L'Aggression au 48 de la Rue Monsieur- Le Prince, Le 23 Juin 1975

Raymond Mason 1922 - 13 Feb 2010

Summary

A recreation of a street scene which happened near the artist's studio. Twelve figures stand around a stretcher bearing a badly injured man, with blood on his face. The stretcher is carried by two men from the emergency services. A distraught woman gestures towards the victim, a man standing behind her with a ginger beard tries to comfort her. Next to them stands a bald man with an eye patch who has crouched down to get a better view. To his right is another passer-by on crutches. To the left of the anguished relative is another man, his coat draped over his shoulder. To the left is another woman wearing large glasses, an ice cream in her hand, unaware of the scene behind her. On the other side of the stretcher is a large woman in a bright red dress, standing facing away from the stretcher, with her arms outstretched, her eyes closed, her mouth open as if crying out. To the left is a young girl, in adult high heels and a patterned dress. A man in a grey suit and a woman, with her jacket draped round her shoulders, stand next to her. The whole scene is set on a plain base inscribed with the title.

Display Label

L'Aggression au 48 de la Rue Monsieur- Le Prince, Le 23 Juin 1975 (The Attack at 48 Rue Monsieur-Le Prince, 23 June 1975) 1976 Mason lived on Rue Monsieur-Le Prince, Paris, and he made this crowd scene after a real attack on one of his neighbours. The victim on the stretcher is an opthalmologist. Mason found painful irony in an eye-specialist no longer able to see, causing bystanders to stare intently. Mason did not witness this event, but it was described to him by a friend. He has compressed a wide range of human emotion into one small crowd : from the widow’s scream of grief to the ice-cream eater’s oblivious smile.