Look: the people! The destiny of a vision from socialism to nowaday populism

Abstract

Giuseppe Pellizza’s Il Quarto Stato is not a visual representation of Socialism, but it is actually a socialist painting: it strikes a deal with the beholder and stipulates the transfer of an ideal legacy.
The long process of elaboration that lead to the 1901 last version shows how Pellizza was looking for an enunciation device which would have established the axiological competence of the beholder. The syntax of the figures on the discursive structural level, along with the narrative articulation of the space operated by the light, set the ground for the effectiveness of the visual device. The mutual references between deixis and epideixis, arrange a link between the textual structures and the epistemic structure of Discourse, which is where the power struggles take place. The image, understood as a structural device, turns into a political mechanism oriented towards the future.
A series of recent works and advertisements that transpose, transcribe, and translate Il Quarto Stato sheds light tremendously in advance on the transformation of the category of the “people”, which has appeared in the framework of political discourse during the latest years. As much as we describe the enunciation devices of these re-worked versions, art shows itself as a tool to understand the present, as an oracle, or a prophecy.