Art et pouvoir

You are shown Anthony van Dyck’s Equestrian Portrait of Charles I (about 1637-38, National Gallery, London). In English, describe the painting in an organised way, name the devices it uses, and explain what image of royal power it was built to produce.

1. 01Name the work and its context

   Open with the full identifying triplet, then the situation: “This is an oil painting by Anthony van Dyck, made around 1637-38 and now in the National Gallery in London. It portrays Charles I, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, a few years before the Civil War that would cost him his throne and his life.” Naming author, date and location is what turns an allusion into a reference.

2. 02Describe the composition before interpreting it

   Set the space and the scale: “In the foreground the king rides a powerful horse through a wooded landscape; he is seen slightly from below, so the viewer looks up at him. The canvas is huge — almost four metres high — and the figure fills it.” Use in the foreground, in the background, seen from below, larger than life; keep every judgement out of this step.

3. 03Name each device and say what it stands for

   Move from the visible to the meaning, one item at a time: “The armour stands for military command; the baton in his hand stands for authority over an army; the medallion identifies him as Sovereign of the Order of the Garter, that is, as the head of the kingdom’s highest order. The tablet hanging from the tree reads CAROLVS REX MAGNAE BRITANIAE — a claim, not a description, since England and Scotland had only shared a crown since 1603.”

4. 04State the intention, then add the honest caveat

   Close on purpose and on limits: “The painting is meant to legitimise a contested authority: everything in it is arranged so that the king looks natural, unquestionable and permanent. Admittedly, it tells us what Charles wanted to be seen as, not what he was — which is exactly why a portrait of power is evidence about power, and not evidence about a man.”

Résultat : Une bonne réponse donne d’abord le triplet complet (van Dyck, vers 1637-1638, National Gallery de Londres), décrit ensuite la composition sans la commenter (premier plan, contre-plongée, échelle), puis NOMME chaque procédé en disant à quelle idée il renvoie (armure, bâton, médaillon de la Jarretière, inscription) et conclut sur l’intention — légitimer une autorité contestée — en ajoutant la réserve qui fait la nuance : un portrait officiel documente une volonté, pas une vérité. La langue est claire et organisée, au passif quand il le faut, sans « on the painting ».

You are shown Alfred Leete’s Kitchener design (London Opinion, September 1914) beside James Montgomery Flagg’s Uncle Sam recruiting poster (1917). In English, compare them: name what they share, name what differs, and explain why the shared device works.

1. 01Establish both works precisely

   Give each its own triplet before comparing: “The first is a drawing by Alfred Leete, published on the cover of London Opinion in September 1914 and reused as the British recruiting poster ‘Your Country Needs YOU’. The second is by James Montgomery Flagg: the figure first appeared on the cover of Leslie’s Weekly on 6 July 1916 and was adapted in 1917 into the American poster ‘I Want YOU for U.S. Army’.”

2. 02Name the device they share, and how it works

   Describe the mechanism, not just the image: “Both use direct address. The figure looks straight out of the frame and points at the viewer, so the poster stops speaking to a crowd and starts speaking to one person. The capitalised YOU does in typography what the finger does in drawing. The effect is to turn a public appeal into a private obligation.”

3. 03Name what differs, and what that difference means

   Move to contrast: “They differ in who is speaking. Kitchener was a living minister, so the appeal comes from a real, identifiable authority. Uncle Sam is an allegory: the nation itself, personified. Britain asks in the name of a man; the United States asks in the name of an idea — which makes refusal feel less like disobeying an officer and more like betraying a country.”

4. 04Close on the limits of the analysis

   End with an honest caveat: “Admittedly, we can describe what these posters were designed to do far more confidently than what they actually achieved: recruitment figures depend on conscription laws, wages and news from the front, not on images alone. What the two posters prove is not that propaganda works, but that both states believed the same device would.”

Résultat : Une bonne comparaison donne d’abord les deux triplets complets, puis NOMME le procédé partagé (l’interpellation directe : regard, doigt, YOU en capitales) en expliquant son mécanisme — passer d’une adresse collective à une obligation personnelle. Elle dégage ensuite la vraie différence (une autorité réelle et nommée contre une allégorie nationale) et en tire un effet distinct. Elle se termine par une réserve de méthode : une affiche documente une intention, pas un résultat. La langue emploie le lexique de la persuasion et des connecteurs de comparaison (both, whereas, unlike).

You are shown James Gillray’s hand-coloured etching The Plumb-pudding in danger, published in London on 26 February 1805 (British Museum). Two men in uniform carve a globe-shaped pudding at a dinner table. In English, read the cartoon: establish the event, name what is exaggerated, identify the target, and say what the image assumes its reader already knows.

1. 01Establish the event the cartoon reacts to

   A cartoon is dated by construction, so start there: “This etching by James Gillray was published in London on 26 February 1805, at the height of the war between Britain and Napoleonic France. Britain dominated the seas; France dominated the continent. Without that situation the drawing means nothing.”

2. 02Describe the central device before judging it

   Name the mechanism: “The world is served as a pudding at a dinner table. William Pitt, the British Prime Minister, and Napoleon each carve their share. Pitt takes a vast slice of ocean; Napoleon takes Europe. The device is a METAPHOR pushed to the point of absurdity: an entire war reduced to two men helping themselves to supper.”

3. 03Say what is exaggerated, and who is targeted

   Distinguish exaggeration from target: “The bodies are exaggerated — Pitt thin and sharp, Napoleon small and greedy — but the real target is not either man’s appearance. It is the appetite itself: the cartoon accuses both leaders of treating peoples as portions. Notably, Gillray does not spare his own side, which is what makes the print satire rather than propaganda.”

4. 04Name what the image assumes, and what that tells us

   Draw the methodological point: “The print assumes its buyer can recognise Pitt and Napoleon on sight and knows what a plum pudding is. That tells us something about its audience: London print-shop customers, informed, urban, able to laugh at their own government. A cartoon is therefore evidence twice over — about the event, and about the public that was expected to get the joke.”

Résultat : Une bonne lecture établit d’abord l’événement (février 1805, guerre entre le Royaume-Uni et la France napoléonienne) sans lequel l’image est muette, décrit ensuite le procédé central (la métaphore du monde servi à dîner) avant de le juger, puis sépare nettement ce qui est EXAGÉRÉ (les corps) de ce qui est VISÉ (l’appétit de conquête des deux camps, y compris le sien) — c’est cette symétrie qui distingue la satire de la propagande. Elle finit par ce que l’image suppose connu, et en tire une information sur son public. La langue emploie le lexique de la presse et de la caricature.

You are shown Peter Kennard’s Haywain with Cruise Missiles (1980, Tate and Victoria and Albert Museum, London). In English, explain what the image is made of, how the montage produces its meaning, and why the artist chose this particular painting to alter.

1. 01Say what you are actually looking at

   Separate the two sources before saying anything about meaning: “This is a photomontage made by the British artist Peter Kennard in 1980. It takes John Constable’s painting The Hay Wain, from 1821 — probably the best-loved image of the English countryside — and adds three photographed cruise missiles to the cart in the middle of the river.”

2. 02Explain the mechanism of the montage

   Describe how the two halves work on each other: “The montage does not argue, it collides. Nothing is written and nothing is explained; the viewer simply sees two things that cannot belong together, and does the reasoning alone. Because the landscape is familiar and reassuring, the weapon looks more obscene there than it would in a desert.”

3. 03Explain the choice of that particular painting

   Make the choice itself part of the analysis: “Constable’s painting is not just any picture: it is a national emblem, reproduced on biscuit tins and calendars. By altering it, Kennard attacks the idea that the English countryside is a place apart, safe from politics — which was exactly the argument used when American cruise missiles were to be based in eastern England.”

4. 04Weigh what the image can and cannot do

   Close with a measured judgement: “The montage cannot prove that basing missiles in Britain was wrong; it is not an argument but an alarm. Yet it did something an argument could not: it made a familiar image impossible to look at innocently again. That is the specific power of committed art — it does not win the debate, it forces one to happen.”

Résultat : Une bonne analyse sépare d’abord les deux sources (Constable, 1821 ; Kennard, 1980) avant de parler de sens, puis explique le MÉCANISME du montage — deux images qui se contredisent produisent un sens qu’aucune ne portait seule, et c’est le spectateur qui fait le raisonnement. Elle traite le choix du tableau détourné comme un argument à part entière (une icône nationale, donc une atteinte à l’idée que la campagne anglaise serait hors politique). Elle conclut par un jugement mesuré sur ce qu’une image peut et ne peut pas faire. La langue emploie le lexique de l’engagement sans faute de construction.

Write a structured argumentative answer in English to this question: “A group of parents asks a school library to remove a novel they find offensive. Should the school do it?” Frame the tension, argue one side properly, concede honestly, and conclude with a conditional position. Use at least one connector of concession.

1. 01Reframe the question so both values are named

   Do not answer yet — set the stage: “This is not a choice between good and evil but between two things a school owes its students: access to books that challenge them, and a duty of care towards children of very different ages. Naming both makes the rest of the answer possible.”

2. 02Argue the strongest case for keeping the book, with a dated reference

   Build one side properly: “A library is not an endorsement: holding a book is not recommending it. Removing a novel because it offends some readers hands the shelf to whoever complains loudest, and the American Library Association has organised Banned Books Week every year since 1982 precisely because such requests are frequent and rarely isolated. Moreover, removal often backfires: the attempt to suppress a work usually makes far more people read it.”

3. 03Concede what the other side gets right

   Give ground where ground is due: “Admittedly, a school library is not a public one. It serves a captive audience of minors, and choosing what to put on a shelf for eleven-year-olds is an editorial decision that someone must make. Refusing to make it is not neutrality — it is only a different decision.”

4. 04Conclude on conditions rather than on a verdict

   Land the nuance: “Therefore the useful question is not whether to remove but who decides and how. A transparent procedure, a written reason, an appeal, and a decision taken by educators rather than by the loudest group would settle most of these cases. All in all, a book should be moved for a stated pedagogical reason, and never removed simply because it was complained about.”

Résultat : Une bonne réponse ne tranche pas d’emblée : elle NOMME les deux valeurs en tension, développe un côté avec un repère daté et vérifiable (la Banned Books Week depuis 1982), CONCÈDE honnêtement à l’autre côté avec un connecteur (admittedly), puis conclut sur des CONDITIONS — qui décide, selon quelle procédure — plutôt que par un oui ou un non. Elle emploie trois connecteurs au moins (moreover, admittedly, therefore, all in all) et évite la faute despite + proposition.

In English, compare the way these two series stage political power: The West Wing (created by Aaron Sorkin, NBC, 1999-2006) and the American House of Cards (Netflix, 2013-2018, after the 1990 BBC serial adapted from Michael Dobbs’s novel). Name one signature device on each side, say what each device does to the viewer, and conclude on what the contrast reveals.

1. 01Set both works up accurately, and say what they are not

   Establish the facts, then the caveat: “Both series are fictions about American politics, made a generation apart. The West Wing was created by Aaron Sorkin and ran on NBC from 1999 to 2006; House of Cards ran on Netflix from 2013 to 2018, adapted from a British serial broadcast by the BBC in 1990. Neither documents how government works — each argues a case about it.”

2. 02Name the signature device of the first, and its effect

   Describe the mechanism precisely: “The West Wing is built on the walk and talk: a long unbroken shot that follows officials striding down a corridor while they argue policy. Movement never stops, dialogue never simplifies, and nobody is filmed from below. The effect is a government that looks busy, expert and fundamentally decent — power as competence.”

3. 03Name the signature device of the second, and its opposite effect

   Contrast the mechanism, not the plot: “House of Cards is built on direct address: the main character turns to the camera and explains what he has just done. The viewer knows more than every other character, and is flattered into complicity. The effect is exactly inverted — power as manipulation, and an audience that ends up enjoying a man it disapproves of.”

4. 04Conclude on what the contrast reveals

   Draw the wider point: “Both series break the distance between the viewer and the state, but in opposite directions: one invites us to admire, the other to be complicit. Admittedly, neither is evidence about real government. What they do document is what their audiences were ready to believe about it — which is itself a fact about power.”

Résultat : Une bonne comparaison donne d’abord les deux fiches exactes (créateur, diffuseur, années) et pose la réserve — ce sont des fictions, pas des documents. Elle NOMME ensuite un procédé signature de chaque côté (le walk and talk ; l’adresse à la caméra) et dit ce que chacun fait AU SPECTATEUR, non ce qu’il fait dans l’intrigue. Elle conclut sur ce que l’écart révèle, avec une concession explicite. La langue emploie le lexique de l’image animée et les connecteurs de comparaison.