Gericault Raft of the Medusa

From Art and Politics Paper: The French artist Theodore Gericault is one of the two French artists most closely associated with the Romantic Movement. His most ambitious project was the large-scale painting Raft of Medusa. It measured 16 by 23 feet and is a depiction of an actual historic event. The subject of the painting is a shipwreck that took place in 1816 off the coast of Africa. The French warship Medusa wrecked on a reef due to the incompetence of the captain, who was appointed by the French government. As a last effort to survive, 150 of those who survived build a raft from the destroyed ship. The raft drifted for 12 days and only 15 people survived. When the raft was finally spotted the starved survivors were rescued. The event itself stirred the public once it reached their ears (Kleiner 823).

Gericault was attempting to confront viewers with the horror, chaos, and emotion of the tragedy at hand. It depicts the few survivors as they try to wave down a ship that is far away on the horizon. The jumble of bodies reflects a departure from straightforward organization of the neoclassical works. The piles of bodies, both living and dead, display every feeling of dying and death. The bodies themselves are arranged in an X shape that creates a lot of power and dynamic. Some of the bodies even seem like they are sliding off of the raft, out of the view of the viewer, and into the ocean (Magi 49).

Gericault also inserted a comment on the practice of slavery. He was an abolitionist group that tried to find ways to end the slave trade in the colonies. Given his antipathy to slavery, it is amazingly appropriate that he placed Jean Charles, a black soldier and one of the few soldiers, at the top of the pyramid of bodies.