship leading a small colonial fleet, went aground off the coast of Africa. In
the following twelve days on the open ocean, one hundred thirty five of the
shipwrecked died under the most miserable, horrific, and brutal conditions.
Drifting across the sea, they were subjected to sun, hunger, thirst, strife, murder,
revenge, and cannibalism: only fifteen survived the ordeal. Are they heroes?
*
1
The author is currently a researcher at Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte/Centre Allemand
d'Histoire de l'Art, Paris.
Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, Oil on Canvas, 491 x 716 cm, Paris, Musée
du Louvre.
105
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
No, not by any means—they are victims. People who by coincidence or by
accident become the victims of a senseless crime and are forced to suffer to
their deaths or to the last minute of their rescue are not heroes. They provide
nothing in terms of a model worthy of emulation.
Belonging to the category faits divers—violent, bizarre, anecdotal
subjects from the events of the time—depictions of a crime or a catastrophe
like this were known as ocassionelles or canards. But, as the art historian
Robert Simon has noted, this picture of the drifting raft represented an
immensely enlarged canard, an exaggeration of this genre of anecdotal
illustration. 2 As a depiction of a shipwreck, The Raft would have rather
required the genre’s mid-sized format.
Accordingly, contemporary art criticism only saw in the image—ce
tableaux monstreux3—a mere apologue of the lowly and the ugly, and criticized
the lack of a moral message and of a heroic protagonist or a positive heroic
figure. As one critic put it in 1819 in the Gazette de France, everything about
this picture is horribly passive; there is nothing honorable about this scene for
moral humanity. 4 And a critic in the Conservateur complained about the
painting’s display of franticness and hopelessness, pointing out that the egotism
2
3
4
Robert Simon, “Géricault und die Faits divers,” in Bilder der Macht, Macht der Bilder.
Zeitgeschichte in Darstellungen des 19. Jahrhunderts (Veröffentlichungen des Zentralinstituts
für Kunstgeschichte, 12), ed. Stefan Germer and Michael F. Zimmermann (München and Berlin:
Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1997) pp. 192-207.
N.N., “Exposition de 1819. Deuxième article,” in: Gazette de France, no. 243, 31. August 1819,
p. 1050.
Ibid.: “Il [Géricault] a cru qu’il pouvait se passer d’un sujet, d’une action et de toutes les
combinaisons dramatiques imposées par les muses à leurs desservans sur tous les sentiers qui
conduisent à la gloire; point de figures principales, point d’épisodes, tout est ici hideusement
passif; rien ne repose l’âme et les yeux sur une idée consolante; pas un trait d’héroïsme et de
grandeur, pas un indice de vie et de sensibilité, rien de touchant, rien d’honorable pour
l’humanité morale.” Cf. Germain Bazin, Théodore Géricault. É tude critique, Documents et
Catalogue Raisonné, (Paris : Bibliothèque des arts, 1987), I, no. 140, p. 44.
106
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
of the shipwrecked would deny them any recourse to divine assistance or
mutual solace.5
Secondly, there is the painting’s composition: its centrifugal plan
violates the convention and is unique in the classical tradition. The ensemble,
arranged like a St. Andrew’s cross, was perceived by a critic writing in the
Indépendant as “confused.”6 And another critic asked, “Where is here the
center? Which figure should one concentrate upon, and what is the general
expression of the subject? A few corpses…a few dead men…a few men left to
despair and a few others that hold onto a weak beam of hope, these are the
elements of the composition, which the artist—despite his talent—did not
know to arrange in a satisfactory manner.”7
Thirdly, there is the question of narrative: contrary to the narrative
nature of history painting, Géricault breaks up linearity as the narrative
ordering of all action: the image is built up on a hiatus, and has a void as its
5
6
7
Le comte O’Mahony, “Exposition des tableaux. (Troisième article). Suite des tableaux
d’histoire,” in: Le Conservateur, V, 1819, 56e livraison, p. 190: “Sur un radeau qu’une vague va
submerger, le peintre a accumulé tout ce que le désespoir, la rage, la faim, l’agonie, la mort, la
putréfaction même offrent de plus repoussant et tout cela est exécuté avec une surabondance de
verve, une vérité de dessin, une énergie de touche, une hardiesse de pinceau et de couleur qui en
centuple les épouvantables effets; et rien, absolument rien ne tempère tant d’horreurs. Tous vont
périr, nulle chance de salut ne leur reste; car aucun d’eux n’a les mains levées vers celui auquel
les mers et les vents obéissent. Renfermés en eux-mêmes, de l’abîme des eaux ils vont tomber,
sans y songer, dans l’abîmé de l’éternité; et comme ils ont oublié Dieu, ils se sont aussi oubliés
l’un l’autre: aucune consolation n’est donnée ni offerte; chacun ne voit que sa mort , ne regrette
que sa vie; c’est l’égoïsme à sa dernière heure.” Cf. Bazin, Géricault, I, no. 149, p. 47.
D., “De l’exposition de 1819. (Deuxième article),” in: L’Indépendant, Nr. 112, 29. August 1819,
p. 3: “mais l’ensemble est confus.” Cf. Bazin, Géricault, I, no. 139, p. 44.
Charles Paul Landon, Salon de 1819, 2 vol., Paris, 1819 (Annales du Musée et de l’École
Moderne des Beaux-Arts), vol. 1, pp. 65–67, p. 67: “Où en est le centre? à quel personnage
paraît-elle se rattacher principalement, et quelle est l’expression générale du sujet? Des cadavres
à moitié submergés, des morts et des mourans, des hommes livrés au désespoir et d’autres que
soutient un faible rayon d’espérance, tels sont les élemens de cette composition, que l’artiste,
malgré le talent distingué qu’on lui reconnaît, n’a pu ordonner d’une manière satisfaisante.” Cf.
Bazin, Géricault, I, no. 146, p. 46.
107
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
center. The visual narrative is frozen, fragmented; instead of narratives, we are
left with figures, without a hero anywhere in sight. To speak of a heroic
protagonist in the face of Gericault’s painting is difficult, if not nonsensical.
In his preliminary studies, Géricault had still placed the brig, the Argus,
which on the thirteenth day would finally, but accidentally, find the
shipwrecked, in the raft’s vicinity, in any case as a concretely visible object [Ill.
2 and 3].8 The decision to minimalize it and push it off into the distance as a
tiny point on the horizon that seems to disappear as soon as we catch sight of it,
as in the final version of the picture, entails an additional refusal of the
narrative content of the image.
Another critic professed that his disgust when confronted with the
image was caused by the oppressive uniformity of skin color, gesture, and
expression, all attesting to one and the same suffering.9 With this he was not
only
referring
to
the
monotonous
and
thoroughly
monochromatic
color—making the painting into something of a chaotic mishmash—but also
to the violation of the theory of representing a gradation of manifold emotions
in the tradition of Le Brun. As these bodies wavering between life and death
lose all the coloration that would make up the stuff of living history, they also
sacrifice all sense of character and individual, personal expression.
The image thus violates or negates all the aesthetic categories that are
an essential to history painting, the components that guarantee the genre’s
generalizing and universalizing connotations: cohesion (ensemble), order
(ordonnance), expression (expression), and unity (unité). The structuring
relations that hold the world together are thus abandoned. The picture is thus
8
9
Théodore Géricault, The Sighting of the Distant Argus, 1818, Oil, 37,5 x 46 cm, Paris, Musée du
Louvre. Théodore Géricault: The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, Oil, 65 x 83 cm, Paris, Musée du
Louvre.
Cf. Gault de St.-Germain, Choix des productions d’art les plus remarquables exposées dans le
Salon de 1819, Paris [1819], pp. 27–28.
108
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
not dedicated to the moral virtues or glory of the French nation—the proper
task of history painting—but the nation’s shame. It illustrates an ordinary crime,
a tragedy without heroes, a scene of physical suffering without redemption.
The traditional demands made of history painting—unity and focus—are not
fulfilled in any way: not spatially, nor in terms of narrative or psychology.
II.
The canvas format chosen by Géricault—five meters by seven
meters—leaves no doubt about what the painting is intended as: a painting of
the grand genre, a history painting. Such a format was exclusively reserved for
history painting, and could only be justifiably used for a subject of
extraordinary moral or national significance. In fact, despite all the missing
other characteristics, art history has repeatedly perceived and described
Géricault’s work as a true history painting.10
This is also due to the fact that Géricault, especially in his treatment of
the sailors’ bodies, engages in a stylization that evokes the classical muscular
10
See for example Henri Zerner, “La problématique de la narration chez Géricault,” in:
Künstlerischer Austausch – Artistic Exchange, Akten des XXVIII. Internationalen Kongresses
für Kunstgeschichte Berlin, 15.–20. Juli 1992, ed. by Thomas W. Gaehtgens (Berlin: Akademie,
1991), II, 569-578; p. 569: “Le Radeau de la Méduse est le seul tableau totalement narratif de
Géricault, son unique contribution à la peinture d’histoire, unique mais d’une singulière
importance. Malgré le sujet peu orthodoxe, il respecte assez scrupuleusement les lois du genre.
[...] Géricault s’est conformé aux préceptes de la tradition classique, et en particulier de Lessing.
[...] Il en respectait l’idée de l’instant fécond; tout dans le tableau converge, tout prend place par
rapport à l’épisode central. Géricault a choisi le moment où les rescapés virent le brick l’Argus à
l’horizon pour disparaître de nouveau. […] Le peintre a bien différencié les efforts de ceux qui
espèrent encore, la déception de ceux qui voient la futilité d’attirer l’attention du brick, et enfin
le désespoir profond du père dont le fils est mort et pour qui l’espoir même n’a plus de sens. Il a
contrasté aussi ceux dont la réaction est tout impulsive, et ceux qui raisonnent, Corréard et
Savigny en discussion près du mât. Tout cela est conforme à ce qu’on attendait d’une peinture
d’historie et tout à fait intelligible pour les contemporains comme pour nous, même le sujet va à
l’encontre des habitudes. Le Radeau de la Méduse s’inscrit sans heurt dans la série des grands
tableaux d’histoire depuis David.”
109
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
body of the hero. The nudity of the figures thus results by no means from
Géricault's quasi-journalistic faithfulness to “real events”—which indeed led
him to collect all the information on the calamity that he could get his hands
on.11 On the contrary: while the first published report in 1817, written by two
survivors—the ship’s engineer, Alexandre Corréard, and the ship’s surgeon,
Henri Savigny—described extensively the condition of the corpses of the
shipwrecked, including horrific details about their skin, which had burst from
unprotected exposure to sunlight and salt water and was torn by axe and bite
wounds resulting from skirmishes that had taken place on the raft, nothing of
the kind can be found in Géricault's image, although it was this report that led
the artist to address this subject.12 Furthermore, Géricault ultimately reduced
the details of military costume that still dominated in the earlier drawings [Ill.
4],13 emphasizing in the final version the heroic nudity of his figures. The
nudity of these ideal, anatomically precise muscular bodies approaches that of
academic anatomical studies. It must be read as an explicit heroification, as
heroic nudity, committed to the convention by which nudity is used to remove
the represented figure from the world of ordinary reality, withdrawing him or
her to a timeless, lofty sphere. Thus, the individual is to be represented by his
type, or, as Quatremére de Quincy put it in his 1823 Essai sur la nature, le but
et les moyens de l’Imitation dans les Beaux-Arts, formulated on the nudité
heroique: “This is a way to communicate to both contemporaries and future
epochs that this individual has ceased to be an individual of this or that city,
11
12
13
Cf. Charles Clément, Géricault. É tude biographique et critique avec le catalogue raisonné de
l’œuvre du maître, Paris, 1879, (Reprint Paris: Laget, 1973), p. 130.
Jean-Baptiste Henri Savigny and Alexandre Corréard, Naufrage de la frégate la Méduse, faisant
partie de l’expédition du Sénégal, en 1816 (Paris: Hocquet, Eymery, Barba, Delaunay,
Ladvocat, 1817).
Théodore Géricault, Mutiny on the Raft, 1818-19, Graphite, pen and brown ink, aquarelle, 40 x
51 cm, Cambridge, Mass., Fogg Art Museum.
110
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
this or that time, that it is a person of all times and all nations.”14 Heroic nudity
thus appears as an atemporal and supraindividual ideal.
This heroification takes place most strikingly in the case of the black man,
who with the help of his comrades has climbed onto a barrel, pushing himself
towards the fore of those frantically waving to the ship approaching in the
distance on the horizon. As part of his preliminary sketches for the painting,
Géricault produced a study of a black nude that was possibly inspired by the
Belvedere Torso [Ill. 5].15 But while the figure of the black man might thus
well be in part of classical provenance, it also violates eighteenth century
aesthetics, whereby the notion of an idealized body relies on its being purified
of all signs of cultural specificity. Already in the nineteenth century, individual
beholders drew their own conclusions about Géricault’s unique strategy of
heroification. For example, in 1842 Charles Blanc, in pre-revolutionary fervor,
commented that Géricault, in his placement of the black man, had helped to
express the spirit of his age:
It is a Negro who at the top of the canvas exerts all his efforts trying to
give signals with the rags left in his hands. […] This Negro is not
found in the depths of the hull of the ship, and it is he who will save the
crew! Is it not remarkable how this great calamity has in a single blow
reestablished equality between the races? It will be a poor slave who
will free all these men who subjugated him and despised him, and this
14
15
Quatremère de Quincy, Essai sur la nature, le but et les moyens de l’Imitation dans les
Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1823 (Reprint Bruxelles: Archives d’Architecture Moderne, 1980), p. 408:
“C’est véritablement la manière la plus claire de faire dire par les signes corporels, que tel
homme a cessé d’être l’individu de tel lieu, de tel temps, et qu’il est devenu l’homme de tous les
âges et tous les pays.”
Théodore Géricault, Torso of a Black Man, 1819, Chalk and oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm,
Montauban, Musée Ingres.
111
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
happens off the coast of Senegal, where one will kidnap one’s brothers
to lead them into slavery. What a noble inspiration to reverse roles!16
Since the 1980s, the literature on this painting—especially in the US—has
adopted this reading of the black man as a hero in the struggle against slavery
and towards the emancipation of all mankind from all forms of racial and social
prejudice or restriction. Hugh Honour, Albert Boime, and others have
interpreted the picture in this way, reconstructing in great detail the colonialist
and racialist discourse linked to the incident and the painting and pointing out
Géricault’s liberal ideas.17 Also along these lines, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby in
her subtle analysis of the discourse on cannibalism woven into the painting
concludes that cannibalism in Géricault takes on a utopian content as a
radically inclusive and democratizing trope. Where white and black are placed
in the same conditions, and all man becomes flesh, Grigsby argues, all become
equal.18 Albert Alhadeff goes so far as to write a veritable hymn in honor of
the black hero at the end of his 2002 monograph on the painting:
Géricault’s exalted figure is all of us, he is black and white, he is our
self, our semblable. And if his skin, sa peau, is to suffer the lash, so is
ours. After all, to reverse the situation […] if our skin is noble so is
16
17
18
Charles Blanc, “É tudes sur les peintres français. Géricault,” in: Le National, 28. August 1842,
pp. 1–2 and 30. August 1842, pp. 1–3; p. 1: “C’est un nègre qui est peint au sommet de la toile,
s’èpuisant à faire des signaux avec des lambeaux de draperies. [...] Ce nègre n’est plus à fond de
cales, et c’est lui qui sauvera l’équipage! N’admirez-vous pas comme ce grand malheur a tout à
coup rétabli l’égalité parmi les races! C’est un pauvre esclave qui va déliverer tous ces hommes
qui l’ont asservi et dédaigné, et cela se passe sur cette même côte du Sénégal où l’on va prendre
ses frères pour les conduire en servitude! Noble idée que celle d’avoir renversé les rôles.”
Hugh Honour, L’image du noir dans l’art occidental. De la Révolution américaine à la
Première Guerre mondiale (Paris : Gallimard, 1989), I, 119–126; Albert Boime, “Géricault’s
African Slave Trade and the Physiognomy of the Oppressed,” in Géricault, ed. by Régis Michel,
(Paris: La Documentation Français, 1996), II, pp. 561-593.
Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France (New
Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 224: “By rendering all men ‘flesh’,
cannibalism is a radically inclusive and democratizing trope.”
112
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
his—and that thought, one that ennobles all men, surely underlies
Géricault’s intent as he painted his apical figure on the Raft, un homme
de tous les couleurs.19
In this way, the picture presents the politically correct, radically
democratic vision of a collective body that shines through in its heroic
martyrdom, in order to elevate the most marginalized members of society and
to place them at its apex. This interpretation can integrate another, older line of
interpretation, one that was already contained in Corréard and Savigny’s report
and also expressed by a poet named Brault in an 1818 ode on the peril: a
reading that stylized the scene as one of courageous Frenchmen resisting their
doom as modern Argonauts.20 Jules Michelet did something similar in his
Collége de France lecture on the painting in 1848: arguing that the raft
represented France’s calamity, the downfall of the nation under the awful rule
of the Bourbons, against which the body of the downtrodden people rebels.21
In other words, The Raft of the Medusa is thus a modern history painting
with new heroes, that in order to represent the heroic body of the true nation,
the glory of the good, true France, no longer depicts the body of the king, but
the suffering, albeit rising people, turned toward a better future. No longer is
the absolute ruler the reference point for presenting the historical, but the
people’s body. And if, in the nineteenth century, this was at first still the
national body, the more recent interpretation of art historians has expanded this
19
20
21
Albert Alhadeff, The Raft of the Medusa. Géricault, Art, and Race (München et al.: Prestel,
2002), p. 185.
Louis Brault, “Ode. Sur le désastre de la frégate la Méduse,” in: Le Mercure de France, 10.
January 1818, pp. 49–53, p. 50.
Jules Michelet, “Cinquième leçon. (13. Janvier 1848),” in: Idem: Cours au Collège de France,
vol. II: 1845-1851. ed. by Paul Viallaneix (Paris, Gallimard, 1995), pp. 319-329; p. 324: “En
1822 [sic], Géricault peint son Radeau et le naufrage de la France. Il est seul, il navigue seul,
pousse vers l’avenir...sans s’informer, ni s’aider de la réaction. Cela est héroïque.”
113
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
to include the globalized body of exploited humanity, the body of the
suppressed races, impoverished peoples, and ethnic refugees.
Even if Géricault himself explicitly rejected a political reading of his
painting, his heroifying elevation of a historical event today appears to be a
turn towards universal truths that transcend the political events of the day using
atemporal formulations of pathos.22
III.
But, if we consider this alongside what I discussed at the beginning of
my essay, we have a contradiction: If on the one hand, nothing remains of the
hero, the second reading claims that the painting is an image of modern
heroism. The general rejection of the possibility of representation of the hero
on the one side is opposed by the apologia of the new democratic hero on the
other. But Géricault’s picture, in its antagonistic composition, is constructed so
that it seems impossible to choose between these two mutually exclusive
interpretations of the painting. The group of hope defying their fate is opposed
on the left by the group of mourners around the so-called father, sunken over
the dead youth on his lap with an expression of complete and utter resignation.
Taking recourse to the neo-classical figure of the old man as seen in Guérin’s
22
Cf. Théodore Géricault, “Lettre à Musigny,” in Bruno Chenique, Les cercles politiques de
Géricault (1791-1824) (Ph. D. diss., Université de Paris I, Lille, 1998), II, pp. 513–514: “Cette
année [1819], nos gazetiers sont arrivés au comble du ridicule. Chaque tableau est jugé d’abord
selon l’esprit dans lequel il a été composé. Ainsi vous entendez un article libéral vanter, dans tel
ouvrage, un pinceau vraiment patriotique, une touche nationale. Le même ouvrage, jugé par
l’ultra, ne sera plus qu’une composition révolutionnaire, où règne une teinte générale de sédition.
Les têtes des personnages auront toutes une expression de haine pour le gouvernement paternel.
Enfin, j’ai été accusé par un certain Drapeau blanc d’avoir calomnié, par une tête d’expression,
tout le Ministère de la marine. Les malheureux qui écrivent de semblables sottises n’ont sans
doute pas jêuné quatorze jours, car ils sauraient alors que ni la poésie ni la peinture ne sont
susceptibles de rendre avec assez d’horreur toutes les angoisses où étaient plongés les gens du
radeau.”
114
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
1799 Retour de Marcus Sextus [Ill. 6],23 Géricault mobilizes a typical figure of
reflection from David and his school that vividly communicates the effect of
the emotional content of the subject for the beholder.24 But other models were
also integrated into the despairing group: female models, like Melancholia or
the Pieta, underscoring still further the sense of expression.25 A melancholic
side, that collects the horror, that seems to approach an all-consuming final
wall of waves on the left, and opposite it a phallic side of hope, built up with a
baroque
pathos.
Both
stand
across
from
one
another
with
no
mediation—absolutely incommensurate. The image thus falls apart into two
halves that link up in neither a thematic nor a compositional sense; a rift
separates the two. In compositional terms, the pyramid of hope is again taken
back, and the visual message of the painting is not left to it, but rather left in an
uncertain groundlessness. Hence, readings that would like to see this image as a
kind of apotheosis of suffering, that see a better future coming on the horizon,
that in all the suffering and destruction still want to see Géricault’s
revolutionary hope, thus miss the fundamental aesthetic structure of the image,
which of course is the ultimate bearer of meaning. For the image offers no
resolution towards the hope of the one side at the cost of the other side. The
center of the image, traditionally reserved for the hero, offers nothing more
than a void: the image thus becomes a metaphor for standstill.
Géricault’s painting does not take sides, but represents an antagonism
that encompasses both readings. With an anonymous black figure, which in
23
24
25
Pierre-Narcisse Guérin: The Return of Marcus Sextus, 1799, Oil on Canvas, 217 x 243 cm, Paris,
Musée du Louvre.
Cf. Stefan Germer, Historizität und Autonomie. Studien zu Wandbildern im Frankreich des 19.
Jahrhunderts. Ingres, Chassériau, Chenavard und Puvis de Chavannes, Studien zur
Kunstgeschichte, 47 (Hildesheim, Zürich, New York: Olms, 1988), pp. 57–60.
Cf. Klaus Heinrich, “Das Floß der Medusa,” in: Idem, Floß der Medusa. 3 Studien zur
Faszinationsgeschichte mit mehreren Beilagen und einem Anhang (Basel, Frankfurt/Main:
Stroemfeld, 1995), pp. 9-74, p. 16.
115
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
addition can only be seen from the back, in the compositional position of the
hero, the audience, trained to keep its eye out for a heroic figure in a history
painting, is offered nothing to hold onto: contemporary critics hardly made note
of this figure. In the long search for such a hero, the beholder comes upon the
resigned patriarch. But this figure as well, through his isolation and inactivity,
the lack of direct contact with the other survivors, is equally removed from the
sphere of the heroic, as are the officers, Correard and Savigny, who passively
endure their fate behind the mast. The image thus nowhere offers hierarchies to
structure the differences significant to liberals and conservatives alike.
Géricault’s attempt to obtain recognition with a critical painting in the
salon of the restoration period could only expect success by referring to a
higher third party, superior to the political parties of the day. But what is this
higher third party? Clément, the author of the first large monograph on
Géricault, provided an answer to this in 1879, arguing that more than that of
any other artist, Géricault’s work represented a profound shift in the way art
was to be understood. “Ideas of sympathetic suffering, benevolence, and
solidarity, fully new at least in terms of their accentuation, breathe in this
image, and I cannot look at it without a word escaping my lips: humanity! We
suffer with these unlucky men, and we hope with them.”26
This means that at issue is not the expression of hope, and thus
“humanity,” but humanity in suffering. Having reached its lowest point,
humanity is simultaneously elevated. And it is the task of the beholder to
provide all this with meaning. Géricault responds to this tendency towards
humanization with a heroification of the human, expressed in the image’s
26
Clément, Géricault, p. 161: “Ces idées toutes nouvelles (à ce degré d’accentuation tout au
moins) de pitié, de charité, de solidarité, respirent dans son tableau, et je ne puis le voir sans
qu’un mot s’échappe de mes lèvres: humanité! Nous souffrons avec ses malheureux, avec eux
nous espérons.”
116
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
almost exhibitionist nudity, an exaggeration of muscles, an excess of energy, an
emphasis on expression and superhuman pathos.
But in so doing, the aesthetic achievement itself is placed at the center
of attention, the accomplishment of the artist. When, for example, Lorenz
Eitner sees the merits of the image in having formed the event into an image of
superhuman greatness and energy that can stand alongside the works of
Michelangelo and the Old Masters, this observation already alternates between
the moment of superhuman greatness and energy in the figures represented and
the superhuman greatness and energy necessary to create this very depiction.27
The grand gesture carried out by Géricault in making this huge painting thus
seems to surpass the tradition of history painting. The immense effort of this
gigantic format was supposed to correspond to the unconventionality of the
issue. The format chosen, the composition, and the elevation of this subject,
politically quite provocative, to the status of great art, communicate a claim to
genius that directly refers to the artist and his uncompromising drive towards
fame and greatness.
In 1848, Michelet had already referred to Géricault in his self-staging
gesture as an artist as a hero and a grand homme, saying that all his paintings
were instructive on matters of heroism.28 In 1870, Henry Lachèvre described
this in the following way: “More and more, the preliminary studies of Géricault
on the Raft of the Medusa peeled layer for layer towards the personal moment,
27
28
Lorenz Eitner, Géricaul:. His Life and Work (London: Orbis, 1983), passim.
Cf. Michelet, “Cinquième leçon,” , p. 327: “Il vécut seul, mais rien n’était plus loin de lui que
l’école solitaire, égoïste, drapée d’un orgueil insensé. Il était né pour être l’interprète, l’organe
d’une société libre, et, pour risquer ce mot, le peintre magistrat, dont chaque tableau eût été un
héroïque enseignement.”
117
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
ultimately arriving at the majestic canvas in which each brushstroke is the great
impression of a lion’s paw.”29
The spiritualization of the hero into heroic energy refers back to its
painter, towards the person who created the image. It is instructive that the
early literature on Géricault ultimately solved the difficulties that the Raft of the
Medusa presented for the conventions of heroic representation by replacing the
missing hero with the heroification of the artist himself. Clément summarized
this in the following words: “He loved glory and he prepared to attain it with
the greatest effort.”30 This is quite concretely true of the actual process of
creating this work in particular: as has been recounted until quite recently, still
true to the first biographies on the artist, in order to isolate himself from society,
the artist had himself shaved bald in an act of symbolic self-castration. He then
worked for eighteen months shut away in his studio, surrounded by parts of
corpses that he had obtained from the morgue as models and then forgot about
in his creative delirium, so that they began to rot, the rats scurrying about them.
Thus, oblivious to the world and his surroundings, with complete dedication, he
summoned all his powers to create an absolute masterwork—The Raft of the
Medusa. An immense gesture of potency that reckoned with all fathers and
forefathers, but, in its exaggeration, also referred to its predecessors, proving
itself equal to them.
This is echoed, moreover, by the way Géricault’s biography mobilizes
topoi of the heroic: physical beauty and power, superiority of mind and
character, recognition in society and social elevation, courage and passion, and
a willingness to take on solitude. On the one hand, there is the line of reception
29
30
Henri Lachèvre, “Détails intimes sur Géricault,” in: Le Nouvelliste de Rouen, no. 60, 1. mars
1870, p. 3. Cf. Pierre Courthion, Géricault raconté par lui-même et par ses amis
(Genève-Lausanne: Cailler, 1947), pp. 197–198.
Clément, Géricault, pp. 41–42: “Il aimait la gloire et il s’était préparé à la conquérir par les plus
sérieux efforts.”
118
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
that describes Géricault as a man of great physical well-being and prowess, a
man of decisiveness: this is then seen in his deeds, which, besides the painting
of gigantic paintings, included horse riding, in which Géricault the
horse-fanatic did not shy away from any difficulty or danger. In a text from
1887, Barbey d’Aurevilly named Géricault one of the “most manly geniuses
painting that one ever saw, and that is the reason why this virile man in his
paintings especially engaged with the man.” He added, “It was said of him that
he was not born of woman, but of a centauress… or at least an Amazon.”31
Then there is the other side of the biography, which focuses on suicide
attempts, depression, and unrequited love, his love for his married aunt, a love
to the death. An artist that fled from the world, who was plagued by visions and
madness—as was long thought could be deduced from his portraits of the
mentally ill—an artist hounded by demons, the peintre maudit, the
misunderstood genius, suffering in solitude, dying alone. Both aspects embody
almost paradigmatically the modern tradition that combines the ancient tropes
of the vita activa with that of the Christian vita contemplativa. Both use topoi
that can be traced back to antiquity, as well as the myth of the hero and the
artist. The attempt is made not only to encounter again the biography in his
work, but also, conversely, to draw conclusions from the work about the artist
and his character. Accordingly, in a work without a genuine hero, but depicting
the heroic energy of suffering, we have an artist of unforeseen heroic energy
and capacity to suffer.
The absolutization of the private in the stature of the historical leads in
Géricault’s case to the fact that no longer is a hero of any kind made the
31
Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly, “Géricault,” in: Idem, Les Œuvres et les Hommes. Vol. VII:
Sensations d’Art (Paris: Quantin, 1887), pp. 83–96, p. 87: “[…] Géricault est […].un des plus
mâles génies de peintre qu’on ait vus, et pour cette raison, c’est de l’homme que ce Viril se
préoccupe le plus. […] On dirait qu’il n’est pas né d’elle, mais d’une Centauresse, – tout au
moins de quelque Amazone…”.
119
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
representative of the beholder, as had been the case for Reynolds’ Ugolino or
David’s Brutus [Ill. 7].32 Rather, the artist himself, with his emotion, his
capacity for suffering, his life, so to speak, serves as a stand-in for the beholder,
serving to existentially underwrite a notion of modern heroism, a notion that,
like modern history painting, can only be guaranteed with this backing. We
should thus not simply dismiss the stylization of Géricault’s biography—to
which he himself contributed, along with his early biographers—by way of a
gesture of ideological critique, but consider the essential role it played in the
production and reception of his art.
Returning once more to the reading of the biographer, Clément, from
1879, who argued that Géricault’s work, more than that of any other artist,
represented a profound shift in the way art is understood, manifesting in his
picture the idea of suffering, benevolence, and solidarity in a new form, then
this indicates a new quality of the pictorial form. In artistic terms, this
undertaking can be explained by arguing that the artist sought to evoke certain
emotions that could no longer be achieved with the representation of a
conventional hero. Now it is no longer a hero known by name, not even an
individual, anonymous hero, but a conglomerate of heroic bodies, an orgy of
skin, nerves, tendons, and muscles that illustrates an amazing pain, a heroic act
of suffering, making it plausible to the beholder. The individual hero is no
longer able to achieve this effect—a collective of bodies that stands for human
nature can. To arrive at this higher level, the painter had to ensure that no
single specific hero was represented. If the immediate predecessors of Géricault
in the modernization of history painting still staged the dying hero or hero as
victim—think here of Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe [Ill. 8],
Copley’s Death of Chatham, or Guérin’s Marcus Sextus—Géricault now went
32
Jacques-Louis David, The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of his sons, 1789, Oil on
canvas, 323 x 422 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre.
120
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
a step further. In his effort to satisfy his own need for a hero—and that of his
audience—Géricault had to undertake a further abstraction. The task that he set
himself in the Raft of the Medusa was ultimately to isolate the essence of the
heroic and to distill it in the form of a heroic effect. Only then could the artist
ensure that the representation of heroic suffering was not limited to a historical
person in his or her public role and model stature, but available for all to
experience and perceive in its universal content. The task that thus presented
itself was in a sense to paint a painting without a subject, which as we know,
Delacroix, referring to other paintings of the artist, isolated as one of
Géricault’s achievements; the depiction of an image that, in presenting its
subject, simultaneously transcends it in its specific delimitation. What was then
to have an impact was the image as a whole, its aesthetic achievement, and the
modernization of the visual form.
The work as a whole must address an interiority that fully involves the
beholder. But we should be careful about concluding that these accompanying
alterations of visual form, the modification and modernization of this artistic
technique, entailed the death of the hero and the end of history painting as such.
Such formulas, with their Hegelian premises, found all too often in the
discussion of history painting, voice a teleology that is unable to account for
the continuing existence of the hero in countless mass cultural manifestations.
It is here that Géricault’s painting of the Raft of the Medusa represented an
important step in Western culture’s efforts to privatize the classical epic hero,
subjectivizing and spiritualizing him. It is also clear that in accompanying
conceptualizations of the heroic, the effort of the artist serves to secure the
artistic medium’s capacity to present the hero or the heroic, allowing its
traditional moral claim to move into the nineteenth century. Géricault’s image
brings the inversion of the artist to the hero into view, because it proves art’s
ability to take on a heroic quality. Yes, even events that are not heroic, like the
121
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
shipwreck before the coast of Senegal, can be lent a heroic dimension not
granted to the real protagonists of the drama, the few survivors of this tragedy.
But it is also clear that this art’s universal claim also belongs to a
specific cultural context. In using such techniques, Géricault placed himself in
the tradition of Christian humanism, picking up in the spirit of Montaigne’s
neo-stoicism, in which the greatness of humanity is no longer judged according
to a glorious life, but according to what a person is able to bear. Indeed, in
quite a general sense the realism of Western art can be attributed to a Christian
anthropology that attempts to absolutize the contingency of its standpoint by
way of universalizing aesthetic abstractions. This Christian anthropology of
suffering represents an ethical demand, and communicates an image of the
world in which normative claims are inherent, claims that apply both to life and
art. This culminates in an ethic of suffering; art is then the medium that allows
the individual, as a distinct person and a member of the human species, to
encounter the abyss separating the two. It is the bearing of the hopelessness of
this abyss, the emotional exploration of it, and its retention in our
consciousness that then appears heroic.
122
Gregor Wedekind,
Heroes after the Death of the Hero: Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
Heroes after the Death of the Hero:
Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa
Gregor Wedekind
Abstract
Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, exhibited in the Salon of 1819,
represents an attack on the picture genre in which the image of the hero is
primarily conceptualized: the history painting. Géricault’s painting offends all
aesthetic categories that indispensably belong to history painting, categories
that guarantee it its generalizing and universalizing connotations. Yet at the
same time, the tremendous format and Géricault’s stylistic treatment of the
bodies depicted leave no doubt that this is a painting that would like to attain
the dignity of history painting. Even if Géricault’s new heroes arouse the
sympathy of the viewer, they are in no way any use as new figures of
identification. The antagonistically aesthetic structure of the picture does not
allow for such an unequivocal reading. Géricault’s heroicizing of that which is
human intends to trigger certain emotions by way of art, emotions that would
not have been attainable with the representation of a conventional hero. It is no
longer the hero known by name, no longer even the single anonymous hero, but
instead a conglomerate of heroic bodies which are meant to demonstrate heroic
suffering and make it plausible. In fact, it is the picture as a whole that achieves
this effect. For this reason, however, the aesthetic merit of the painting itself
comes into view.
From the start, the reception of the painting switched
between the statement of superhuman size and energy as a depiction and the
superhuman size and energy that were necessary to create this depiction. The
123
《藝術學研究》第一期（2006.06）
magnificent gesture that Géricault makes with his enormous painting was
intended to surpass the tradition of history painting. The chosen format, the
composition, and the inflation of the scandalizing subject to great art refer
directly to the artist and his absolute desire for fame and greatness. The creator
of the picture, the artist himself, becomes visible behind the depiction as the
actual hero.
Keywords: Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, hero.
124