Crowd

A crowd is a large group of people gathered or considered together, often defined by a shared common purpose or intent, such as a demonstration, a sports event, or a looting. In sociology, an acting crowd specifically refers to a collectivity driven by a single-minded goal. The concept extends beyond mere physical aggregation, as the term can also refer more broadly to the lower orders of people in general. In art, the crowd emerges as a distinct subject when masses of people erupt into political life or pulse with the activity of the modern city, serving as a visual reservoir of social energy, collective emotion, and cultural tension.

The iconography of the crowd carries dual meanings of passivity and activity, reflecting the subject's polarized social theories. On one hand, the crowd symbolizes irrationality, contagion, and diminished individual responsibility. Gustave Le Bon characterized individuals in a crowd as susceptible to suggestion, dominated by unconscious motives, and driven by exaggerated sentiments, which dissolves their sense of personal accountability through anonymity. This framework presents the crowd as impulsive and easily manipulated by leaders. On the other hand, the crowd signifies collective power, courage, and social integration. Elias Canetti identified a liberating element in the crowd, where individuals overcome feelings of powerlessness and isolation. Modern research confirms that crowds can make united, rational decisions and serve integrative social functions, creating temporary communities that challenge dominant ideologies, as seen in organized civil rights sit-ins.

Within the referenced collection, the crowd is a recurring motif depicted across 114 works. These artworks capture the subject through various sociological typologies, ranging from casual and conventional gatherings to highly charged acting crowds. Examples include religious and conventional assemblies, such as The Gathering of Manna, The Preaching of John the Baptist, and Christ Bearing the Cross. Other works depict expressive and acting crowds driven by intense collective purpose or emotion, as seen in Slave Market in Rome, The Triumph of Aemilius Paulus, and The Bersaglieri. Urban and modern leisure crowds are also represented, including The Five Points, On the Jetty, and Moving Day (in Little Old New York), as well as the confrontational scenario of Christ Presented to the People.

The treatment of the crowd in art has shifted alongside its evolving role in society. The motif gained prominence with Jacques-Louis David's 1791 painting of the Tennis Court Oath, which depicted the crowd as a politicized actor at the start of the French Revolution. Throughout the nineteenth century, artists like Daumier and Delacroix continued this political visualization, while also representing the leisure crowds swarming Parisian streets and opera houses, a phenomenon Charles Baudelaire celebrated as an immense reservoir of electrical energy. In the twentieth century, modernism largely abandoned the subject, though the crowd reemerged in darker forms, reflecting the overorganized, manipulated masses of Fascism and the conformist, consumerist audiences of the postwar spectacle. Since the early 2000s, contemporary artists have revisited the crowd, focusing on the polarity between the protest group and the mass entertainment audience, exploring both its threatening, regimented chaos and its creative, participatory potential.

Notable depictions of the crowd span from early modern history painting to contemporary multimedia. Jacques-Louis David's Tennis Court Oath (1791) established the politicized crowd as a canonical subject. In the twentieth century, George Bellows explored the density and energy of the urban masses in his 1923 lithograph The Crowd. Contemporary artists have approached the motif through diverse media, often highlighting the dynamics of mass entertainment and globalization. Andreas Gursky's 2001 photograph of a Madonna concert places the crowd within a regimented modern grid, while Stephen Dean's video Volta (2002-2003) captures the unified bouncing of thousands of Brazilian football fans, leaving the outcome of such collective energy ambiguous. Jeremy Deller and Julie Henry have focused on the productive, participatory aspects of fan culture, documenting the active give-and-take between performers and audiences in local talent shows and sports events.

The legacy of the crowd as a subject extends deeply into both modern social thought and contemporary cultural practice. The early psychological frameworks of Gustave Le Bon and Gabriel Tarde, which posited the crowd as fundamentally irrational and prone to contagion, have been challenged by later sociologists who recognize the capacity for rational, goal-oriented collective action. This shift is reflected in contemporary art, where the crowd is no longer merely a symbol of dangerous, unruly masses but also a site of democratic participation and creative potential. Furthermore, the concept of the crowd has evolved into the digital realm through crowdsourcing, where ordinary individuals act as co-creators of historical narratives and cultural memory. This development echoes the artistic fascination with the productive capacity of the many, transforming the crowd from a passive subject of observation into an active participant in cultural production.