Géricault's Severed Heads and Limbs: The Politics and Aesthetics of the Scaffold

Abstract

While referring to the grim realities of the Restoration guillotine as an instrument of government repression, Gericault's paintings of severed heads and limbs more ambiguously explored the taste for the macabre and the uncanny rampant in the popular terror novels, horror shows, and tear-drenched melodramas of his time. Ultimately, this pairing of social and aesthetic horrific obeyed the Romantic modernists' call for artistic and political renewal through a rejection of academic decorum, which Gericault, in his contempt for academic classicism and the conservative ruling classes, embraced.

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