The Place Vendôme column will be demolished

La Commune de Paris. Thursday, April 13, 1871. Gustave Courbet, the realist painter of the 1866 painting "L'origine du monde," announces today the creation of the Federation of Artists to "unite all artistic intelligences" and contribute "to the splendor of the future and to the universal Republic." From today, "the free expansion of art is proclaimed, freed from all governmental protection and all privileges".

In recent days Courbet had published a letter in the newspapers against the Vendôme column erected in the square of the same name, to commemorate Napoleon and the battle of Austerlitz. Today the Commune decides: "The Commune of Paris, considering that the imperial column of Place Vendôme is a monument of barbarism, a symbol of brute force and false glory, an affirmation of militarism, a denial of international law, a permanent insult of the winners to the losers, a perpetual attack on one of the three fundamental principles of the French Republic, fraternity, decrees:

Sole Article. The column in Vandôme Square will be demolished.

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