interventions: Eating Cake
This phrase appears in book six of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions, whose first six books were written in 1765 and published in 1782. In the book, Rousseau recounts an episode in which he was seeking bread to accompany some wine he had stolen. Feeling too elegantly dressed to go into an ordinary bakery, he recalled the words of a "great princess."
At length I remembered the last resort of a great princess who, when told that the peasants had no bread, replied: "Then let them eat brioches."
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions
Rousseau does not name the "great princess", and he may have invented the anecdote, as the Confessions is not considered entirely factual.
(This is an abbreviated travel intervention)
unsanctioned intervention, Paris, France, 2022
materials: acrylic paint, acid-free ink, archival Fabriano paper (19 X 14)
