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Senator Obama and the Raft of the Medusa
By Beth Gersh-Nesic - Feb 27th, 2008 at 9:58 pm EST

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On Senator Obama and Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa

Given Senator Barack Obama mounting lead in the Democratic primaries, I often think of Théodore Géricault’s masterpiece, Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819, a gigantic painting, where a bare-chested black sailor reaches up above the horizon line, lifted by his crewmates, to signal for help from a ship that is barely perceptible in the far distance. His task is to save himself and his fellow survivors, who have been set adrift on an enormous jerry-built raft after their frigate, the Medusa, had run aground off the coast of West Africa in July 1816

The disasterous journey of the French ship Medusa became a symbol of the dysfunctional Bourbon regime, restored in 1815 under Louis XVIII after Napolean’s defeat at Waterloo. Its story parallels the Bush administration, too, as demonstrated in Joel-Peter Witkin’s Raft of the George W. Bush (2006) and Kara Walker’s Post-Katrina Adrift (2007).

At the heart of the Medusa’s misfortune were three incompetent political-appointees, Frigate-Captain Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, Lieutenant-Colonel Julien-Désíré Schmaltz (governor for St. Louis and Senegal), and a M. Richefort (port master for St. Louis), who decided to speed up their trip from France to Senegal by sailing along the treacherous coast of West Africa. The crew protested, but these overconfident men with little seafaring experience (the captain had spend the previous twenty-five years as a customs officer) took none of their advice.




On July 2, 1816, the Medusa got stuck on shoals in the Arguin Bank. Of the 400 passengers, most of the well-to-do escaped in the six life-boats. The crew, about 150, settled for a 65 by 23 foot raft. Mayhem ensued –murder, mutiny and cannibalism. About two weeks later, just four miles from shore, fifteen survivors were picked up by the Argus (the Medusa’s sister ship)—ten made it home to tell their stories to the press.

The black sailor who energetically waves his shirt toward the Argus may represent the military conscripts brought along to patrol France’s territory in Senegal. More likely, he serves to remind the viewer of France’s slave trade, which Géricault actively opposed and Leutenant-Colonel Schmaltz meant to profit from in Africa. Therefore, Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa is more than a dramatic record of this event and a symbol of hope in the face adversity, it questions the body politic when its practice leads to corruption and human degradation. The artist’s choice of a black man leading the fight for survival called attention to those who had been abandoned by society, like the Medusa sailors left to fend for themselves on the open sea.

Géricault’s great painting received mixed reviews. Some critics found the work too vulgar in its realism, too unbeautiful for teaching a moral lesson. These critics were speaking in code. It was the African hero that set their teeth on edge.

Today in America, many voters might feel the same. They cannot imagine an African-American at the helm of our ship the USA. The code for their doubts is “lack of experience.” However, after eleven consecutive victories, it seems clear that Senator Obama’s grass-roots campaign has demonstrated authentic leadership skills. Those who work in the trenches know this best through their tireless phone-banking, numerous emails to each other, meetings, fund-raising events, rallies and door-to-door conversations. They see that tiny Argus though the eyes of this optimistic leader, who has been lifted up by his crew and has already set a new course for this country.



Images:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raft_of_the_Medusa Raft of the Medusa

http://www.edelmangallery.com/witkin33.htm Raft of George W. Bush

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/toc/2007/08/27/toc_20070820 Post Katrina Adrift



Sources:

Alexander McKee, Death Raft: The Human Drama of the Medusa Shipwreck, Charles Scribners, 1975.

Albert Boime, The Art of Exclusion: Representing Blacks in the Nineteenth Century, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.

Albert Alhadeff, The Raft of the Medusa: Gericault, Art and Race, Prestel, 2002.


Beth Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D., is an art historian, who reviews exhibitions for About.com: Art History (an affiliate of the New York Times) and teaches at Purchase College and other colleges in the Westchester/Rockland area. Her most recent book is André Salmon on French Modern Art (Cambridge University Press, 2005). See website: www.andresalmon.org.


She is the director of the New York Arts Exchange: www.nyarts-exchange.com.