121 But the Declaration of Human Rights cannot be reduced to the, albeit legit, Consumer Code. Heroism does not work on consumption. The dignity of bodies is not on the market. Recovering a phrase that has entered history on the subject of rights – and, specifically, the right to work and to gender equality – associated with a banner posted during the strike of the textile female workers of four factories in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912: We want bread, but we want roses too. Panem et rosas. Once again, the strength of the symbol, which is the nourishment of art. And there is another symbol risen to flag of the free state of human rights, under which the body, asking for freedom of self-determination, and the bodies, asking for peace once and for all, seek shelter. A symbol discussed both in the Bible, in physics manuals, and in those of art history, whose figurative representation appeared for the first time in medieval illuminated manuscripts to reach, full of imagery, 1978 – the year in which the artist Gilbert Baker, on the occasion of the Gay Pride parade in San Francisco, delivered it to the history of human rights, creating the first Rainbow Flag. In this arc of time, to represent this arc of refracted light, there is the whole history of art: a symbol of the covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh (Genesis 9: 12-15) for Christian art, and allegory of justice with Christ circumscribed within it during the Judgment; emblem of peace, and specifically of that between Catholics and Protestants, in the Allegory of Catherine de' Medici as Juno by Léonard Limosin (1573), where a rainbow pulls the triumphal chariot of the queen mother of France, promoter of the Peace of Saint Germain; source of art itself for Angelika Kauffmann (Color, 1780); metaphor of the extra/ordinary beauty of nature in Romanticism; profound sense of the Sublime as Delightful Horror (Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757), whose research is constant for the human striving for the Absolute, in Shaker rainbow (1998) by Wolfgang Tillmans, an artist whose commitment to safeguarding human rights speaks the universal language of a harsh, rough and deeply cultured photograph, often amplified through the powerful dialogues triggered by his diptychs, where the unusual beauty of a double rainbow’s refracted light shakes a glimpse so usual as to seem presage; until today, the day when we can find a permanent rainbow at coordinates 56°09'14.2"N 10°11'58.7" E. It is there, in fact, that in 2011 Ólafur Elíasson – contemporary artist always attentive to the effects of human behavior on natural balance, who like a demiurge creates enchanting environmental installations combining art with science – crowned the ARoS - Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Aarhus, Denmark, with Your Rainbow Panorama, a suspended circular glass gallery walkable on each of its 150 meters, whose purpose is to perceptually eliminate the separation between inside and outside, framed in a sky with the colors of a rarefied and psychedelic rainbow. Distinguishable even from a great distance, the installation also serves as an orientation and a lighthouse for those looking at it from the outside. Orientation and lighthouse, as with the models of life. In the summer of 2021, UEFA rejected the request to illuminate the Allianz Arena in Munich with the colors of the rainbow, during the cup match Germany - Hungary, alleging the reason that the gesture would have been read as a deliberate criticism against the homophobic legislation in force in Hungary. Answer: yes, it was. Yes, the rainbow has become a political symbol, as much as art itself is. And yes, we absolutely need it. Immersed as we are into the era of the domination of images, of the saturation of signs (= semiotic pollution) and of the deprivation of dreams ( = anaesthesia of the imaginary), we need images and symbols full of meaning, that can be orientation and lighthouse as gestures can, as it can be even just dressing free from the fear, even today, of an assault. In defense of human rights, we need symbols. We have always needed them. [warning: what follows is nothing but a figment of the imagination] My dear Eloise, there are thirty minutes to midnight, and outside there is the Revolution. For Freedom and Equality, they say. Here in the Rue de la Mortellerie barricades have been erected, the smoke of the shots fired is still suspended in the air and the pavement is torn and stained by the blood of the rioters. Like others, I have witnessed the clashes from the windows. Even if your absence reassures me that nothing will happen to you, it weighs on me nonetheless. But yesterday, from those same windows, I saw the rainbow. So I opened the closet and started taking out your things. I put on your gray muslin dress that you often wear on hot days like this, when we go for a walk, and on the hat I pinned the tricolor cockade. With a veil I covered my face, and my hands with satin gloves. I went down the stairs in the dark and hesitated in front of the door, which was already half open. Slowly, one step in front of the other, I then went out. There was no one. The road was devastated. I walked a few meters towards the Confiserie and stopped in the middle of the road. A deep breath, I turned, and retraced my steps. Now I'm back here, sitting at the desk, looking at your dress
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