Drawing a Crowd for Inauguration

Google Art Project comparison of two works that feature crowds by Honore Daumier in The Phillips Collection: at left, Le Public du Salon: Un jour où l’on ne paye pas…, 1852. Lithograph on paper. 14 1/8 x 10 in. Gift of the Dwight Clark Bequest; at right, The Uprising (L'Emeute), 1848 or later. Oil on canvas, 34 1/2 x 44 1/2 in. Acquired 1925Google Art Project comparison of two works that feature crowds by Honore Daumier in The Phillips Collection: at left, Le Public du Salon: Un jour où l’on ne paye pas…, 1852. Lithograph on paper. 14 1/8 x 10 in. Gift of the Dwight Clark Bequest; at right, The Uprising (L'Emeute), 1848 or later. Oil on canvas, 34 1/2 x 44 1/2 in. Acquired 1925

Google Art Project comparison of two works that feature crowds by Honore Daumier in The Phillips Collection: at left, Le Public du Salon: Un jour où l’on ne paye pas…, 1852. Lithograph on paper. 14 1/8 x 10 in. Gift of the Dwight Clark Bequest; at right, The Uprising (L’Emeute), 1848 or later. Oil on canvas, 34 1/2 x 44 1/2 in. Acquired 1925

With the presidential inauguration just days away, with an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 people expected to gather, now’s the perfect time to revisit the small but captivating gallery of political cartoons by Honoré Daumier and Patrick Oliphant on view through January 31.

Daumier, especially, seems to have a penchant for depicting crowds of people in his works. Daumier’s lithograph Le Public du Salon (1852) packs in a mass of people attempting to navigate an art salon. Everything about the piece is crowded, from the bustling figures to the artworks hung closely together on the walls. A woman stands in the foreground, a harrowed expression on her face as she nervously pushes her way through the crowd while those around her demonstrate similar exasperation.

Daumier’s lithograph hangs alongside Oliphant’s work, aptly titled Homage to Daumier (2000). This piece references another work by Daumier in the collection, The Uprising (1848 or later). One of Duncan Phillips’s favorite paintings that he owned, the museum founder described it as a “symbol of all pent up human indignation.” The painting depicts another crowd, this one dominated by a light-haired figure gesturing forcefully across the canvas, his emotional expression echoed in the faces of all those behind him. In Oliphant’s appropriation of the work, the artist depicts himself alongside The Uprising, joining the crowd in a sense with a look on his face of intense concentration and, perhaps, anxiety reflecting his own contemporary sense of political turmoil.

Elizabeth Kachavos, Marketing Intern

Politics in Perspective

Brian Dailey, America in Color, 2012

Brian Dailey, America in Color, 2012, photo courtesy the artist. Exhibition on view at Stephan Stoyanov Gallery, New York, through November 18, 2012.

Last Wednesday evening as part of Creative Voices DC series at the Phillips’s Center for the Study of Modern Art, Brian Dailey accomplished a considerable feat for election season—he discussed politics without getting political. In his first solo show America in Color, on view at the Stephan Stoyanov Gallery in New York City through November 18, the artist and former Phillips trustee is displaying a group of one-thousand portraits that together present a demographic study of the American electorate. While traveling across the United States, Dailey photographed individuals in front of monochrome backgrounds representing their political affiliations: blue for Democrat, red for Republican, grey for Independent, green for the Green Party, and yellow if they don’t vote or participate in the political process. Dailey and his team employed a vigorously consistent lighting pattern and various editing techniques to keep the backgrounds uniform and photographed subjects in full-length, to capture each individual’s mannerisms and behavioral quirks. Using such a systematic approach across various locations allowed Dailey to reveal a narrative not only about democracy and political diversity, but about what he refers to as the “uncelebrated American life.”

I embraced this concept and think our audience appreciated it as well. With the final presidential debate two nights prior, the third-party debate the night before, and Election Day countdown beginning, heightened animosity and contention between political parties seems to be polarizing the nation, affecting us all. This being my first presidential election as an official voter, the animosity feels especially intense, and within my own social circles I have watched people either stay quiet or loudly declare political allegiance. But Brian Dailey keeps politics in perspective. In his talk, he did not mention Senate leaders, party representatives, or presidential candidates. For Dailey these figures do not define American politics—all Americans do. And although our political affiliations may be summed up by red, grey, green, blue, or yellow, our political identity is not a color. Instead it is a stance, a uniform, a costume, or an expression—some part of a person’s presence, which represents all the ideas, characteristics, and beliefs an affiliation cannot. Sometimes this identity seems to match our stereotypes about the color behind it, but Dailey showed us that often it doesn’t. And while political affiliations may at times divide Americans, our more complex, less popularized, “uncelebrated” political identities bring us together.

Madeline Bouton, Center for the Study of Modern Art Intern