Today, we are going to talk about Orientalist painting. In this way, I'm going to present you the general aspects of that kind of painting: its historical context, its specificities, its recurrent themes, its criticisms and finally its decline. Throughout this presentation, I will try to show you several Orientalist paintings, so that you can have a more precise idea of what this artistic movement is. Until the middle of the 17th century, the main link between the East and the West was trade. It is only at the end of the 17th century and in the whole 18th century that the European interest for the East really aroused. At that time, Europeans had a huge fancy for what is called in French ‘les turqueries'_ that is to say works of Oriental inspiration, at that time it mainly imitates the Oriental designs. It could be found for instance in domains like painting, literature, theatre, clothing or ornament. We can see it for instance in Boucher's L'odalisque brune (1) which represents a naked woman in a setting that wants to look Oriental. We can see that with the blue cloth, the low table at the left, the jewels, and the feathers on her head... Boucher tried to make of an ordinary Western woman (his wife) an odalisque.
[...] We can say that Orientalist painters often chose to show symbolic moments or objects in their paintings. Indeed, the European audience at that time was mainly in search of exoticism. Recurrent themes. In this way, there were some recurrent themes. Historical paintings. Painters, when they went in the East, often took advantage of colonial missions. In this way, some of them became real reporters, showing to Europe the important steps of colonization in the East. Thus, at the beginning of the 19th century (when trip conditions had not developed yet), there were lots of historical paintings_One of them being Gros's Bataille des Pyramides(12). [...]
[...] Nevertheless, the great blossoming of Orientalist painting is positively the 19th century, and more precisely the universal exhibitions of 1855 and 1867_the English Orientalism developed more in the middle of the 19th century. The 19th century Orientalism was considered by some as the true orientalism since it was based on a more accurate vision of the East and on a new ethnological approach. We can find an explanation to that blossoming in several historical events that enabled and even launched this interest for the East and, consequently, this movement throughout the 19th century: - The Napoleonian march on Egypt, in 1798_that is represented in Gros's Bonaparte visitant les pestiferes de Jaffa. [...]
[...] For instance, in Renoir's Mosquee d'Alger(13) in which there is still a detailed representation of the costumes and of the Orientalist motives of the architecture and of the mosque walls. Moreover street scenes were often used to represent Oriental habits like spinning and slave trade (that is a much more realist vision of the East, since it represented a negative view of it and thus that is not at all romanticised). However, we can notice that this setting did not allow painters to show women, in a sensual way for instance. [...]
[...] Indeed, we can observe in Orientalist paintings exactly the same evolution in genre as in the European 19th century academic paintings. For instance, we can, and must include in Orientalism : classical paintings, such as Ingres' Odalisque a l'esclave (in which the odalisque stands in a very classical position, just like a Greek statue, that is the reason why Ingres could paint a naked woman.), as well as realistic paintings, such as John Frederick Lewis's The Courtyard of the House of the Coptic Patriarch, Cairo (that looks almost photographic, you can notice that all the details are painted); impressionist paintings, such as Renoir's Jeune Algerienne(4) (in which you can observe that the details are not paint, only the impression that they give are.), as well as cubist paintings, such as Picasso's Les Femmes d'Alger(5) (very easy to recognize with its very geometrical forms. [...]
[...] However the vision of painters coming to grasp some sketches can not be so accurate since the trip conditions were rather harsh. Another criticism was to reproach the painters for having participated in the imperialist system of the time. (Indeed, the end of the Orientalist corresponds more or less to Algerian independence, showing thus a change of perception about colonialism.). Critics (Castagnary and Said were among them) claimed that Orientalist painters were either colonialist or based their works on their fantasies. [...]
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