Donald Trump's motorcade, en route to the Armistice Day Centennial Celebration on Sunday morning (November 11), was interrupted by a topless woman shouting “fake peacemaker.” The same words were written across her breasts. It's been 100 years since peace was declared after WWI. Her message suggests that the president doesn't know the meaning of the word peace. I also want to share that the art of Delacroix got a retrospective.

Female complaint

Posing as a photographer, the half-dressed protester, one of three women similarly attired, was able to break through French security to get close to Trump before she was stopped.

According to the Associated Press, the protesters are members of a feminist group based in Paris called Femen. It's also worth noting that front page stories can fuel the price of art.

All three of those women were arrested on charges of ”sexual exhibitionism.” But the way Femen's leader Inna Shevchenko sees it, even though these women “denounce this hypocrisy” of celebrating peace with the likes of Trump and Putin, their protest was peaceful. Frances's Interior Minister Christopher Castaner seemed to agree. BFM television quoted him saying that since the women didn't bear arms, the security of the event was “in no way threatened.”

French connection

As for the charge of “sexual exhibitionism,” Shevchenko ascribed it to the French authorities' belief that “women's bodies are supposed to be regarded as sexual by definition.

We claim the opposite, that women's bodies are sexual when women decide it, and they can be political when we decide it.” By the look of Eugene Delacroix's 1830 painting Liberty Leading the People, he would have sided with Shevchenko.

His portrayal of Lady Liberty, raising the tricolors of the French flag, as she rides into battle, includes her exposed breasts.

French authorities, at the time, had no problem with the wardrobe malfunction and even chose the image for a postage stamp. My guess as to why Delacroix would show her anatomy is to make the point that liberty is the mother of France. In that sense, it can be argued that the topless protesters, in Paris, on Sunday, were enacting the spirit of this painting.

Trump tantrum

Female nudity in art has not only stood for politics, but also for piety. You can see this in numerous paintings of the Madonna and Child throughout art history. Virgin Nursing the Infant by Lucas Cranach the Elder and Nursing Madonna, by Bernardino Luini, show it. Yet, even the benign image of a nursing mother can be vulgarized. I'm thinking of Trump telling attorney Elizabeth Beck, who needed a break during a deposition in 2011 to pump breast milk, “You're disgusting.” As she told CNN, he had an “absolute meltdown.“

Dark ages

There's a long history of such an attitude, like Trump's, even though most of humanity gets its start being suckled. Consider all the medieval images of St.

Agatha suffering the hacking off of her breasts at the hands of the Romans, as graphically pictured in the engraved by Diana Sculton based on Ippolito Costa's painting in 1577. Given that the Renaissance held that the human body stands for truth and beauty, and the Medieval belief system held that nudity was shameful, it's clear we're still living in the Middle Ages.
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