Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité
A Photo Collage Project
by Jan Kather
“O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!”
This project began last summer when I visited Mass MOCA to see Anselm Kiefer’s Women of the French Revolution in stallation. Using images from a November 2019 exhibition of my works, as well as a newly embroidered tapestry based on “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,” three ideals that appeared during the French Revolution, I share my fascination with this period of French history from a feminist perspective. I must also ac knowledge the influence of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s films: Red, White, Blue - Three Colours trilogy (1990s). The flags of both France and the US share red, white, and blue and maybe on a good day, we share (as allies) not just the colors, but the ideals of liberty, equality and brotherhood/sisterhood .
Charlotte Corday
Charlotte Corday (27 July 1768 - 17 July 1793) is remem bered as the woman who stabbed Jacobin Jean-Paul Marat who was soaking in his medicinal bath.
Although Corday was demonized in her time, her actions today are viewed with sympathy. At her trial she defended herself by saying she killed one man to save 100,000. She was referring to the fact that anyone connected with the ar istocracy (a Girondin) was added to Marat’s hit list and sent to the guillotine for beheading. She and other Girondins were beheaded for proposing a constitutional monarchy that would allow for a peaceful transition of power.
Liberty Leading the People
Like Jacques Louis-David, Eugene Delacroix, who painted “Liberty Leading the People” in 1830, was inconstant in his support for equality for all. As Philip Kennicott wrote in the Washington Post (April 12, 2018) “despite liberal views, [Delacroix] remained wary of the political mob and the volatile streets of Paris that produced precisely the event he memorialized in “Liberty Leading the People.”
Women, ironically, were a large part of that fearsome “mob.”
Liberty Leading the People Collage
Marat Collage
Male artists, specifically, Jacques Louis-David and Eugene Delacroix, have always been featured in art history books about the French Revolution. That we don’t know these women’s stories suggests that history does, indeed, celebrate the actions of men over the actions of women.
Marat / Corday Photo Collage
Madame de Genlis
Madame de Genlis ( 25 January 1746 – December 31) was an influential writer and educator appointed to oversee the education of the children of Louis Philippe II, Duke of Chartres (later Duke of Orleans). This was the first time young boys were instructed by a woman rather than a man. Jane Austen was both influenced and repelled by her novels. De Genlis fled Paris to save her life, returning when Napo leon came to power. Kiefer suggested Madame de Genlis’s creativity by embedding an artist’s palette into her lead bed.
Designed by Jan Kather using Adobe InDesign 2022 for online distribution with issuu.com
Typeface: Minion Pro
Photo collages: Adobe Photoshop 2020
Copyright © Jan Kather 2022