Americans of the Decadence will be a hand-embroidered painting and modern interpretation of the original painting Romans of the Decadence (Les Romains de la Décadence, 15′ 6″ x 25′ 4″ / 472.44 x 722.16 cm, oil paint) made by the French artist Thomas Couture, first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1847, a year before the 1848 Revolution which toppled the July Monarchy which now belongs to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. 

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I have a long history with the original painting by Couture. In my first encounter with the work in 2015, I came across a photo of it used as a backdrop in a social media travel article. I searched for more information about this oddly intriguing image, and as I learned more, I became fascinated, not just with the imagery itself, but with the context. I learned that the artist, Thomas Couture, was disgusted with the culture and society he was living in. He was presenting a powerful critique of his day, using an era prior to his own to make the point, and he did so in a bold, large-scale historical format. In other words, it is not subtle. I love this about the painting. To our modern eyes, it seems to be just a big, formal history painting, but when you actually learn about it, it is one hell of a slap in the face to the world he lived in.

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I had the privilege of traveling to Paris specifically to see the painting at the Musée d'Orsay in 2016, a trip that sparked my interest in recreating the artwork. It was everything I had imagined and more: a grand and sweeping gesture, heroically gutsy and important. Yet it also possessed this odd air of being forgotten, overlooked, and not taken to heart, as empires marched onward after its creation, repeating the same mistakes; I am speaking specifically of the American empire. Additionally, the sheer size of the painting in person felt off-putting, as if Couture knew it was too much. It felt as though he were hiding a message he deemed too dangerous to make directly about the current powers that be, yet he knew these almost absurd proportions would force the viewer into a deeper read.

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I began to understand Romans of the Decadence as a message across the ages, a dire warning from one era of empire to future eras about the lies built into our ideas of progress. It said to me very clearly and loudly that future generations should heed this warning lest they fall into the same trap of privilege and malaise that Couture was forcing us to consider. I believe Couture's warning was spot on. We haven't evolved much beyond the time of this painting; today, we are just as mired in our own decadence. We are drunk with malaise, a Western culture drowning in mindless consumerism and self-fascination, all at a great cost to ourselves and the world.

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This has become my purpose and mission in recreating this artwork: I want to present a critical and sober view of Western decadence today, so that we may hopefully see ourselves and move forward. I intend to use my particular approach to showing decadence and what I call the "failed state" of humanity by focusing on those who suffer from it. Couture wanted to show the drunken malaise of the peak of the Roman Empire as a metaphor for what he saw in France during the mid-19th century. I want to show the ramifications of this same drunken malaise across the modern world. I want to show the profound hurt and suffering it has caused in order to call us to awaken to our Western ways, so that we may change and embark on a much different, better path for ourselves and humanity. This has always been a recurring theme in my work: the idea of complicity, of participation, asking how much of the blame for our social ills can be placed on the system, how much can be placed on us, and where that line exists exactly.

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From Google Arts & Culture:

 

"It took Thomas Couture three years to complete The Romans of the Decadence the proportions of which betray grand artistic ambitions. He wanted to give fresh impetus to French painting and to do so referred, rather conventionally, to the masters of ancient Greece, the Renaissance and the Flemish school. The work is a history painting, regarded as the noblest genre during the 19th century: it therefore had to represent human behavior and convey a moral message. This was explained by Couture himself, who quoted two lines from the Roman poet Juvenal, (c. 55-c.140 AD) in the catalog for the 1847 Salon where the painting was exhibited: "Crueler than war, vice fell upon Rome and avenged the conquered world". In the center of the painting, Couture has placed a group of debauched revelers, exhausted and disillusioned or still drinking and dancing. In the foreground are three men who are not taking part in the drunken revels: on the left, a melancholic boy sitting on a column and on the right two foreign visitors casting a disapproving eye over the scene. The antique statues looming above the group also seem to be condemning the orgy. Apart from illustrating an ancient text, Couture was alluding to French society of his time. A Jacobin, Republican and anticlerical, he criticized the moral decadence of France under the July monarchy, the ruling class of which had been discredited by a series of scandals. This painting is therefore a "realist allegory", and the art critics of 1847 were quick to see in these Romans "The French of the Decadence". 

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