“Retraite de Constantine” was one of the most widespread examples of Auguste Raffet´s series of annual lithography albums. It was published in spring of 1837 by Gilhaut Freres and gives an account of the first failed attempts at conquering the Algerian fortress. The ignominious retreat of the French army in November 1836 was mainly blamed on the Siberian weather conditions of the winter setting in. Raffet, who never set foot on Algerian ground,mainly reverted to topoi of the Napoleonic Russia campaign and in doing so decidedly placed the colonial adventure in a continuum of Bonapartist mythification. In October 1837, after fights with the defenders that caused an extremely high number of casualties, Constantine was finally captured. The fact that Raffet?s next lithographic cycle “La Prise de Constantine” is far more differentiated and authentic, owes to his intense research studies and also to a longer journey to the Orient which he had meanwhile taken.
Alexander Roob’s “History of Press Graphics. 1819-1921. The Age of Graphic Journalism” is out now. (Taschen Cologne, Hardcover, 24.6 x 37.2 cm). In over 600 pages, this far-reaching compendium presents press illustration and graphic journalism as a distinct and unique genre and a laboratory for developing avant-garde aesthetics. The images are largely taken from the […]
What sails here under the flag of caricature is nothing other than an early form of blunt and bleak social realism. The group makes a powerful and monumental impression, misery in the dimension of a history picture, and that’s exactly how it was meant to be. The publisher of La Caricature, Charles Philipon, like most […]
Heavenly Zo / INRI becomes ISO / Swabian and Lorraine Somnambulism Heavenly Zo Richard’s emblematic sexual symbolism originated in the theurgic Neoplatonic geometry of Alexandrian late antiquity and had found its way from there into Jewish mysticism and Hermeticism. The most famous example was the Seal of Solomon, the hexagram, which consisted in the interpenetration […]