#romaniticism

(tho he doesn't rlly say he's gorgeous but you get my point)

Géricault is best known for his dramatically composed and brilliantly colored portrayals of cavalrymen charging into battle upon their noble steeds, but he also left us one of the more interesting set of portraits from the 19th century.  Through his friend and patron, the psychiatrist Dr. Georget, Géricault gained access to the Parisian "lunatic asylums" -- as they were then called -- in 1820 and there painted ten portraits of the doctor's mentally ill patients.  Five of these, including this one, still exist.  On one level, the painter saw them as representative victims of various forms of social trauma, exposing through their compulsions -- gambling mania, kleptomania, delusions of grandeur, and the like -- the particular social maladies of the age. It would also appear that for Georget -- and perhaps Géricault -- they were thought to have scientific value as visual "case histories" from which hypotheses could be formulated or general conclusions drawn.  As Michel Foucault has documented in "Birth of the Clinic," starting in the late 18th century there was a concerted effort on the part of the "authorities" to define "mental illness," classify its various forms, and "identify" those afflicted through tell-tale features, such as shape of the head or facial expression.  This pseudo-scientific enterprise would culminate in the 1870s with the work of the Italian criminologist Lombroso, whose typologies would hold sway for several decades and lead to a lot of unnecessary misery before finally being rejected.

https://www.mixcloud.com/caitlin-sian-richards/august-9-2016-imaginary-landscapes-seance-for-lizzy-siddal/

So many youth are questioning the traditional wisdom of Capitalism for our economic models. I think more people should begin to question Romanticism as the dominant model for interpersonal partnerships.