Delacroix painted Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement in 1834 after he was back from his journey in Morocco and Algeria which had profoundly influenced him,. In 1954, after having revisited many painters such as Velasquez or Monet, Picasso decided to revisit Delacroix's Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement by creating fifteen paintings and two lithographs, all named "Femmes dealer". If Delacroix could be linked to the colonialist and Oriental movements, Picasso was rather against colonization. Each painting represented women of Algiers even if it was made in a very different painting style. Nevertheless, according to their different trajectories, it could be expected that the images of the "native" population in those paintings were completely opposed. In what ways were those "Femmes d'Alger" different?
[...] However, Death of Sardanapalus was a painting inspired by literature, not by real life” (Alaoui p.115) whereas Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement was based on sketches made on the spot and worked up after he had returned. If his paintings made before his journey were based on an imaginary Orient, it seemed that Femmes D'Alger dans leur appartement was rather based on a Orient. Indeed, Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement was painted after his enriching experience in North Africa. The Comte de Mornay's mission in which Delacroix took part in 1832 aimed to convince the sultan of Morocco to support a new French offensive in Algeria. [...]
[...] However, those paintings were also reworked in films such as Kamal Dahane's 1992 documentary film, Les femmes d'Alger but also in novels with Sebbar's Les Carnets de Shérazade in 1985. Bibliography Alaoui, B. (ed.) (1994) Delacroix in Morocco. Paris, New York: Flammarion. Boudjedra, R. (1998) Peindre l'Orient. Paris: Zulma. Bourdais, J.-C. (2005) À la recherche des Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement . Retrieved April from http://www.jcbourdais.net/ Cassou, J. (1947) Delacroix. Paris: Éditions du Dimanche. Celik, Z. (2000) "Colonial/Postcolonial Intersections: Lieux de Mémoire in Algiers," Third Text Winter 1999-2000, pp.63-72. Delacroix, E. (1932) Journal de Eugène Delacroix. Paris: Librairie Plon. Djebar, A. (2002) Femmes d'Alger dans leur [...]
[...] Moreover, in this period of beginning colonisation many stereotypes and stigmatisation about the native population were widespread (laziness, racism, It is now important to see how all those facts influenced Delacroix by analysing Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement more deeply. Even if the title asserted that the women were represented in their apartment, they actually were in a harem. This site was of symbolic significance because it was considered as a most intimate interior, a place normally forbidden to Europeans” (Jobert p.150). [...]
[...] This repetitive analysis of the women led to the dissection of their body to study them in details, to understand them more deeply. Those women were represented naked but it was not made according to an Orientalist perspective. This nakedness was rather the symbol of the liberation of the Algerian women. According to Djebar (2002, p.163), Picasso depicted them “Comme s'il faisait aussi de cette dénudation non pas seulement le signe d'une émancipation, mais plutôt celui d'une renaissance de ces femmes à leurs corps”. [...]
[...] That was why Saïd (1991, p.1) asserted that Orient was almost a European invention [ ] which was not about describing what you see but imagining what may This colonialism and Orientalism in Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement showed that Delacroix depicted negative values in a beautiful way. During the winter 1954 (from 13 December 1954 to 11 February 1955), as the Algerian war began, Picasso obsessively reworked Delacroix's Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement, creating fifteen paintings and two lithographs, all named Femmes d'Alger. [...]
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