Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. Benjamin Franklin

Saturday, August 15, 2015

The 200-year-old painting that puts Europe's fear of migrants to shame

Jonathan Jones

THE GUARDIAN - AUGUST 11, 2015

Nearly 200 years ago, Théodore Géricault painted a masterpiece of pity that puts modern Europe to shame.
The Raft of the Medusa (1818-19) is one of the most startling and powerful paintings in the world. It is also a call for compassion, humanity and common decency. Striking in reproduction, it is truly harrowing in real life, all 7x5 metres of it, looming over you in the Louvre. Darkness is literally eating up this painting; a deathly shadow seems to suck you into it. There is a black hole of horror at its heart.
And now I have to ask: why can’t we modern Europeans show the same compassion and humanity that made our forebears flock to see this protest against callous indifference to people abandoned at sea?
The Medusa was a French navy ship that got into trouble off west Africa in 1816. About 147 people were put off the ship on an open raft, in a heartless decision that contemporaries blamed on the recently restored French monarchy. They were cast helplessly adrift at sea, just as so many migrants making the perilous attempt to cross to Europe have in our time been cruelly left to drift in unseaworthy craft by unscrupulous people traffickers. Only 15 people survived the raft of the Medusa.

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