Between Two Heads

Barry Barker (Centre for Contemporary Visual Arts) and Peter Seddon (School of Arts and Communication), as part of their work around curatorial interventions for the CCVA, have been offered the opportunity to mount a ‘curatorial intervention/exhibition’ by the Musee des Beaux Arts in Nimes in November 2007. Intervention is a strange word to use perhaps, after all are not all temporary exhibitions in museums ‘interventions’ into their spaces and collections? Nevertheless the word does point towards certain approaches not quite covered by words such as ‘site- specific’, or ‘installation’ or ‘curated exhibition,’ all of which carry implications in today’s art world that do not quite cover the didactic intent and manipulation of the word ‘intervention’.The intervention at Nimes will centre on a large salon history painting in the nineteenth century rooms of the collection by Paul Delaroche. Painted in 1831 and depicting ‘Cromwell gazing at the beheaded corpse of Charles I in his coffin after his execution’, this painting was dispatched to the Museum at Nimes shortly after its exhibition at the Paris Salon of 1832, where it has remained displayed on the museum walls ever since. Delaroche is perhaps most famous for his remark in the 1840’s about photography which was that ‘from today painting is dead’. The intervention at Nimes will reflect on death and corpses in a number of different cultural senses.

Barker and Seddon will display a number of items and texts around this painting in the nineteenth century galleries at Nimes. The principal one will be a large digital projection of an image of Cromwell’s own head as it was photographed in the 1950’s adjacent to or near the painting. It may not be commonly known that Britain’s premier republican was, after his death in 1658, dug up at the Restoration of 1660 and his body displayed on a gibbet, his head cut off and displayed on the roof of Westminster hall as a warning to all would be King killers. The head passed down the generations as a cabinet curiosity only to be finally reburied in 1960 in a secret location in the grounds of his old college Sidney Sussex, Cambridge. Though based on still photographs the image will be digitally manipulated to twitch occasionally as an unnerving contrast to the absolute stillness of the painting.

Barker and Seddon over the Spring and Summer terms of the last academic year have made research visits to Nimes, Sidney Sussex and the Museum of London, all institutions that will participate in the exhibition through both lending items and by making their archives of Cromwelliana available for research towards the event. Dr Nicholas Rodgers, curator of the Muniment Room, and secretary to the College Council, took the photograph illustrating this short article. It shows Barker and Seddon either side of an eighteenth century bust of Cromwell held by the College and also an item to be installed in the Nimes exhibition. The intervention, in addition, will make use of a painting in Sidney Sussex of Cromwell’s head made in 1799 and of graphic items and a further painting of the 1660’s from the Museum of London that depicts Charles I after death with his head sown back on! All this might seem grotesque, gratuitously gruesome and bizarre but the two heads of Cromwell and Charles still carry a substantial charge over the centuries.

The exhibition will deal with a number of interlinked art historical, historiographic and cultural concerns between England and France. There is the issue of looking and the unreturned gaze for example, and the bringing together of seventeenth, nineteenth and twenty-first century art in a manner that positions work differently for museum audiences. Delaroche’s painting depicts an incident described by Francois Guizot a government minister in France at the time and an historian. He was born in Nimes. Cromwell also has a personal connection with Nimes since he threatened to intervene when Nimes City Council tried to expel Protestant representatives. Unfortunately, unlike the more famous case of the Savoy, Cromwell’s minister for Latin tongues, Milton, did not produce a sonnet on the subject.

Pascal Tarieux, the resident curator at the Musee des Beaux Arts is enthusiastic about a project that dwells on one of the best-known holdings in its collection as well as connections between French and British history. Barker and Seddon are also working on a publication to accompany the exhibition with essays by them and a number of other authors, among who will be Stephen Bann, Britain’s foremost expert on the work of Delaroche. The exhibition is due to open in November 2007 and will last for the month.