Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

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I find Orientalism in art a fascinating subject, in parallel with the Japonisme that soon followed, as the West opened up to new cultures and influences, even if in the process, exoticized and romanticized them sometimes to the point of absurdity.

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The French artist Jean-Léon Gérôme visited Egypt for the first time in 1856.

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This would herald the start of many orientalist paintings depicting Arab religion, genre scenes and North African landscapes.

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In an autobiographical essay of 1878, Gérôme described how important oil sketches made on the spot were for him: "even when worn out after long marched under the bright sun, as soon as our camping spot was reached I got down to work with concentration. But Oh! How many things were left behind of which I carried only the memory away!"

Edited December 28, 2017 by Flex Mentallo

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He did not only gather themes, artifacts and costumes for his oriental scenes, but also made oil studies from nature for their backgrounds.

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He was a leading light of the academic painting style that prevailed until the advent of Impressionism, following which his star waned.

 

Edited December 28, 2017 by Flex Mentallo

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He is now back in fashion. Master of the Hounds sold at auction for over £1,000,000 in 2008.

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And Veiled Circassian Beauty for more than twice that amount.

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"The Orient is a stage on which the whole East is confined in order to make the Eastern world "less fearsome to the West"

Edward Said

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Since the latter part of the 20th Century, the term "Orientalism" has come to be associated with patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian and North African societies which was shaped by the cultural attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Conversely, the term "Occidentalism" is often used to refer to negative views of the Western world found in Eastern societies and is founded on the sense of nationalism that spread in reaction to colonialism.)

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Hence, the action of "othering" cultures occurs when groups are labeled as different due to characteristics that distinguish them from the perceived norm.

Orientalism provides a framework to understand one's own feelings of unease when faced with images of "odalisques" and slave markets and drug-dealers - the same unease evoked by skewed media representations of Arabs (and Muslims) today.

 

Jean-Léon Gérôme, for example, may or may not have believed in France's mission civilisatrice; perhaps he only ever wanted to sell paintings. But in supplying images of indolence and cruelty he helped to nourish perceptions that eased the path of that mission.

 

 

Edited December 28, 2017 by Flex Mentallo

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As with the luxurious coffee table books like the one of The Omo People, once one understands the context, (in the case of the Omo that they themselves are faking a cultural identity for the sake of the tourist dollar) one sees them very differently. So is it the same image?

 

The evolution of ideologies is often initially embedded in the language,and above all art is language, and so are photography,advertising, and all forms of media; and over time this language continues to ripple through the fabric of society by taking over the culture, economy and political sphere. Wittgenstein argued that thought and language are so intricately intertwined that they are impossible to separate. So we now see Twitter weaponised.

 

So when one looks at the exotic and romanticized pictures of the Orientalists, one cannot merely set aside the history that came after, and that casts a shadow into the present. It is easy to demonstrate that oriental subjects gave artists a perfect excuse to portray the naked slave, less obvious that this voyeurism is true of every oriental image and represents another sort of enslavement. As Jean Genet remarked, the mask of the image can be used to manipulate reality to sinister ends.

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Knowing this, I am even more fascinated by these pictures, and I can also identify with the adventurous spirit of those artists who set out to make their reputations in distant lands.

 

Along with Roberts, the artist who for me stands out with integrity is John Frederick Lewis.