‘The far right ruins the spirit of the imagery that is about fraternity’ – Technologist

Hijacked by RN

To grasp reality, the philosopher Roland Barthes asserted that it was necessary to decipher its “signs,” the most emblematic objects and, even more, their staging. In two videos, one aimed at the French population as a whole, the other at women, posted online on June 13 and June 17 in the run-up to France’s parliamentary elections, Jordan Bardella, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) party, sits at a desk behind which there is a reproduction of a lithograph in blue-white-red colors.

The artwork is “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité: la Marianne d’Obey,” by the American artist Shepard Fairey, known as Obey. It represents Marianne, the personification of the French Republic, and the national motto. The fervent defender of minorities, who designed Barack Obama’s campaign posters in 2008, is far from sharing the ideology of the RN, which targets immigrants and wants to establish a “national preference.” Contacted by Le Monde, the street artist expressed his dismay at the reappropriation. “The far right ruins the spirit of the imagery that is about fraternity and living together and gives another nationalistic interpretation that puts boundaries.” By displaying the lithograph, Bardella, whose staff did not respond to our request for comment, was killing two birds with one stone: He is targeting a young electorate and he is taunting Emmanuel Macron, who put forward the same artwork during his 2017 presidential campaign.

On loan to the Elysée Palace

It was in February 2017 that this Marianne made its appearance at Macron’s campaign HQ. The canvas belonged to Jean-Marc Dumontet, then a close adviser to the presidential candidate. “The idea was not at all to use it as a communication tool,” defended the show producer, keen to point out that he “lent and not gave” the work to the president. Invited twice to the Elysée Palace, Obey admitted he was flattered to see his Marianne hanging in the palace’s corner office. “I thought that Macron was a much better choice than Marine Le Pen,” the artist told Le Monde. The canvas has since been removed from the presidential office. “But it’s still somewhere at the Elysée,” said Dumontet, who finds Bardella’s use of the image “ideologically shocking”: “Basically, he looks like a little plagiarist.”

Open source

Obey had imagined this Marianne in support of the victims of the November 13, 2015, terrorist attacks. The image, whose graphic design calls on political pamphlets and Art Nouveau iconography, was turned into a monumental mural the following year on the facade of a building on Boulevard Vincent-Auriol, in Paris’s 13^th arrondissement. Committed to the spirit of sharing conveyed by his work, Fairey made the image open source, allowing anyone to download it for free from obeygiant.com, his website. “The spirit of my work is about sharing. It doesn’t belong to any political party,” he said.

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