La Liberté Raisonnée

Cristina Lucas’ video La liberté raisonnée (2009) is based on Eugène Delacroix’s iconic image of rebellion, Liberty Leading the People (1830), which was inspired by the July Revolution of 1830 in Paris. Lucas’ resurrects—and simultaneously deconstructs—Delacroix’s painting and its idealistic spirit of rebellion. The moving image shows what happened before and after the moment immortalized in the painting. We see a group of men striding towards us in slow motion, led by Marianna, the symbol of France. The scene is framed against a funeral march and battle sounds, heightening the ecstatic, seductively violent spirit of the scene. Its symbolic call for reason, justice, liberty and democracy ends like many other Utopian visions do: the league of men slay their female leader as she stumbles to the ground.