LACMA showcases Delacroix painting
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art invites its visitors to a rare experience with an exhibit showcasing works by Eugène Delacroix. Delacroix, often called one of the greatest French artists of the 19th century, is principally known for his painting “Liberty Leading the People,” which potently captures issues of the French Revolution. LACMA will showcase Delacroix’s 1826 painting, “Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi,” until Feb. 15.
“Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi” scarcely travels from its home at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux. It is currently being showcased at LACMA as a part of the 50-year celebration of the sister-city relationship between Bordeaux and Los Angeles. At LACMA, it occupies a prominent space at the entrance to the second floor of the Ahmanson Building. The Delacroix exhibit is located on the way to LACMA’s popular modern art exhibits, which include works by Picasso, Magritte and Kandinsky. As soon as one ascends to the second floor of the Ahmanson building, the vivid red walls on the left of the stairs grab one’s attention. The Delacroix work is positioned in such a way that it projects from the back of its exhibition room, and the striking brightness and dramatic posture of the key figure, as well as the sheer enormity of the painting itself, in its dark landscape reel the viewer inside.
The Delacroix exhibit is housed in a single room. Upon entry to the room, one sees a couple blurbs on the left wall that give information on the painting’s historical and political context and Delacroix’s background. The wall directly in front of the exhibition’s entrance showcases “Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi.” The other walls feature five other works with related themes to complement the main Delacroix work — “Henri IV Conferring the Regency upon Marie de’ Medici” (before 1834) by Delacroix, “Arab in the Desert” (1817) by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, “Arabs of Oran” (1833) by Delacroix, “The Giaour” (1822) by Théodore Géricault, and “Odalisque” (1830) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. A display case to the right of the room includes an untitled engraving from French artist Octavian Dalvimart’s 1814 series “Costume of Turkey” and a bronze medallion with Lord Byron’s profile by British engraver Alfred Joseph Stothard.
“Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi” engages the viewer intensely upon first glance, with its dramatic figure of a woman in desperation, half-kneeling on the rubble of a fallen city. As the blurbs to the painting’s left explain, Delacroix painted the work in response to the 1826 Ottoman siege of Greek city. The siege ended in tragedy, as the remaining Greek survivors detonated their own armory in a suicide mission to defeat the Turkish army. Delacroix painted “Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi” months after the city fell. He intended the work to be a political piece, with the purpose of persuading the French government to stop condoning the massacre of Greek citizens during the Greek war of independence.
The woman in the foreground of the 7-by-5-foot painting wears the colors of the Greek flag, thus symbolizing the beleaguered Greek nation. Her arms are outstretched in a gesture of anguished pleading, and she kneels on the remains of her destroyed city, which in turn lie on the dead bodies of its citizens. The triangular shape of the painting’s composition, as well as the spotlight directed toward the top of the painting, funnel the viewer’s attention toward her facial expression. Her mouth is drawn with despair as her eyes look towards heaven for aid. “Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi” is primarily a work of political propaganda, speaking out against the injustice of the historical conflict. It also draws deeply on the themes of personal and intimate emotion, however, by highlighting an individual experience of human struggle. The woman stands out from her dark background and the rich red walls behind the painting, and thus is isolated and individualized in her misery. Delacroix was one of the forerunners of the Romantic movement in visual art, so it is fitting that even in his propagandist pieces, the issues of the self and a depth of private emotion are apparent. His use of Romantic detail is also revealed in the dark skies above the kneeling woman. The stormy skies mirror Greece’s affliction with their turbulence and calling to mind the Romantic motif of the terrifying sublime.
Delacroix’s Romantic bent is also manifested in the motif of Oriental culture, with the Turkish soldier in the background holding his scimitar. The soldier provides a striking contrast when juxtaposed with the main figure of Greece. While she is half-kneeling, the Turkish soldier stands triumphantly. While she is portrayed as vulnerable with her exposed white dress, he is portrayed as wealthy and dynamic with his many layers of vivid robes.
The theme of the Western perception of Oriental issues pervades the entire exhibit. One of the historical blurbs states that French art during Delacroix’s time was extremely interested in the culture of North Africa and the Middle East. After Napoleon’s colonial efforts in these regions, as well as Lord Byron’s dramatic poetry that idealized Oriental culture, French artists became extremely interested in the world of the East. As the exhibit blurb also points out, however, such compositions are inevitably tinged with the agenda and assumptions of “Western imagination.”
The other eight works in the Delacroix exhibit subtly point to this paradox. Géricault’s “The Giaour” is a perfect example — the work was inspired by Byronic poem of the same name, which describes the romanticized story of an Arab Christian living as an unbeliever in a Muslim region. The Dalvimart engraving in the exhibit’s display case continues this paradox, rendering a Western depiction of Turkish dress. Furthermore, Ingres’ Odalisque makes overt allusions to the stereotypes of the Orient as lavish and sensual. Odalisque also takes the Renaissance tradition of the nude and displaces it in an Eastern setting. Though the subjects of these works might be inspired by issues of the East, they are unavoidably colored with the personality of another culture. Their juxtaposition with “Greece on the ruins of Missolonghi” subtly prompts the viewer to consider how Western art has portrayed issues of the East, even as it speaks out against the injustice of the Ottoman siege.