ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the theory of Revolution, drawing on Marx and the legacy of the French Revolution. It takes the reader through the various analyses of the French Revolution advanced by contemporary scholars and examines the Marxian theory of Revolution. It is rarely acknowledged that the inaugural moment of modernity in painting began with a crime scene. The revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat was murdered on 13 July 1793. Jacque-Louis David, the painter of Marat à son dernier soupir, hastily finished his painting on 25 vendémiaire Ans Deux on the revolutionary calendar (16 October 1793), in two-and-a-half months. With David’s painting, an extraordinary thing was borne The Blank Wall. This is the degree zero of modernity that architecture later would adopt, avant la lettre. We can declare that modern architecture took off after a crime was committed in the midst of the French Revolution. It has a precise date. It was born on 16 October 1793—the date David finished his painting of Marat. This moment in architecture has certain philosophical sources. They are the same sources that brought the Revolution to our historical consciousness.
