I’ve been rather enjoying Coldplay’s latest album “Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends”, which incidentally has made some news recently as the most downloaded album in history. As reviewers have mentioned their music in this album is much less “straightforward” and more “oblique”, and if I may add myself, the tunes are rather…happy. Easy on the ears, definitely.

Of particular interest and nostalgia to me was the choice of artwork used for the album cover, “Liberty Leading the People”, (original pictured below) by the French Romantic artist Eugene Delacroix.

As art students we use to pore over his work (including Thedore Gericault of course ) and have always been amazed and awed by the intensity and energy of their paintings. The fact that that were artists creating such sublime masterpieces more than 200 years ago is simply astounding. That said, I wonder how Delacroix would feel, if he were alive today, about his artwork been used as a plug for the most downloaded album of all times.

“Liberty leading the People”, as with Theodore Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa” and Jacques-Louis David “Oath of the Horatii”, (pictured below) all great classics and some of my favourite paintings, reside in Louvre, Paris.

Now to see all three in person will be quite an experience indeed. Soon, soon.

Read more about these paintings from Wikipedia :
Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People”
Theodore Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa”
Jacques-Louis David “Oath of the Horatii“