Subject: reading
images
Posted By: Lynn Hunt
Date Posted: June 23, 2003, 10:44 PM
How do you discern the “message” of
a visual image, especially if there is no explicit evidence in textual
sources? This is one
of the key reasons why most historians avoid visual evidence. Even
art historians, after all, use textual evidence as keys to unlocking
the meaning of visual expressions. Our problem here is the anonymity
of much revolutionary print-making.
Subject: historical knowledge
Posted By: Vivian Cameron
Date Posted: July 5, 2003, 5:15 PM
If what is meant by “historical knowledge,” the
knowledge of a specific historical event, then some prints, particularly
those
of Prieur/Berthault, provide us with visual details about the site
of action, some monuments, as well as the physiognomy of certain
principal actors, such as Bertier de Sauvigny. [Images
2 and 31]
But what sort of “historical knowledge” do we acquire from
the more generalized visual accounts of an event, as is the case
in many of the images picturing the attack on the Bastille as well
as the demolition of the Bastille? [Image
3] As Claudette Hould
has pointed out, one of the first popular prints of the attack on
the Bastille was executed by Nicolas Dupin for the Révolutions
de Paris, which appeared only in October 1789, and which was subsequently
adopted as a model by other printmakers for their own images of the
event. Like written memoirs of the period, these more generalized
prints, such as Dupin's “Attack on the Bastille” or our
Image
3, “Demolition of the Bastille,” convey
only a certain amount of information—much of it inaccurate. At the
same time, the ubiquity of these prints offers a different perspective
on “historical
knowledge.” For their prevalence tells us not only that the
printmakers thought that such images had commercial value and would
sell but also that their popularity came from their symbolic value,
souvenirs or “memory triggers” of a momentous event, which
operated to perpetuate those symbolic events. The knowledge we acquire
in these cases is about the symbolics of the event (as Lüsebrink/Reichardt
have studied) in these particular visualizations.
Subject: Some belated comments
Posted By: Warren Roberts
Date Posted: July 9, 2003, 10:53 AM
I've avoided this question up to now because
of the word “knowledge,” which
isn't the word I would use to explain what images have meant to me.
Images have added to my understanding of the Revolution. For me the
key word is “understanding.” But yes, images do have
knowledge that isn't found in other sources, meaning texts. As I
proceed to my first point, I'm not certain if what I'm about to say
pertains to “knowledge” or “understanding,” but
let me make the point anyway. Images show us something. Texts can't
do that. For example, and in the context of my work, they show us
the physical spaces within which the Revolution took place. To read
about the events that took place in the Place de Grève on
July 14 and July 22 is one thing; to see what happened, which we
can do through images, is something else, or at least it is for me.
By comparing images of crowds in action on these two days I have
acquired understanding, and perhaps knowledge that I wouldn't have
gotten otherwise. I know that different illustrators depicted crowds
differently on these two days, and by scrutinizing these differences
I am able to achieve fuller understanding of the events; also I am
able to see something of the illustrators own responses to the events
they depict. For me this is part of the actual history of the Revolution:
the Revolution wasn't just what happened, the events themselves,
but how people responded to them. In the case of illustrators who
made images of the Revolution this is of particular importance because
their images, when disseminated, helped define the Revolution—in
some measure—for contemporaries whose understanding of events was
influenced by the images they saw.
Images have much to say about spaces that were important to the Revolution.
Let me take one of them, the Place Louis XV\Place de la Revolution.
Prieur's 5th tableau shows the first eruption of violence in the
Paris Insurrection on the afternoon of July 12, as Parisians clash
with German guards in the center of the Place Louis XV below the
equestrian statue of Louis XV. As was often the case with Prieur,
the illustration is scripted; less accurate than other depictions
of this event, it shows the violence taking place at
the base of Bouchardon's equestrian statue, from which graffiti had
to be removed in the years after its installation. The Place Louis
XV was built in honor of a king who became the object of rumor, ridicule,
and ill feeling. More than any other image of the conflict between
Parisians and German Guards in the Place Louis XV on July 12, Prieur's
brings out the connection between that feeling and this event. Framing
the image as he did, he makes a commentary on the Place Louis XV
and the king in whose honor it was built. Images by other illustrators
offer a more accurate depiction of the event than that of Prieur.
Subject: A postscript
Posted By: Warren Roberts
Date Posted: July 9, 2003, 11:28 AM
Images sometimes lead to misunderstanding. One example is Prieur's
Arrest of the King at Varennes. [Image 8] Prieur shows a crowd
breaking into an inn where the King, the Queen, and their retinue
are seated at a table having an evening meal. The illustration
is wrong in all ways; what Prieur shows never happened. Yet this
image has been included often in histories of the Revolution, sometimes
without explanation and needed corrections. Some historians have
paid so little attention to images that when they include illustrations
in their books they sometimes, in effect, misinform their readers.
One might even say that they dispense false knowledge.
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