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L'Espagne
c'est encore l'Orient; l'Espagne est à demi africaine, l'Afrique
est à demi asiatique
(Spain is
still the Orient. Spain is half-African, Africa is half-Asiatic)
Victor Hugo,
in the preface to Les Orientales
Scholars have
of late been rethinking the idea of Orientalist Art. In
recent years, the Tate in London has had shows and talks with
names like
The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting
and
Orientalism Revisited.
And there was the recent and much-talked-about show of the works
of
Jean-Léon
Gérôme(1824-1904)
at the
Getty.
Gérôme, who though rather successful in his day, went out of favor
with the public and critics with the rise of Modern Art...pushed
aside by the Impressionists and Cubists. His native
town of Vesoul rejected the paintings he had bequeathed it, citing
a lack of room to hang them! But critical reevaluation of
his work is under way (see the Getty's publication,
Reconsidering
Gerome).
And he’s been revalued in a more pragmatic sense – prices for his
work and for Orientalist Art have been on the rise – Gérôme’s
Veiled Circassian Beauty recently sold for 4.1 million
dollars.
The
Reception,
1873,
John Frederick Lewis,
oil on panel
Gérôme’s Orientalist paintings have an
almost-photographic yet always painterly realism, a lushly erotic,
tongue-in-cheek consciousness; his is a sensuous and
sensationalist art. And the same
revaluation for British Orientalist Painter, John Frederick
Lewis, whose works had long been dismissed and are now selling for
new highs.
Moorish
Bath, 1870,
oil on
canvas, Jean-Léon
Gérôme,
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
Gérôme's
painting The Snake Charmer (top), graces the cover of
Orientalism,
the book by Edward Said, which viewed this artistic and literary
movement with some suspicion. Turnaround time is here--those
lenses seem to be falling to the wayside. Even the Tate
slyly
asks:
What is
the current debate on Edward Said’s radical book Orientalism?
Is his argument too binary between East and West?
Most interestingly, we came across an article on the website of
the Saudi Aramco magazine World, titled
Behind
Orientalism's Veil,
which talks about the rising prices of Orientalist art:
'In July
2008, Orientalism brought £21.4 million to Christie’s in London,
“the highest total ever achieved for this category”...'
and also notes,
“... interest
in Orientalist art has been led by the cognoscenti of the cultures
depicted—mostly in the Arabian Peninsula, followed by North
Africa."
European
Romanticism and the idea of Ex oriente lux (out of the East,
light). Romantic Orientalism in literature (Shelley’s
Alastor, Coleridge’s Kubla Khan, Byron’s The Giaour),
Hugo with his influential Les Orientales (and later
in Les Chants du Crépuscule: L’Orient, L’orient, qu’y voyez-vous poètes?
Tournez vers l’Orient vos esprits et vos yeux). The Orient
became a revitalizing force in the Romantic Movement, a yearning
for some imaginary other place...fantasies perhaps fed by the
Arabian Nights which truly belong to the entire world.
Moorish Spain was in some sense a center of these romantic
fantasies, the Alhambra seen as an earthly paradise, and from
this, the idea of Alhambraism. For Granada was where the
Orient and the Middle Ages coexisted, where Gothic Christianity
met Arabian customs in the spirit of convivencia.
Even American Washington Irving succumbs to the lure with his
delightful
Tales of the
Alhambra.
The Alhambra
So if you are
overcome, in Romantic fashion, with a certain ennui at the
very idea of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom or the thought of
visiting Abstract Expressionist New York (now previewing at
MoMA), we say look to the East for the light (travel to the
Alhambra, buy some Orientalist Art, or curl up with
Tales of the
Alhambra!)
Read:
Reconsidering
Gérôme, Scott Allan & Mary Morton
Read:
Behind
Orientalism's Veil
Read:
Tales of the
Alhambra, Washington Irving
Tags:
fashion
literature
art
travel
spain england
france
egypt
museums
poetry
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Veiled
Circassian Beauty,
1876,
oil
on canvas
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