The ability to show convincingly a group of people gathered together in close physical proximity has always been a test of the image maker's skills. Some times the space available for delineating the Crowd is restricted, sometimes a vast surface. There are clear challenges of scale and narrative interest. There can be implications of sudden or potential movement - there can editorial challenges of meaning and interpretation. Sometimes the the scene can be persuasive and suggestive, sometimes tedious and formulaic.

...The Wyndham Lewis painting is one of his major canvasses, clearly identifying context (flags - France, Socialist) with a direct reference to the space 'ENCLOSURE..." There are clearly two species at work - the Leaders and the Led (heads and necks).A sequence of open planes is deliberately made available for the passage of the Crowd to arcs of machine form, in the cellular gird of the City. The influence of Gustave Le Bon's writings, with their recourse to visual analogies, would have been attractive to Lewis who we can expect would have read Nietzsche, Bergson, Stirner, Maurras and the writings of those in the Action Francaise circle.

Beneath is a grid of images each chosen to demonstrate a particular principle of pictorial composition as applied to the crowd. Each variant of composition will seek to prove the ways in which the phenomena can be interpreted. The end game is to realise how easily we as viewers can be persuaded by the picture itself (even without captions) to believe/impose false meanings.It is as if we bear within us a set of templates by which to measure the Crowds, and where we were led to see aggression might in actuality be pain, fear or a yawn.

A highly eccentric and mannered rendering of the Crowd, from Jean Duvet's L'Apocalypse figuree, Paris 1561; plate to Chapter VI 30 x 21 cms a characteristic compressing of forms to create the crowd, as a textured backdrop to the angels branding forheads and a glimpse of the City beyond (right). A skilled depiction of heads swirling into the composition creating flow and depth to the shallow spaces. The head shapes merge with clous shapes and defy the scale of mountian beyond. Duvet's Crowds are unique in the economic means of devices, heads, hoods, crosses with a sustained mood of intensity and joint purpose.

illustration by Gustave Dore to Balzac's Les Contes Drolatiques Paris 1855, 8 x 11cms, an idealised and comic vision of the medieval french town with turbulent movement, key incident and sly invention. See also Dore's illustrations to Rabelais, and his graphic responses to the Crowds of London 1872

Much use of plume, dress and sah to create a flickering movemnt, and small notes of animals, one of which is pissing.

illustration by Gustave Dore to Balzac's Les Contes Drolatiques Paris 1855, 8 x 11cms, Crowd scene in battle, at the siege of a medieval fortress -the Crowd of Soldiers becomes the collapsing masonery, limbs almost cylindrical in armour. To the left an advancement of dark knights act as a foil to the cascading figures.

Go to Dore's London

Richard Doyle, "Ye Publicke its Excytement on ye appearence of Miss Lind", from Manners and Customs of Ye Engyshe, Mr Pips his Diary, written by Percival Lee, Bradbury and Evans, London originally published in Punch. undated c1860 16 x 17 cms, and typical of Doyle's dry line style, adept in massing the bodies while integrating funny incidents and characterisation.Impressive the vortex of figures compressing themselves into the theatre portals.

comparison - find the 20th century photograph of a crowd greeting the returning aviatrix then use ytour back button.