A qui le tour? 1870

Honoré Daumier created this lithograph, “A qui le tour?” in 1870 during a period of immense social and political upheaval in France. Here, Daumier uses the visual language of caricature to comment on France’s cycle of revolution and regime change. The print depicts a peasant militiaman in the ‘Musée des Souverains’ or Museum of Sovereigns. The museum is not a neutral space; it's a theater of power, a place to legitimize the present by displaying the discarded symbols of the past. Our militiaman holds a skewered imperial eagle of Napoleon III. At his feet are symbols of previous French regimes with dates of their demise: 1815, 1830, 1848. Daumier’s republican sympathies are evident in the triumphant pose of the peasant and the mockery of the fallen empires. He suggests that the institutions of art are always tied to the political order. To fully understand this work, we might consult newspapers, political pamphlets, and the records of the institutions that supported or suppressed such imagery. In the end, art is a product of its time, reflecting the social and institutional context in which it was created.