An Ignoble Body, A Black Body
â... pas un trait dâhĂ©roisme et de grandeur ... rien dâhonorableâ1âânothing memorable, heroic or honorableâ in this canvas was the Gazette de Franceâs indignant dismissive response to GĂ©ricaultâs Raft of the Medusa (Plate 1).2 For the Gazette and the press in general, GĂ©ricaultâs oil, a canvas of grand dimensions on view in the late summer of 1819 in the Louvreâs impressive Salon carĂ©e, was shorn of all redeeming and uplifting qualities. Depicted in a scene of men lost at sea on a makeshift raft, GĂ©ricaultâs exhausted survivors, mired in hopelessness, lacked all moral fiber. Unable to transcend their plight, they deserved their fate.3 However, few if any of the Salonâs visitors studying the Raft observed that far from jettisoning artâs traditional tropes of heroism and honor, GĂ©ricault had vested them in a different guise, an unfamiliar face to GĂ©ricaultâs cohorts and one they could neither discern nor accept. Indeed, if the Louvreâs visitors could not see the Raftâs challenge it was because its moral fiber was couched in a black body, one they deemed ignoble.
The black body they could not see was the signaling black, a dark-toned muscular figure set at the forward-most end of the raft (Plate 2). Capping a pyramidal rise of desperate figures clustered about his person, GĂ©ricaultâs apical black waves a scrap of cloth before him hoping to attract a passing vessel that appears on the far horizon. With several of the raftâs survivors at his side echoing his stance, he faces the sea, perched precariously on an upright barrel, drawing attention to himself with his ragged bunting. Clearly visible to us, he was evidently invisible to the Gazette and to the other papers who reviewed the Raftâinvisible, that is, in that he does not find a place in their accounts of the Salon,4 an omission that may have its roots in the waverâs color. Black, a slave or perhaps a former slave, surely an Other, he needs to be discounted.5 This in effect is the problem we faceânamely, to understand the racial divide that distanced the races as whites enjoyed the fruits of their chatelled-slave labor. Indeed, the many visitors milling about the Raft were hardly aware of the systemâs extreme brutalities to acknowledge them.6
With blacks reduced to chattel, it was all but impossible to assign a trait dâhĂ©roisme et de grandeur to a man of color. In the rare instance when GĂ©ricaultâs âhailerâ is cited, as in the Journal de Parisâ review, he is dismissed as âthat manâ (cet homme),7 a bland moniker insuring his anonymity. In effect, the Journal de Parisâ man could be any man on the Raft, he could be either âwhiteâ or âblack.â But black he is! And that fact is fortuitously forgotten. Thus, by denying his color, that which indelibly isolates him from the other naufragĂ©s (shipwrecked survivors), his signal role is denied ⊠a denial which in turn denies GĂ©ricaultâs focus on blacks, a central tenet of his grand canvas.
Indeed for the Journal de Paris âthe manâsâ efforts will get him nowhereââuseless and exhausting,â8 is how the paper phrases it. As those who repudiated people of color never tired of saying, blacks can never amount to much. Surely, their endeavors are doomed to failure. Not only for the Journal but for GĂ©ricaultâs peers in general, failure was synonymous with people of color. Thus, GĂ©ricaultâs apical figure had to be demeaned, downgraded. Hear for instance the voice of one such criticâAntoine-Hilarion KĂ©ratryâs is speaking. The year is 1820:
Two or three sailors, worn out, climb atop a barrel, and held by other wretches, themselves fainting with weakness, strive to wave a few ragged cloths before them signaling their distress.
Deux ou trois matelots extĂ©nuĂ©s de fatigue, montĂ©s sur une tonne, et qui soutenus par dâautres malheureux, eux-mĂȘmes dĂ©faillans, Ă©ssaient dâagiter, dans les airs, quelques lambeaux en signe de leur dĂ©tresse.9
Hence KĂ©ratryâs pathetic image: Exhausted, expiring wretches massed about the Raftâs pinnacle. â[W]orn out,â sailors too weak to standâa moving scenario, indeed, but it is not GĂ©ricaultâs. Where KĂ©ratry focuses on exhaustion, GĂ©ricault focuses on elation; and where KĂ©ratryâs sailors barely stand, GĂ©ricaultâs apical black surges forward, invigorated by hope, inscribed with life.
With KĂ©ratry replacing GĂ©ricaultâs signaling figure with two or three sailors (deux ou trois matelots), one might suppose that KĂ©ratry saw what he saw because he could not entertain the thought that a canvas of such magnitude could be capped with a man of colorâand just one man at that! Clearly, KĂ©ratry felt he had to down-play the latterâs importanceâhe had to lose him in a larger crowd, depict him (and the men gathered about him) as spent, drained of life. By emphasizing the hailerâs âweaknessâ KĂ©ratry undercuts his agency. Indeed, how can a man deemed hopeless lead a surge of hopeâa question that for KĂ©ratry and for those who shared his racial biases was more than rhetorical.
KĂ©ratryâs sense that Africans were incapable and could not possibly take a leading role in any undertaking, not just in the Raft, needs to be underlined, for negrophobia was part of the temper of the day. A case in point is a text from 1819 and one contemporary with the Raft. A seemingly judiciously tempered tract on the Negroid race, it is in effect a thinly disguised biased surge of anti-black sentiment. Addressed to a professional audience of eminent medical practioners, and published in the SociĂ©te des mĂ©decins et de chirurgiensâs journal, its author, J. J. Virey (1775â1847), a doctor of note, bases his argumentsâor rather, his racial theoriesâon a host of past and present scientific profiles by physiologists, anthropologists and other men of learning. Buttressed by numerous scholarly pronouncements and by impressive Latin sources, Virey launches into a long disquisition (it runs for more than fifty pages, one we will often return to in these pages) denigrating blacks, arguing that there âare two distinct and principal species that comprise humanity: the white species and the black speciesâ (lâespĂšce blanche et lâespĂšce nĂšgre)10âa clear division that demarcates the races, with the latter, as Virey goes on to argue, forever indulging in âthe most dissolute excesses; his soul ⊠wrapped up in gross animal appetites.â11 Hence Vireyâs conclusion: with its âsuperior intelligence,â12 it is only natural that lâespĂšce blanche âgovern all creatures.â And
as the God-head has willed that the weak and doltish submit to those more powerful ⊠just as women submit to men, and youth to old age, likewise le nĂšgre, less intelligent than whites, must bow down (doit se courber) and submit to his [the white manâs] presenceâjust as the ox or the horse, in spite of all their strength, heed manâs will; thus has it been proscribed by destiny.
si lâordre Ă©ternel a voulu que les faibles, les incapables dâesprit se soumissent aux plus forts, aux plus intelligens ⊠comme la femme Ă lâhomme, le jeune au plus ĂągĂ©; de mĂȘme le nĂšgre, moins intelligent que le blanc, doit se courber sous celui-ci, tout comme le boeuf ou le cheval, malgrĂ© leur force, deviennent les sujets de lâhomme; ainsi la prescript une Ă©ternelle destineĂ©.13
Vireyâs voice (just one learned voice among many spearheading an objective analysis of le nĂšgre) was heard well into the nineteenth century14âand with it a damning view of black people, one that reverberated in response to GĂ©ricaultâs Raft. Mid-nineteenth-century appraisals therefore did not just disparage GĂ©ricaultâs signaling black, they were averse to his presence, to his race. Ernest Chesneauâs essay of 1861 on GĂ©ricault and the modern movement for the Revue europĂ©enne illustrates the problem. Abiding by tradition, Chesneau (1833â1890) reminds his readers that canvases of grand scale (pompiers) favor a centre moral, a moral center that holds the picture together. The Raft, says Chesneau, has such a unifying focus, a pivotal point: The centre moral de son [GĂ©ricaultâs] tableau, câest lâArgus15 (The moral center of his canvas is the Argus). But the Argus, the rescue vessel, is far away, a speck on the horizon. Barely visible, its presence is in doubt. Even the Raftâs naufragĂ©s questioned its presence. Given its elusive station, might not Chesneauâs central focus better fit a tangible body, a corporeal entity that caps the composition: GĂ©ricaultâs impressive black? Still, in spite of his seeming indifference, Chesneau never denies the latterâs presence. Hence Chesneau:
There, a black (un nĂšgre), held by his fellow castaways, has raised himself up on an empty barrel; he waves a ragged cloth against the oceanâs winds in a desperate attempt to signal the crew of the brick [lâArgus], whose hazy silhouette those among the least forsaken naufragĂ©s have discerned on the horizon.
LĂ , un nĂšgre, soutenu par ses compagnons de dĂ©tresse, sâest hissĂ© sur un tonneau vide; il agite au vent de la mer un lambeau dâĂ©toffe. Câest un signal dĂ©sepĂ©rĂ© adressĂ© Ă lâĂ©quipage du brick, dont les moins dĂ©faits dâentre les naufragĂ©s ont distinguĂ© la grise silhouette Ă lâhorizon.16
True, although Chesneau concedes the hailerâs presence and his colorâa concession that borders on confessionâhe will not give him pride of place, the Raftâs centre mo...