Gericaults Raftas legacy in art and politics
Theodore Gericault's greatest legacy as an artist is undoubtedly his Raft of the Medusa, completed in 1819. The painting is the comprehensive result of experiments with a variety of forms and styles; it marks the apogee of Gericault's career. Beautiful and horrible, incidental and ubiquitous, monumental without a specific hero, The Raft of the Medusa was to the Salon of 1819 a complete paradox. The painting's first critics were divided in their assessments by their political and artistic ideologies. Some critics at the painting's initial exposition desired a picture more blatant in social criticism while others felt that the painting derided the very patriotism they felt needed protection. Artistically too Gericault's masterwork was found to be an enigma. He followed no artistic school coherently and attempted a fusion of sorts that was unprecedented in his day. While such efforts did not popularize him with his Romantic contemporaries, Gericault's Raft of the Medusa markedly began a new epoch in the evolution of art, that of innovation. Through his unique amalgamation of subject matter, contradictory styles, and the universality of his theme Gericault has produced in The Raft of the Medusa an integral part of art histo
Gericault had visited the painting styles of Neo-Classicism, Romanticism, the Baroque, and the Renaissance. He saw things that he appreciated and things that he did not. Of the former lot he took the clarity, the realism, the grandeur, the focus on the contemporary and the dramatic and gave them a personal spin (Eitner 54). Of the latter Gericault discarded the stilted artifice of over stylized art, the tendency towards triviality that Romantic art possessed. What he was left with, the qualities that the painting itself embodies, can be explicated as a monumental depiction of a contemporary occurrence that intimate a universal experience in the painting's theme, suffering. In summary, Gericault's Raft of the Medusa is an experiment in virtuosity that has yielded far greater results than the artist ever imagined. The unbending adherence to his own theory, theme, and principal has allowed Gericault to secure for himself a place in history that will not easily be forgotten. He abandoned the traditional conventions of his day, the formulaic art of the past, and the prerequisites for subject matter that had previously controlled all artistic endeavors. The result was a masterful composition that reflects not only on the revolutionary mood of Gericault's time but on the transcendental element that pervades time itself. Gericault initially began his work in the manner that a reporter might seek out a story. That is he sought nothing but the cold hard facts. The Raft of the Medusa was originally intended to convey nothing but visual truth (Eitner 55). However when faced with such fa
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