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Lucas Hoffmann
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Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité! These are the three notions on which France was rebuilt during the revolution of 1789. The general sentiment of the common people to overthrow the monarchy grew from an animosity towards what seemed to be an old, tired establishment. The kings of the old regimes lived lavishly in palaces while the lower classes toiled in their own filth. However, once the revolution came, those who would’ve been scared to come out into the light of day finally were in control of their own futures and there was a new, vibrant, young energy in the air. One of the palaces of old that was converted into a more public role was the Louvre palace, which can be dated back to the 12th century with its origins as the Louvre castle. This bastion of old imperial strength in the very center of Paris was aptly converted to a museum open for the public on the one-year anniversary of the demise of the monarchy in 1793. One of the most famous paintings housed within it’s walls is Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. In it the soul of France is represented as an adolescent woman flaunting her femininity and waving the French tricolor through a battle charge. This depiction of the republic of France as an adolescent woman is a repeated motif through a lot of art from the era. The symbolic link between France and adolescence led me to analyze more of the collection of her largest museum – and, in fact the largest museum collection in the world – the Louvre, through an adolescent lens.
Analyzing the collection through an adolescent lens didn’t come without it’s challenges. While the collections of a lot of the other museums I’ve worked with, including the Harvard Art Museums and the Tate Modern, have a lot of more recent pieces to chose from such as photography and modern art, the collection of the Louvre is tethered in a bygone era. This proved difficult to map pieces that I’d put together for the collective museum of adolescence in class to works of art for this one. This did however, give me the opportunity to go back over everything and deepen my understanding of the material, as well as an opportunity to engage with some truly fantastic works of art. Another massive challenge was in navigating the online Louvre archive itself as the cataloguing doesn’t seem conducive to common digital search methods. I ended up working around this by Googling what I was looking for and double checking key terms with the database. All in all, I welcomed the challenges and focused on the relationship between adolescence and the art itself.
Due to the nature of the collection, I found that most of the art I was working with could either be tied to biblical themes or to French history. This boded well for my attempt to analyze the museum through an adolescent lens. First on the biblical side, thanks to comparatively short lifespans during the period in history when most of the books of the bible were set, many of the characters were adolescents. Two examples of this that I go into deeper further on are the prodigal son and Bathsheba who are both thought to be in their late teens at the times of their stories. Secondly, and somewhat more importantly to this project, France is a country whose history was built on the backs of adolescence. For this reason, a lot of the French art features adolescent champions. Napoleon was in his early twenties when he began his infamous campaigns. Earlier still, Joan of Arc was a teenager when she fought against the English in the hundred years’ war. Her bravery and adolescent spirit in fighting for France led not only to her being declared a national symbol of France by Napoleon, but also to her being canonized as a patron saint of France by the Vatican. Another exemplary adolescent in the long history of France is Marie Antoinette, who ascended the throne along with her husband Louis XVI in 1774 at the age of 19. Within the next years she had to deal with the rising turmoil that was the French revolution before she was eventually executed in the Place de la Révolution in front of the Louvre the same year that it opened as a museum. Considering all these arguments, it seems as though there exists numerous reasons to analyze the Louvre collection through an adolescent lens and approaching it in this unconventional manner can extract new way of interacting with the art and in turn the information encoded within.
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SAFETY
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I will start off this re-interpretation of the Louvre through an adolescent lens with one of the oldest pieces in the entire collection. Widely accepted to have been created around 510 B.C.E. under the power of Darius the Great of Persia, the Frieze of Archers displays a parade of royal guards with all manner of weapons ranging from spears (placed on the front foot as was customary during Persian military parades), bows and quivers[1]. As an alternative to this conventional explanation of the work, when looking through a Tinbergean lens, royal military parades seem like a pretty perfect opportunity for predator inspection. Imagine that the enemies of Darius had taken the opportunity to sneak a spy into Susa during this parade. Much like the wild vervet monkeys in Blaszczyk’s 2017 article in animal behavior (Blaszczyk, 2017), they would have been able to see what they were up against. Additionally, if they had made their presence known, they would have let Darius know that he had lost the element of surprise. Alternatively, if a larger group of enemies used this chance to come and inspect the predator that is the Persian army, this could be perfectly mapped on to an instance of mobbing.
[1] https://www.bibleodyssey.org/en/tools/image-gallery/l/life-under-empire
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This is a plaque known as the earthly paradise carved out of ivory in the late 9th century. It is actually on the back of a pre existing art work from the 6th century with this reuse of material being indicative of the shortages in elephant ivory of the time period. It exhibits a biblical scene of paradise from the garden of Eden. For the purposes of this museum, I’d like to draw attention to the top panel where we have Adam and Eve alongside the tree holding the forbidden fruit. Slithering up this tree is the serpent of temptation. This paradise scene is extremely common in biblical literature and art and has been reproduced and reinterpreted many times. For this reason, I thought it could be particularly interesting to consider through a Tinbergean lens. In order to do so, I believe the best attribution of adolescent animal tendencies to assign it is that of neophilia. Younger animals are known to be more curious of new things, which generally leads to negative outcomes. From class we learned that young foxes have a higher probability of being hit by cars because they are more likely to go check out a road. In a similar way, Adam and Eve, being young humans, were exceptionally curious of the forbidden fruit and that had adverse consequences for all of mankind. On the other hand, older animals are more likely to be neophobic because they’ve already encountered most stimulants in their ecosystem and in turn already know of their associated risks. Using this argument, it could be interesting to surmise that had Adam and Eve been older, the likelihood that they would have succumbed to temptation would have been greatly reduced.
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With this 19th century sketch of Leonidas at the famous battle of Thermopylae, our museum of adolescence continues to hurtle forward in time. The generally accepted story behind this image is that Leonidas and his army of 300 Spartan soldiers took on a substantially larger force of Persians in an attempt to stop the army of Xerxes the Great from invading the Greek islands. As the story goes they successfully kept the aggressors at bay for several days through superior fighting skills and the tactic of funneling the opposition through a narrow gorge at Thermopylae, which translated to English means hot gate. On the third day they were finally defeated when a traitor led the Persian army through another pass to form a pincer on the small, tired group. The artist, Jacques-Louis David chose to depict the Spartans as fighting in the nude and when analyzing this battle through a Tinbergean lens, this led me to think about using signals of unprofitability to dissuade predators. This is seen time and again in the animal kingdom whether it be through Lizard push-ups, kangaroo rat foot drumming or the fainting mechanism within a juvenile dwarf mongoose when it comes into the proximity of a hornbull. All of these mechanisms, much like Leonidas fighting in the nude would definitely give predators pause as they revaluate whether it’s worth engaging in a fight that they may lose. In the case of Leonidas, unfortunately we know that while the Spartans where able to hold for an inordinate amount of time, they eventual met their ends at the hands of the Persians and to paraphrase what’s being written in the top of the sketch fought to the end and, “fell, obedient to Spartan law”.
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STATUS
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This is Rembrandt’s painting of Bethsheba at her bath. The story is originally biblical and takes place in the second Samuel 11 in the old testament. Bathsheba was a beautiful adolescent woman who was seen bathing one day by King David who immediately fell head over heals in love. King David proceeded to send the husband of Bathsheba, Uriah the Hittite, to a certain death in battle. The painting here takes place when Bathsheba is let known about this through a royal summons to go and be seduced by king David. There are multiple paths that can be taken in dissecting this piece. I’ll focus on long term sadness in the form of depression in adolescents. A neurobiological causal factor of the high rates of adolescent depression is stress, which could be caused by having your husband executed for all intents and purposes. Stress causes “less neuronal activation in areas of the prefrontal cortex, cingulate, and thalamus” (Fuhrmann, 2015). Adolescents are also more susceptible to decreased dopamine production due to underdevelopment in regions of the brain such as the ventral striatum. Dopamine acts a reward system in humans and a deficiency in it causes many of the symptoms of depression. From the perspective of the animal kingdom It has been observed that animals at the bottom of social hierarchies – like depressed adolescents – generally have lower dopamine and serotonin production levels. An example of this is an experiment under taken by Larson on green anole lizards, where they artificially altered the dominance structure of a group and then measured the corresponding serotonin levels. They found that animals whose social rank decreased also displayed decreased production of serotonin (Larson, 2001). Therefore, we can form an adaptive hypothesis that Bathsheba is sad because through King David’s machinations she comes to realize her position in the social hierarchy and in turn her serotonin and dopamine levels drop off.
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This work is The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine on December 2, 1804 again by Jacques-Louis David. Before breaking into the conventional discussion surrounding this piece, let’s jump straight into analyzing it through a Tinbergean lens because no one in the history of France represents the winner effect better than Napoleon Bonaparte. Much like the cichlid fish in the Oliveira et al 2009 paper (Oliveira, 2009), it can be argued that Bonaparte’s previous victories led to his future ones. The science behind the winner effect states that a win can lead to increased androgen levels in the winner, which in turn prove pivotal in any upcoming competitions. Napoleon’s victories seemed endless at the time. Through his Italian and campaigns leading up to his coronation as the ruler of the French empire, he was nearly undefeated. In fact, the David piece that we are working with goes so far as to to call his coronation a consecration. All this said, his later life does give rise to some opportunities to discuss the loser effect as well. Bonaparte’s failed invasion of Russia during the so-called Napoleonic wars arguably led to his overall defeat and exile to Elba. After this, although he was able to take back the French empire, it’s possible that his decreased androgen levels stemming from his defeat led to his most infamous defeat at the hands of the Duke of Wellington at the battle of Waterloo. Despite all this, the piece of art represents his zenith, ascending to the throne of the French empire for the first time. All of this was made possible through his long series of previous victories.
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This final piece in the status subsection is not even a piece but a whole room. I took the liberty of including it because it is one of the most prized treasures of the Louvre collection. It is the private apartments of Napoleon III and represents a nearly untouched example of classic French art, architecture and design. Otherwise known as Louis-Napoleon, Napoleon III, like his great uncle Napoleon I was the grand master of the Legion of Honour, which remains France’s highest distinction. The order was founded by the elder Bonaparte who famously defended it’s importance, "You call these baubles, well, it is with baubles that men are led. Do you think that you would be able to make men fight by reasoning? Never. That is good only for the scholar in his study. The soldier needs glory, distinctions, rewards.” This reminded me of examples in animal literature where higher status animals hold something of secondary importance over the heads of lower status animals in order to control them. For example, higher status finches withhold food from lower status ones so that if they are ever faced with a situation where a predator hunts near a food source, the hungry lower status individuals will have to come out of hiding sooner in order to satiate their starvation, in turn offering valuable information or time to escape for the higher status animals. While I hesitate to anthropomorphize animals, it seems as though finches are on a similar plane of tactics as the famous emperor of the French when it comes to controlling their subordinates.
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SEX
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Here we have Coustou’s statue representing Apollo in pursuit of Daphne. The story behind this is that the vengeful god Eros created two arrows, one of gold and one of lead, shooting Apollo with the gold one instilling in him love for Daphne while shooting Daphne with the lead arrow, which instilled in the nymph a deep hatred for Apollo. While a conventional lens may cause us to see this as a representation of lust, a Tinbergean one may lead us in the direction of the notion of courtship and specifically non receptive signals and their effects.
Courtship for the giant Autralian cuttlefish, Sepia apama, is male initiated, yet heavily involves female choice. When the female decides not to mate with the male, she has been found to display a white lateral stripe on the base of her fin. This therefore conveys a non-receptive signal, to which the male will generally react respectfully (Schnell, 2015). This in turn allows the female to retain some form of autonomy. It is important to distinguish that in the animal kingdom, receptivity indicates female fertility and not necessarily a desire for sexual contact. In the case of the dance between Apollo and Daphne, we must address some of the more overarching themes of courtship. In the animal kingdom, at it’s heart courtship is a conversation about consent and here, although it’s inflicted by Eros, Apollo is lusting after Daphne and Daphne is not at all interested – to the extent of disgusted – by Apollo. Apollo should come to terms with this and move on to another, more likely to be successfully receptive, female in order to enhance his chances of reproduction.
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Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s masterpiece is titled Une Odalisque, which can be directly translated to harem girl. The young woman is lying on a bed entirely exposing her newly post-pubescent body. Within the realm of sex as one of the four core competencies of adulthood, maturity in that regard is hugely important. Traditionally, in all genders, this is an exciting time and in many cultures there even exist celebrations of maturity. However, it’s also a confusing time and there even appears to be signs of confusion on the harem girl’s face as she takes stock of what these changes mean for her future life. As an explanation for this confusion, we can look through a Tinbergean lens to the animal world where once sexual maturity is reached one of their most important mandates is to attempt to procreate as a fitness enhancing measure. A key aspect of this is the idea of courtship in the animal kingdom. This in turn brings up many potentially unintuitive things we’ve read about or talked about in class such as non-procreative sex as a courtship tactic. This is especially pertinent within the context of a human harem. We looked at the example of the giant bats or flying foxes performing oral sex and discussed that this could be used as a bonding or fertilizing measure between possible future sexual partners. In this way we point to non-procreative sex enhancing procreation in the long run. This is one of the many confusing aspects of sexual maturity in both animals and humans that the woman in the picture may be struggling with.
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The Rape of the Sabine Women is an event in Roman mythology where the men of Rome ran rampant through the streets abducting and forcing copulation with young women from surrounding villages. The event has become a common motif in art from the depicting the era. This piece, completed by Poussin in 1638, is a very literal representation with grizzled men ferociously intertwined with the unfortunate young women. Given this conventional view of the series of events, let’s step back and analyze it through the Tinbergean lens of adolescent animals. Coercive sex can be defined as any form of forced copulation, whether it be through physical intimidation or other power dynamic. “It has been found that male harassment may have profound consequences on receptive females” (Clutton-Brock, 1995). It has been studied in feral horses that “females in the harems of territorial males are less frequently harassed than those in harems of non-territorial males” (Ibid.). In turn, the less frequently harassed animals show ~9% more time feeding and a higher breeding success. That said, sexual coercion is prominent in the animal kingdom with specific examples of coming from chimpanzees (Muller, 2011) and sea otters (Harris, 2010) attempting to increase the likelihood of reproduction through forced copulation. Although it’s awful to think about, the roman men who undertook the rape of the sabine women could have purely been trying to spread their seed and with it, the influence of the Roman empire.
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SELF
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Here we have a painting by Leonello Spada of the parable of the prodigal son. In the story, a wealthy father has two sons, and the younger of the two squanders his inheritance and must return home and beg his family to take him on as a servant. While this is the conventional explanation for the return, Through the analysis of animal examples from class we can find an alternative explanation for this phenomenon. Animals often display delayed dispersal in order to maximize parental care and in turn survival. Spending more time in the nest allows for animals to grow stronger and have a better chance against predation once they do eventually disperse. An example of this is the Western Bluebird Sialia Mexicana that will often remain with their natal groups for extended periods in order to continue to access additional resources and in turn grow stronger (Dickinson, 2014). Again, this return to extended parental care is seen in Gentoo Penguins where adolescents in the post-fledging period remain in the nest “to gain experience at sea prior to dispersal that might allow them to develop foraging skills before they are completely independent (Polito, 2008). Further, late stage juveniles that remain in the nest are often given a “helper at the nest” role where they help gather resources and raise the next cycle of offspring such as in Eastern Bluebirds (Burtka, 2013). Therefore, we can argue that the prodigal son has returned to the care of his parents as a fitness enhancing measure to grow in strength and maximize his chances of survival once he’s back on his feet.
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The tale of Oedipus is another myth that has lasted since the age of Greek antiquity. Most famously recounted in Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus Rex, it is the story of a young prince who was prophesized to murder his father in cold blood and marry his mother. In order to stop this prophecy from being fulfilled, his father, King Laius had a young Oedipus tethered and left to die on a mountainside. Oedipus was saved by a shepherd and long story short ended up fulfilling the prophecy. In the process, he encounters a sphinx and in the second piece we are looking at by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, he is depicted correctly answering the famous riddle of the sphinx. What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs in the evening? The answer being man. Considering the strained relationship that Oedipus had with his parents, this is a great lens through which to discuss the parent-offspring conflict in animals. This can be seen as a clash between parents and offspring, seen in the Egyptian vulture (Ceballos, 1990) and many other species of birds as well as other animals, when the fledglings refuse to leave the nest during regular dispersal phases and the parents must make the decision to prioritize resources for themselves and future offspring cycles, in turn displaying parental meanness. Parental meanness is a real scientific term whereby parents ignore regular and usually intensifying feeding cues from offspring that refuse to leave the nest. It can oftentimes even turn violent as was observed with Spanish imperial eagles Aquila Heliaca, where they would chase their young out of the nest (Alonso, 1987).
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For the last piece in my museum of adolescence, I thought it would sentimental to draw everything together with a depiction of a biblical narrative that combines both humans and animals. Even just hearing the words Noah’s Ark leads the imagination on a journey through a green pasture with every animal making their way, two by two, down to a colossal wooden boat with storm clouds brewing in the distance. This 17th century painting by Paul De Vos really helps transform that mental image into a physical one. The story has it’s origins in the book of Genesis in the old testament and goes that god was angry with the earth as it was corrupted so he tasked Noah, who he saw as a righteous man, to build an ark and on it save his family and two of every animal from the damnation of the flood that he would call down to cleanse the earth of it’s sins. Contrasting this conventional explanation, we can consider the myth through a Tinbergean lens. We can stretch the story a little to help us map the departure of these animals not as some divine mandate, but instead as an example of adolescent dispersal. Dispersal is when adolescent animals leave the natal home to begin their new lives on their own. Whether it be to discover new territory for food or mating partners or to give their parents an opportunity to undergo another offspring cycle, dispersal is an important step in the lives of young animals. It is also exceedingly dangerous, as was seen in the example of Slavic the wolf in class, dispersing animals have a much higher fatality rate. In some instances, dispersal is overseen by the parents. This is called informed dispersal and has been observed in certain species of birds as well as other animals. Stepping back to the flood narrative, perhaps this is an example of informed dispersal by heavenly decree.
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SOURCES
Pieces from the Louvre collection
Delacroix, E. Liberty Leading the People (1830)
Unknown. Frise des archers (Epoque achéménide circa 510BC)
Unknown. Plaque known as The Earthly Paradise (circa 870-875)
David, J. Leonidas at Thermopylae (1813)
Rembrandt, H. Bethsabée au bain tenant la lettre de David (1654)
David, J. The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine on December 2, 1804 (1806-7)
Napoleon III Apartments
Coustou, N. Apollo Pursuing Daphne
Ingres, J. Une Odalisque (1814)
Poussin, N. The Rape of the Sabine Women (1637-1638)
Spada, L. The Return of The Prodigal Son (1611)
Ingres, J. Oedipus Explaining the Enigma of the Sphinx (1808)
De Vos, P. Entry of the Animals into Noah’s Ark (circa 17th century)
Papers
Blaszczyk, M. (2017). Boldness towards novel objects predicts predator inspection in wild vervet monkeys. Animal Behaviour, 123, 91-100.
Fuhrmann, D., Knoll, L., & Blakemore, S. (2015). Adolescence as a Sensitive Period of Brain Development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Trends in Cognitive Sciences , 19 (10) pp. 558-566. (2015).
Larson, & Summers. (2001). Serotonin reverses dominant social status. Behavioural Brain Research, 121(1), 95-102.
Oliveira, R., Silva, A., & Canário, A. (2009). Why Do Winners Keep Winning? Androgen Mediation of Winner but Not Loser Effects in Cichlid Fish. Proceedings: Biological Sciences, 276(1665), 2249-2256.
Schnell, A., Smith, K., Hanlon, C., & Harcourt, L. (2015). Female receptivity, mating history, and familiarity influence the mating behavior of cuttlefish. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 69(2), 283-292.
Clutton-Brock, & Parker. (1995). Sexual coercion in animal societies. Animal Behaviour,49(5), 1345-1365.
Muller, M., Thompson, M., Kahlenberg, S., & Wrangham, R. (2011). Sexual coercion by male chimpanzees shows that female choice may be more apparent than real. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 65(5), 921-933.
Harris, H., Oates, S., Staedler, M., Tinker, M., Jessup, D., Harvey, J., & Miller, M. (2010). Lesions and Behavior Associated with Forced Copulation of Juvenile Pacific Harbor Seals (Phoca vitulina richardsi) by Southern Sea Otters (Enhydra lutris nereis). Aquatic Mammals, 36(4), 331-341.
Burtka, & Grindstaff. (2013). APPEARANCE OF A CONSPECIFIC MALE HELPER AT THE NEST-BOX OF AN EASTERN BLUEBIRD (SIALIA SIALIS). The Southwestern Naturalist, 58(3), 386-388.
Dickinson, J., Ferree, E., Stern, C., Swift, R., & Zuckerberg, B. (2014). Delayed dispersal in western bluebirds: Teasing apart the importance of resources and parents. Behavioral Ecology, 25(4), 843-851.
Polito, M., & Trivelpiece, J. (2008). Transition to independence and evidence of extended parental care in the gentoo penguin ( Pygoscelis papua ). Marine Biology, 154(2), 231-240.
Ceballos, O., & Donazar, J. (1990). Parent-offspring conflict during the post-fledging period in the Egyptian vulture Neophron percnopterus (Aves, Accipitridae). Ethology. Berlin, Hamburg, 85(3), 225-235.
Alonso, J, Gonzalez, L, Heredia, B, & Gonzalez, J. (1987). Parental care and the transition to independence of Spanish imperial eagles Aquila heliaca in Donana National Park, southwest Spain. Ibis, 129(2), 212-224.
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