Tam - Oasis Text Panels

Creating the Authentic A favorite subject for Orientalists was the depiction of “native types”— images of varied Eastern peoples in local dress. Charles-Henri-Joseph Cordier was commissioned to produce a series of such busts for the ethnographic gallery of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris. His extraordinarily nuanced A Sudanese in Algerian Costume illustrates his goal to produce “a general type combining all the beauties specific to the race under study.” Though these images were highly realistic, they were not individual portraits but rather composites of physical traits and costume details used to symbolize a particular cultural group. Photography also played a major role in the popularity of these images, and the growth of European studio photography in the Middle East is directly linked to the Western interest in them. Although these photographs often were created in the studio by posing models in dramatic costume, the power of photography to signal the real is so strong that many of them were used to illustrate documentary travel or ethnographic texts. Egypt Egypt, more than any other place within the Ottoman Empire, actively exploited the Western fascination with Middle Eastern culture, including the belief that Western culture had its roots in ancient Egypt. Obelisks were gifted to London, Paris, and New York and are visible today within the urban fabric of these cities. Westerners who had not traveled to Egypt were able to see original artworks or decorative arts at the British Museum, the Louvre, and elsewhere. Drawing on the popularity and proximity of these objects, artists used them as sources for their Egyptian scenes. The theatricality of Frederick Arthur Bridgman’s painting Cleopatra on the Terraces at Philae was heightened when displayed in New York in 1897 by the nearby presence of Cleopatra’s Needle, an obelisk installed in Central Park in 1881, a gift from Tawfig Pasha, then ruler of Egypt. Faithful Compositions In published accounts of the Middle East, representations of Islamic worship and houses of worship were popular because they represented a culture with religion at the core of daily life, unlike the more secular culture of the West. The most famous and accurate of these guides was Edward William Lane’s An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians Written in Egypt During the Years 1833–1835 (first published in 1836). Lane made explanatory drawings for this book that included the various positions of Islamic prayer. A number of artists quoted from

these images in their Islamic compositions, treating Lane’s illustrations as accurate sources on Islamic daily life, but often manipulated other elements of their pictures to create a more perfect composition. Such aesthetic license was widely accepted in the 19th century, though it blurred distinctions for audiences between strictly factual and imaginative depictions of the people and cultures of the East. Luminous Landscapes Although never an art movement, the term “luminism” is used to define paintings characterized by palpable, atmospheric light, a trait with roots in 17th-century Dutch landscapes. By the mid-19th century, luminism could be found in national schools throughout Europe and from Russia to the United States. Egypt, with its famous pink, azure, and gold sunsets and vast panoramic spaces threaded through by the Nile River, was an ideal luminist subject. The best-known luminist of Egypt was the Frenchman Charles Théodore Frère. Though Frère and his fellow artists were entranced by the scenic beauty of desert landscapes, they also often enhanced what they saw, heightening color and rearranging topographical elements to create a more effective and dramatic picture. The Ottoman Empire At its height, the Ottoman Empire (1299–1923) stretched across three continents from Turkey through the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeastern Europe. The Empire had its roots in 14th-century Anatolia and gradually expanded outward into the surrounding territories of the Byzantine Empire. After seizing the Byzantine capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul), in 1453, the Ottomans began rapidly increasing their reach; the Empire reached its greatest extent under Sultan Suleyman “The Magnificent” (ruled 1520–1566). Over the next three centuries, uprisings in conquered countries and battles with ambitious European states slowly eroded their borders. In the 19th century these losses were particularly widespread. Ottoman rule was officially ended in 1923 when Turkey was named a republic. Turkish Style Jean Baptiste Vanmour was a member of a circle of artists in 18thcentury Constantinople who served the growing European diplomatic and commercial community. He was named court painter to Sultan Ahmed III in 1725, and his full-length portraits of members of Ottoman society in full regalia earned him great fame. Charles de Ferriol, the French ambassador to the Court of Sultan Mustapha II, commissioned the engraving of 100 of these portraits for a book titled Recueil de cent Estampes représentant différentes nations du Levant (100 Prints

Representing Different Nations of the Levant), first published in 1712– 13. The costumes in these portraits sparked the vogue for Turkish fashion in Europe. They also served as a template for other artists such as François Boucher, William Hogarth, and the porcelain producer Meissen. The Vanmour prints were popular in many 18th-century homes, where they were cut out and used as decorations on fire screens, fans, and other decorative objects and reworked as gravures dresses (dressed pictures), a form of elegant paper doll. Women and Men Many of the stereotypes associated with 19th-century Orientalist painting revolve around the ways men and women were depicted. Scenes of everyday life and activities at home, at worship, and in the streets and markets pervaded Orientalist art, but for many in the West the defining features of the East were eroticism, violence, languor, mystery, and danger. Women are repeatedly pictured as dancers and harem odalisques— icons of sensuality and sexual availability that for a Western male audience conjured an Orient of unlimited pleasure. Eastern men are usually represented as either warlike or indolent, as fierce soldiers or idle patrons of coffee houses. In these types of images, Eastern men and women become mirrors for the West’s own desires, fears, and sense of superiority.