Ruins, Rhetoric and Revolution: Paul Signac's Le Démolisseur and Anarchism in the 1890s

Between 1897 and 1899 Paul Signac worked on a large painting, Le Démolisseur, representing a worker knocking down a building, rich in ambiguities. Signac held anarchist views, but how had they evolved over the period from the terrorist bombings of the early 1890s to the imposition of punitive laws against anarchism later in the decade? Was there a new violence in Signac's vision, and is Le Démolisseur a veiled self-portrait? The painting is at odds with the typical imagery of Third Republic France, with its emphasis on construction, yet a related lithograph uses a rising sun motif common in both anarchist and republican imagery. The article assesses Signac's evolving position and its ironies, within a wide context of contemporary imagery.