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This painting was posted at the ever-informative site of GalliaWatch, maintained by Tiberge, which gives us an almost daily detailed account of the happenings over in France.
In this post, Tiberge writes about the number of legal immigrants that are allowed into France, and used this most-appropriate image as the header. She didn't say much about the painting except that it came from another site.
Well, I went to the site from which she got her information, and tried to find out more about the image by right-clicking on it. I was lucky enough to find the file name, "la_foule_1998.jpg". Typing in "La Foule 1998" in Google, I managed to find the painting and many replicas of the image on the internet. It seems to be somewhat famous.
The painting, called La Foule (The Crowd), is by Olivier Suire-Verley, who paints in a mixed expressionistic/impressionistic style. I think his most striking painting is actually La Foule, which captures some of the energy of a large crowd trying to get to (and through) a narrow exit.
Is that how immigrants feel. As though they are running out of some claustrophobic "interior" to the golden light of an "exterior"?
Why do the feel like this? Are they reacting to reality? Or to dreams and chimeras? I personally think it is the latter, since many who actually make it through that golden opening, and into the world beyond, are often bitterly disillusioned.
They go from such powerful, shining chimera, to the grayness of reality. Looking for jobs, learning a language, having their children turn away from them, wondering if every glance is loaded with antagonism or even hatred, missing their own bright sun and warm earth.
I think immigrants have been duped. Many believed that they would find some kind of paradise beyond that glowing doorway. The Moroccan in Paris, the Turk in Berlin, the Pakistani in England, the Jamaican in Brooklyn, the Haitian in Montreal, all thought that they would partake of the land of milk and honey, and streets paved with gold.
Instead, they live in ghettoes, feeling like aliens even into the second and third generations. They can see the milk and honey, but it is hard to get at. And even those who have prospered somewhat never cease to talk about the sun and the warmth of their former (now chimeric) lands.
The shining light in the painting should be directed back at them, instead of outward into this unknown.