LIBERTÉ

FRANKLIN DELENO JANUARY 1941 ROOSEVELT'S FOUR FREEDOMS SPEECH AND HOW ART WAS THEN USED TO POPULARIZE THIS HISTORIC SPEECH

FDR'S "FREEDOMS" SPEECH

Message to the 77th US Congress, January 6, 1941

"In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.
The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.
The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.
The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the world.
That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.
To that new order we oppose the greater conception -- the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.
Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions -- without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society.
This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.
To that high concept there can be no end save victory. "

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, January 6, 1941
From Congressional Record, 1941, Vol. 87, Pt. I.

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ON ANOTHER "LIBERTÉ" ACTIO POPULARIS

Image:Eugène Delacroix - La liberté guidant le peuple.jpg

Liberty Leading the People (La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by Eugène Delacroix, commemorating the July Revolutionof 1830, which toppled Charles X. A woman personifying. Libertyleads the people forward, holding the tricolore flagof the French Revolution.

Delacroix painted his work in the autumn of 1830. In a letter to his brother dated 12 October, he wrote: "My bad mood is vanishing thanks to hard work. I’ve embarked on a modern subject – a barricade. And if I haven’t fought for my country at least I’ll paint for her." The painting was first exhibited at the official Salon of May 1831. Delacroix rejected the norms of Academicismin favor of Romanticism. He depicted Liberty, personified by Marianne, symbol of the nation, as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a robust woman of the people, an approach that contemporary critics denounced as "ignoble". The mound of corpses acts as a kind of pedestral from which Liberty strides, barefoot and bare-breasted, out of the canvas and into the space of the viewer. The Phrygian cap she wears had come to symbolise liberty during the French Revolutionof 1789.

The fighters are from a mixture of social classes, ranging from the upper classes represented by the young man in a top hat who is said to be Delacroixhimself, to the revolutionary middle class or (bourgeoisie) as exemplified by the boy holding pistols (believed to be the inspiration for the character Gavroche in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables). What they have in common is the fierceness and determination in their eyes. Aside from the flag held by Liberty, a second, minute tricolore can be discerned in the distance flying from the towers of Notre Dame.

The French government bought the painting for 3,000 francswith the intention of displaying it in the throne room of the Palais du Luxembourg as a reminder to the "citizen-king" Louis Philippe of the July Revolution, through which he had come to power. This plan did not come to fruition and the canvas was hung in the Palace museum for a few months before being taken down for its inflammatory political message. Delacroix was permitted to send the painting to his aunt Félicité for safekeeping. It was exhibited briefly in 1848 and then in the Salonof 1855. In 1874, the painting entered the Louvre.

 

References

  1. Toussaint, Hélene, (1982). La Liberté guidant le peuple de Delacroix. Paris: Editions de la Réunion des Musées Nationaux

2. Prideaux, Tom, etc. (1972). The World of Delacroix. United States: Time Life.

 

LIBERTÉ !

 

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 ROOSEVELTS FREEDOMS VIA ART
Four Freedoms, oil on canvas, by Norman Rochwell, 1943. Found in the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass.

 

 

HISTORY OF FDR FREEDOM'S DECLARATION AND ART

President Roosevelt was a gifted communicator. On January 6, 1941, he addressed Congress, delivering the historic "Four Freedoms" speech. At a time when Western Europe lay under tyrannical domination, Roosevelt presented a vision in which the American ideals of individual liberties were extended throughout the world. Alerting Congress and the nation to the necessity of war, Roosevelt articulated the ideological aims of the conflict.
Eloquently, he appealed to Americans` most profound beliefs about freedom, that which corresponds to what Toqueville also confirmed about the "freedom" American soul (formed as a result of both the European "persecution" episode and the French enlightenment movement), and that which is subsumed in the delightful notion "enlightened self-sovereignty" (sovereignty, from the old French "souverainté", meaning "supreme excellence" and "freedom from external control").
The speech so inspired illustrator Norman Rockwell that he created a series of paintings on the "Four Freedoms" theme, as many French artists have done with all "freedom" struggles. In the series, he translated abstract concepts of freedom into four scenes of everyday American life. Although the Government initially rejected Rockwell`s offer to create paintings on the "Four Freedoms" theme, the images were publicly circulated by responsible and enthused citizens, finally were published by The Saturday Evening Post, (then, one of the nation`s most popular magazines). And thereafter, these images were commissioned and reproduced. After winning public approval, the paintings served as the centerpiece of a massive U.S. war bond drive and were put into service to help explain the war`s "liberation" aims.

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LAST THOUGHTS.

 

WE HAVE A LIBERTY BELL.

WE HAVE A STATUE OF LIBERTY.

WE HAVE A BILL OF LIBERTIES.

BUT WE DON'T HAVE A DUTY STATUE.

WE DONT HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY BELL.

SO THE MARKET IS OPEN FOR SUGGESTIONS.

 

CHECK OUT OUR "CIVIC RESPONSABILITY STATUE" PROJECT