History of Modern Art with Klaire
Explore Modern Art history including Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, and other key Modernist art movements. Join artist and educator Klaire Lockheart as she examines famous artists and artwork through a 21st century intersectional feminist lens. Whether you’re an artist, student, or patron of the arts, you will hopefully learn something new about Modern Art.
Orientalism: Cultural Appropriation, Odalisques, and Ingres’s Flatulent Hand
Don’t be fooled by the colorful and relaxing paintings created by the French Orientalists! These 19th century artists really liked to objectify women. Listen as Klaire Lockheart reveals the problematic aspects of Orientalism, argues with dead artists, and introduces you to the brodalisque.
Artists and Artwork: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (Grande Odalisque, Turkish Bath, Portrait of Monsieur Bertin), Jean-Léon Gérôme (Pollice Verso, Snake Charmer, the Meuzzin, the Grief of the Pasha Sabre Dance in a Café, the Slave Market), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Eugène Delacroix, Guerrilla Girls (Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?), and Felix Nadar
Additional Topics: Edward Said (Orientalism), Mohja Kahf (Western Representations of the Muslim Woman), Odalisques, Harems, Karin van Nieuwkerk (A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt), Colonialism, Cultural Appropriation, Gladiator, Linda Nochlin (“The Imaginary Orient”), Awalim, Belly Dancers, and Ghawazee
Artists and Artwork: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (Grande Odalisque, Turkish Bath, Portrait of Monsieur Bertin), Jean-Léon Gérôme (Pollice Verso, Snake Charmer, the Meuzzin, the Grief of the Pasha Sabre Dance in a Café, the Slave Market), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Eugène Delacroix, Guerrilla Girls (Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?), and Felix Nadar
Additional Topics: Edward Said (Orientalism), Mohja Kahf (Western Representations of the Muslim Woman), Odalisques, Harems, Karin van Nieuwkerk (A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt), Colonialism, Cultural Appropriation, Gladiator, Linda Nochlin (“The Imaginary Orient”), Awalim, Belly Dancers, and Ghawazee
Transcript
Hello, my friends! You’re listening to the History of Modern Art with Klaire. I’m your host Klaire Lockheart. Thank you for taking the time to join me as I examine Orientalism through a 21st century lens. Whether you are an artist, student, or belly dancer, I think you’ll enjoy this episode.
[Music]
Upon first glance, Orientalist paintings and prints can be enticing for a Western audience. There are intricate and colorful scenes set in warm, sunny locations. The bejeweled people wear colorful clothes, if they wear anything at all, and everyone appears relaxed. These compositions appear to depict idyllic scenes in far off lands; however, there is more to this art movement than meets the eye. Orientalism is problematic, but I’ll expand on that later.
Orientalism is a category of art that flourished in Europe in the 19th century, and it peaked during the 1860s-1880s. Orientalist artwork was made in France and also the United Kingdom, but Orientalism is more than just a categorization of art. In the 19th century, European scholars and writers thought they could be experts in the “Orient,” which means the “East,” and this often encompasses Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The Occident is the other half of the globe, which includes Europe, the Americas, and Australia. It is important to note that the idea that academic-types in France could declare themselves experts on half of the world, particularly places they never even visited, is preposterous. However, Orientalism was developed during a time of imperialism and colonialism, and there is a long history of European nations and people claiming superiority over others. Edward Said, who wrote Orientalism, stated, “…it can be argued that the major component in European culture is… the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures.” I highly recommend Edward Said’s book Orientalism if you want a deeper dive into the critique of the field of Orientalism. I also encourage you to read Western Representations of the Muslim Woman by Mohja Kahf as a companion piece because the author expands upon Said’s scholarship but specifically includes women. All this background information is truly helpful in providing context for Orientalist art. “…in short,” according to Said, we can see “Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, reconstructing, and having authority over the Orient.”
In addition to considering the academic field of Orientalism in 19th century France, it’s necessary to take into account what the art world was like. Since we’re focusing on places and people from across the globe, I would like to make a quick apology in advance if I mispronounce anything. At the time, the Salon in Paris was an extremely important juried art show that could launch an artist’s career. Photography was a new art form that painters had to contend with in order to justify why paintings were still relevant when compared to the new technology. Orientalists were contemporaries of Impressionists, who rebelled against the Salon by staging their own independent art exhibitions. Impressionists also rebelled against photography by making choppy, sketchy paintings that were clearly handmade. Impressionists were considered Modernists because they depicted their modern lives, which challenged the status quo of the Academy where history paintings reigned supreme.
Orientalists were also rebellious, even though their paintings look like they fit better within the Western academic tradition. They proclaimed that they were relevant despite the invention of photography because their images were in color. Some of the painters used photographs as references to make their paintings even more crisp and detailed. These artists also rebelled against the Impressionists, who were growing in popularity. Artist Jean-Léon Gérôme declared, “[The Impressionists] are a disgrace to French art.” Many Impressionists and their supporters didn’t care much for the Orientalists either, but leading Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir created Orientalist artwork too. Renoir generated paintings and lithographs with Orientalist themes, but he made them in the Impressionist style by using quick, gestural marks. Regardless of his technique, Renoir fit in with the Orientalists because, according to Torey Akers form the article “You Can't Make Me Care About Renoir,” “his paintings weren’t about women, but his dominion over them.”
Eugène Delacroix created lithographs and oil paintings in the early 19th century that impacted the Impressionists and the Orientalists. His paintings stitch together observations from his travels, erotic fantasies, the voyeuristic male gaze, and imperialist attitudes to create dramatic scenes populated by scores of nude women. These women were often placed inside of the harem. A harem is simply the private part of the home. This off-limits section of the house was where women who wore veils or hijabs in public could unveil and relax. Typically, only family or close friends could enter this part of the home. Strangers, especially foreign men, were not be permitted in the harem. However, this did not stop Western men from claiming they penetrated these private spaces, which was interpreted as an innuendo by their heteronormative, male, European audiences.
The harems in art were often inhabited by the odalisque, which I’ve also heard pronounced “oh-da-leesk.” This comes from the Turkish work “odalık,” and it refers to a chambermaid, but in Europe the term evolved to refer to a concubine, mistress, or sex worker. In her book, A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt, Karin van Nieuwkerk wrote, “The crux of the gender issue is that women are generally viewed as sexual beings. Their bodies are enticing, regardless of what they do.” I will argue that there is a longstanding tradition of eroticizing women’s bodies, but it is especially noticeable in Orientalist artwork.
I will describe one of the most famous paintings of an odalisque after the break.
[Break]
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres produced the Grande Odalisque in 1814. It was commissioned by a queen, most likely a gift for her husband. This painting is over 5 feet wide and is on display at the Louvre. Even though Ingres proclaimed that he portrayed an odalisque, the model does not look like she is Turkish. Orientalists would typically create their artwork in French studios, and they would hire white models so they could illustrate their exotic fantasies. This model is nude with pale skin and brown hair. Her back is to the audience, and she fills up the canvas. She is leaning on her left elbow, which is propped up on a blue cushion on the left of the picture plane. Her body extends to the right, and her big toe on her right foot goes to the edge of the canvas. Her anatomically unique body is twisted in a very uncomfortable pose. Her head is in 3/4 profile and she looks over her right shoulder to engage the presumably European heteronormative upperclass male viewer. She’s wearing a head wrap composed of white fabric with gold and red stripes and large gold tassels. Her back is unusually long, and her spine makes a “c” shaped curve. Her left hip is on the bed, and her intergluteal cleft is barely hidden by a wrinkled white sheet. Yes, “intergluteal cleft” is the academic term for “butt crack,” and if you didn’t know that already, you’re welcome. Anyway, the woman’s right leg stretches away from her body, and the sole of her foot is visible. There is a hookah by her toes. Her left leg is somehow swung around over the top of her right knee. Her left knee is visible above her hand, and her left foot is on her right leg. Her right elbow rests on her right hip, and her hand is on her lower left leg. If Twister was party game back then, she would have been the champion. The model holds a fan made of peacock plumes with her right hand, and the feathers graze the back of her right thigh. She sports three gold bracelets on her wrist. Despite her back being fully visible, Ingres made sure that we can at least see one breast, but it looks like she is holding an orange in her right armpit. The background is black, but there is a blue curtain with a floral pattern draped in the right third of the composition.
Grande Odalisque is one of many, many works of art that stars a nude passive woman that I am just expected to appreciate because it is “Art.” If I object to the seemingly endless parade of languid provocative women, I’m labeled as “uneducated” and I’ve been told that I don’t appreciate art. I have heard arguments that when men artists depict nude women, it’s really about lofty philosophical themes such as “truth” or “beauty.” These compositions could also all be about form, design, or color, but they just happen to have nude women in there. If I think these splayed nude women represent sex or ownership by the heteronormative male audience or artist, then I am wrong and clearly don’t understand art. Even though I earned an MFA in painting, which is the terminal degree in my field, I still have been criticized by others if I express displeasure or annoyance at the overwhelming objectification of women in Western art. I’m going to tell you that if you can’t see the artistic merit in every single representation of a nude woman it’s completely okay. If this type of art makes you uncomfortable, that is absolutely fine. You’re probably not the intended audience for this artwork anyway, because the odds that you are a bourgeois 19th century heterosexual French man are pretty slim.
[Music]
In case you haven’t noticed, I like to engage with art history by arguing with long dead artists, philosophers, art critics, and colonizers. This is why I invented the “brodalisque,” who is a bro that reenacts the passivity of odalisques from Orientalist art. I started a series of brodalisque paintings recently to challenge passive representations of women, and you can see photographs of my art on my website klairelockheart.com if you want to compare my paintings to Orientalism. To update the trope of creating a “realistic” painting in a prohibited space, I paint the brodalisques within the hidden mysteries known as the man cave. I render these forbidden environments representationally to persuade the viewers that these compositions are factual and not at all fictitious. If the original odalisque paintings that I reference really truly are about form and aesthetics, not sex and ownership, then my paintings are completely serious and not remotely silly.
I’m not the only contemporary artist who challenges the status quo of accepting the popular objectification of women in the art world. In 1989 a group of anonymous feminist artists called the Guerrilla Girls created a poster called Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? This horizontal poster has a bright yellow background, and the question, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” is printed near the top edge in a bold black sans-serif font. The bottom left corner of the poster includes a black and white copy of Ingres’s Grande Odalisque lounging on magenta cushions. The artists obscured the model’s face with a large gorilla mask. The bottom right section of the poster includes more bold text, but it is slightly smaller than the headliner question. The text proclaims, “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” They updated the poster in 2005 and discovered that only 83% of the nudes were of women, but more than 97% of the art was made by men. The Guerrilla Girls updated their poster again in 2012, and the text revealed, “Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art isn’t the only art institution that doesn’t display enough artwork created by women. Artnet and In Other Words did a joint study of acquisitions by prominent American museums in 2018, and they revealed that only 11% of the acquired artwork was made by women. One of the reasons I paint in a realistic, representational way is to engage with this history of Western art, and I want my artwork to look like it belongs in museums. I also paint a lot so I have a many canvases ready to go just in case an art director or curator suddenly realizes that 11% is slightly less than 50%, and perhaps they should have an art collection created by artists that reflects the population of their community. I personally think it would fun to hang a few of my Brodalisque paintings in an Orientalist gallery between all the traditional odalisques just to see how patrons would react.
Anyway, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres created more than one influential Orientalist composition. In 1863, the same year as the Salon des Refusés, Ingres made the Turkish Bath, which is also at the Louvre. The diameter of this round painting is about 3.5 feet across, and it is packed full of writhing, swooning nude women. The vast majority of the “Turkish” women are white, but there appears to be a couple women of color in the background, but I wouldn’t give him credit for being inclusive. Unfortunately, white artists sometimes included Black women to contrast with the white models to make the white women look more appealing to the presumed white audience. Keep in mind that this painting was made at the same time the United States was embroiled with the Civil War. Some of the women in this scene are wearing hats, jewelry, or hair coverings, but a few of them have flowing blond hair. Ingres was in his 80s when he made this painting, and he did it because he wanted to show off that he could still ogle women like a young man. Once again, the figures Ingres created defy human anatomy, but many historians and critics will argue that he made these bodies contort with rubber skeletons on purpose. Ingres has received more praise for his erotic and unrealistic bodies than criticism, and many 20th century critics saw his distortions as a success.
However, Ingres did receive some negative criticism for his work during his lifetime. After seeing Ingres’s portrait of Monsieur Bertin, photographer Nadar exclaimed, “Look especially at the right hand. Look at this fantastic bundle of flesh… under which, instead of bone and muscle, there can only be intestines, this flatulent hand whose rumblings I hear! I have dreamed about it, about your horrible hand!” While it’s likely that Ingres used a camera lucida for some of his paintings, and this could account for the distortions around the edges in the 1832 Portrait of Monsieur Bertin, I really just enjoy that Nadar was terrified of a floppy, farting hand.
Compared to Ingres’s frequent distortions of his figures, Jean-Léon Gérôme prided himself on creating “realistic” paintings and sculptures. I am invoking sarcastic air quotes for the word “realistic” because Gérôme had an agenda, and his style of painting was used to persuade his audience. He made a reputation for himself as an artist that was attentive to detail, and he was one of the few Orientalists who actually travelled to the locations he depicted. He took photographs on his journeys so he could use them as references when he returned to his studio in France, but it is important to note that he couldn’t get Egyptians to pose for the camera, and so sometimes he and his traveling companion would dress up for the pictures.
I will share more about Gérôme’s paintings after the break.
[Break]
When he painted, Jean-Léon Gérôme would create his compositions with many pieced together elements from various sources. It would be like making a collage out of stack of old National Geographic magazines without regard for the original sources. He would mix and match different landscapes, architecture, clothes, and objects together to create a composition that he thought looked good. “Cinematic” is a great way to describe his paintings, which is quite remarkable considering that he made a lot of his art before the first movie was filmed. The artist died over a decade before the first Technicolor film was created as well. If you’re unfamiliar with his art, picture the movie Gladiator because the director was strongly influenced by Gérôme’s painting Pollice Verso, which is housed at the Phoenix Art Museum. There are many other movies that mix and match cultures, histories, and costumes in a way that makes zero sense, yet they are presented as historical. This is a tradition of cultural appropriation that can be traced back to Jean-Léon Gérôme and other artists. If you’ve ever wondered why Roman emperors in your sword and sandal films are dressed like they’re headed to a Renaissance festival while the women look like they’re at a luau themed Halloween party, this is one of the reasons. However, if you show any displeasure about these paintings, Gérôme might ask you, “Are you not entertained?”
In 1879, Gérôme completed the Snake Charmer, which is a 4 foot wide horizontal composition. This canvas is at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts. This painting is set inside of a room with a mosaic wall of blue, teal, and turquoise tiles. There are five full arches along the wall, and the top of the wall features white calligraphy. The wall meets the floor about 1/3 away from the bottom edge of the canvas. The floor is composed of tiles in various shades of brown. On the left half of the canvas, leaning up against the wall, there are ten men. They are wearing various robes, galabeyas, or caftans. Many wear turbans, and one is wearing a helmet. A few of them are passively holding weapons. The oldest man is wearing a green headdress, and he is reclining with his legs stretched out in front of him. He has a saber, but his sword flops across his lap.
These men make up the audience to watch the snake charmer, who is standing in the right third of the canvas. He is a nude boy with his back to the viewer. He is undressed to assure his audience that there are no tricks up his sleeve because he doesn’t have sleeves. His skin is light brown, and he has the lightest skin color out of everyone in the painting. He is standing on a rug, and there is a large wicker basket to his left. The lid is leaning up against the basket, because the boy took out the snake, which is wrapped around his body. The serpent would be very long if it was uncoiled, but the child holds its head in his upraised left hand. The snake wraps around over the boy’s right shoulder, around his waist, forms a coil at his right hip, and the boy holds the tail in his right hand.
To the right of the snake charmer is an elderly man playing a wind instrument, such as a ney. He holds the instrument to his lips, and it protrudes forward. His left hand is higher up on the flute than his right. The man is sitting with his legs crossed on the floor, and he is wearing dull yellow-green puffy pantaloons. He has a white beard. There is a barrel shaped drum on the floor, parallel to his left thigh. Like many of Gérôme’s paintings, he pieced together various elements from different cultures and sources to create his narrative. Another common characteristic of Gérôme’s artwork is that he erases the visible presence of the Western tourist/voyeur/colonizer from the composition. However, Linda Nochlin argued that there is a Western presence his work when she wrote “The Imaginary Orient.” Nochlin stated, “The white man, the Westerner, is of course always implicitly present in the Orientalist paintings like the Snake Charmer; his is necessarily the controlling gaze, the gaze which brings the Oriental world into being, the gaze for which it is ultimately intended.”
The Snake Charmer was used for the cover of Said’s book Orientalism, but it wasn’t because this painting was seen as good example of ethnographic study even though Gérôme wanted to convince his patrons that he was recreating reality. The artist wanted the viewers to forget that his art was actually art. He painted smoothly to hide his brushstrokes, and he included minute details to persuade his viewers that he was a reliable narrator. He even included broken tiles and missing pieces from the blue wall in the Snake Charmer. While a contemporary viewer might see his attention to detail as being authentic, at the time Orientalists depicted crumbling architecture as a metaphor for corruption in Islamic society. Western artists viewed Muslims as lazy, and the message with the Snake Charmer is that Gérôme thought Middle Eastern people would rather lounge about and play with snakes than prevent their civilization from collapsing. As I mentioned earlier, this is a problematic art movement.
I do want to mention that not everything Gérôme made appears overtly racist, and some of his paintings do seem sympathetic towards his subjects. The Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, NE has two of the least problematic examples of Orientalism I’ve seen in person. Gérôme created The Meuzzin in 1865, and this is a painting of a meuzzin singing the call to prayer while standing atop a minaret on a mosque and overlooking the city. Gérôme painted The Grief of the Pasha twenty years later, and this is a scene within a hypostyle hall. The focal point of this painting is the deceased tiger upon a large blue-green rug, with pink flowers strewn around the tiger’s head and paws. A grieving man is sitting on the far right corner of the rug. I’ve also seen reproductions of some of his portraits that appear respectful of his subjects. I believe that if viewers see these types of paintings first, they will be more forgiving of his more questionable artwork later.
For example, I know several belly dancers who adore Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1875 oil painting Sabre Dance in a Café, which is at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum in New York. This horizontal canvas is set in a cafe with a stone or brick arch that encompasses the top and sides of the composition. There are sun beams shining down from the top left corner, which creates a spotlight that illuminates the dancer at the center of the canvas. She is dancing on the balls of her feet with a sword balanced on top of her head. She clutches a second sword with her right hand, and it is pointing down toward the rug she is dancing upon. Her hair is covered by a green veil, and it appears slightly windy since the fabric is billowing, which makes her sword balancing look even more impressive. She is wearing a sheer blouse, a short pink vest, a blue scarf tied around her hips, and her chest is completely covered with gold coins. The background is fairly dark, with a few musicians and audience members, but her back would be to all of them. She is performing for the painting’s viewer.
The woman in this painting is an almeh, and the original definition of the word meant she was an educated singer or dancer. But shortly after Napoleon invaded Egypt, and caused thousands of deaths, the awalim were seen as sex workers by the European colonizers. Gérôme made many paintings with other awalim, and he depicted many of these women with see-through blouses so their breasts are clearly visible. These paintings were made to appease the male gaze. From photographs I’ve seen of the awalim and the Ghawazee, these performers wore opaque shirts. It appears that their chests were secured by their short vests as well, which would make sense because dancers tend to want to wear secure costumes, not only to maintain their dignity, but also for their comfort. The Ghawazee are a dancers from Egypt, and the Banat Mazin family still performs these traditional dances to this day. All documentation I’ve seen of the Banat Mazin performances included fully clothed dancers.
As I mentioned, Gérôme took many liberties with his artwork, but he made his paintings appear realistic to convince his Western audience to trust that he was sharing what he actually saw on his travels. While he would sometimes paint active women that modern Western women can appreciate, his overall depiction of women wasn’t fantastic. In addition to using his art to promote the outdated colonialist attitude that Europeans were superior to everyone else, he also pushed the theme that men were dominant over women. If you really want to find an offensive painting, seek out The Slave Market, which is at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts.
Overall, Orientalism is a problematic art movement that hit its peak at the end of the 19th century in France. The most popular artists were white heteronormative men, and they created colorful and often detailed paintings for a presumed upper-class European audience of men. These compositions appeared “realistic” in order to combat Impressionism, but Renoir painted Orientalist themes with his Impressionist style. The women models depicted by Orientalists were fantasies and were often passively draped over cushions in French studios because these men would not have been permitted in actual harems. Orientalist paintings and prints not only objectify women, but they also promote bigoted colonialist attitudes. Not all the paintings in this genre are racist and sexist, but the most famous ones seem pretty offensive.
[Music]
Thank you so much for spending your time with me to explore the Modern Art movement of Orientalism. Please join me next time to learn about Postimpressionism. To find a transcript of this episode, the resources I used, or to become a patron, please visit klairelockheart.com and click on the “Media” tab. That’s K-L-A-I-R-E-L-O-C-K-H-E-A-R-T dot com. Find me on Instagram @klairelockheart to see my current projects, or you can find me on Facebook by searching for Klaire A. Lockheart.
The History of Modern Art with Klaire was created by me, Klaire Lockheart. This podcast was recorded with equipment generously provided by Aaron C. Packard of Aaron C. Packard Productions. Check out his artwork at aaronpackard.com, spelled A-A-R-O-N-P-A-C-K-A-R-D dot com.
I genuinely appreciate your support and positive feedback. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast so you won’t miss future topics. Thank you once again for joining me!
[Music]
Upon first glance, Orientalist paintings and prints can be enticing for a Western audience. There are intricate and colorful scenes set in warm, sunny locations. The bejeweled people wear colorful clothes, if they wear anything at all, and everyone appears relaxed. These compositions appear to depict idyllic scenes in far off lands; however, there is more to this art movement than meets the eye. Orientalism is problematic, but I’ll expand on that later.
Orientalism is a category of art that flourished in Europe in the 19th century, and it peaked during the 1860s-1880s. Orientalist artwork was made in France and also the United Kingdom, but Orientalism is more than just a categorization of art. In the 19th century, European scholars and writers thought they could be experts in the “Orient,” which means the “East,” and this often encompasses Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. The Occident is the other half of the globe, which includes Europe, the Americas, and Australia. It is important to note that the idea that academic-types in France could declare themselves experts on half of the world, particularly places they never even visited, is preposterous. However, Orientalism was developed during a time of imperialism and colonialism, and there is a long history of European nations and people claiming superiority over others. Edward Said, who wrote Orientalism, stated, “…it can be argued that the major component in European culture is… the idea of European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures.” I highly recommend Edward Said’s book Orientalism if you want a deeper dive into the critique of the field of Orientalism. I also encourage you to read Western Representations of the Muslim Woman by Mohja Kahf as a companion piece because the author expands upon Said’s scholarship but specifically includes women. All this background information is truly helpful in providing context for Orientalist art. “…in short,” according to Said, we can see “Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, reconstructing, and having authority over the Orient.”
In addition to considering the academic field of Orientalism in 19th century France, it’s necessary to take into account what the art world was like. Since we’re focusing on places and people from across the globe, I would like to make a quick apology in advance if I mispronounce anything. At the time, the Salon in Paris was an extremely important juried art show that could launch an artist’s career. Photography was a new art form that painters had to contend with in order to justify why paintings were still relevant when compared to the new technology. Orientalists were contemporaries of Impressionists, who rebelled against the Salon by staging their own independent art exhibitions. Impressionists also rebelled against photography by making choppy, sketchy paintings that were clearly handmade. Impressionists were considered Modernists because they depicted their modern lives, which challenged the status quo of the Academy where history paintings reigned supreme.
Orientalists were also rebellious, even though their paintings look like they fit better within the Western academic tradition. They proclaimed that they were relevant despite the invention of photography because their images were in color. Some of the painters used photographs as references to make their paintings even more crisp and detailed. These artists also rebelled against the Impressionists, who were growing in popularity. Artist Jean-Léon Gérôme declared, “[The Impressionists] are a disgrace to French art.” Many Impressionists and their supporters didn’t care much for the Orientalists either, but leading Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir created Orientalist artwork too. Renoir generated paintings and lithographs with Orientalist themes, but he made them in the Impressionist style by using quick, gestural marks. Regardless of his technique, Renoir fit in with the Orientalists because, according to Torey Akers form the article “You Can't Make Me Care About Renoir,” “his paintings weren’t about women, but his dominion over them.”
Eugène Delacroix created lithographs and oil paintings in the early 19th century that impacted the Impressionists and the Orientalists. His paintings stitch together observations from his travels, erotic fantasies, the voyeuristic male gaze, and imperialist attitudes to create dramatic scenes populated by scores of nude women. These women were often placed inside of the harem. A harem is simply the private part of the home. This off-limits section of the house was where women who wore veils or hijabs in public could unveil and relax. Typically, only family or close friends could enter this part of the home. Strangers, especially foreign men, were not be permitted in the harem. However, this did not stop Western men from claiming they penetrated these private spaces, which was interpreted as an innuendo by their heteronormative, male, European audiences.
The harems in art were often inhabited by the odalisque, which I’ve also heard pronounced “oh-da-leesk.” This comes from the Turkish work “odalık,” and it refers to a chambermaid, but in Europe the term evolved to refer to a concubine, mistress, or sex worker. In her book, A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt, Karin van Nieuwkerk wrote, “The crux of the gender issue is that women are generally viewed as sexual beings. Their bodies are enticing, regardless of what they do.” I will argue that there is a longstanding tradition of eroticizing women’s bodies, but it is especially noticeable in Orientalist artwork.
I will describe one of the most famous paintings of an odalisque after the break.
[Break]
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres produced the Grande Odalisque in 1814. It was commissioned by a queen, most likely a gift for her husband. This painting is over 5 feet wide and is on display at the Louvre. Even though Ingres proclaimed that he portrayed an odalisque, the model does not look like she is Turkish. Orientalists would typically create their artwork in French studios, and they would hire white models so they could illustrate their exotic fantasies. This model is nude with pale skin and brown hair. Her back is to the audience, and she fills up the canvas. She is leaning on her left elbow, which is propped up on a blue cushion on the left of the picture plane. Her body extends to the right, and her big toe on her right foot goes to the edge of the canvas. Her anatomically unique body is twisted in a very uncomfortable pose. Her head is in 3/4 profile and she looks over her right shoulder to engage the presumably European heteronormative upperclass male viewer. She’s wearing a head wrap composed of white fabric with gold and red stripes and large gold tassels. Her back is unusually long, and her spine makes a “c” shaped curve. Her left hip is on the bed, and her intergluteal cleft is barely hidden by a wrinkled white sheet. Yes, “intergluteal cleft” is the academic term for “butt crack,” and if you didn’t know that already, you’re welcome. Anyway, the woman’s right leg stretches away from her body, and the sole of her foot is visible. There is a hookah by her toes. Her left leg is somehow swung around over the top of her right knee. Her left knee is visible above her hand, and her left foot is on her right leg. Her right elbow rests on her right hip, and her hand is on her lower left leg. If Twister was party game back then, she would have been the champion. The model holds a fan made of peacock plumes with her right hand, and the feathers graze the back of her right thigh. She sports three gold bracelets on her wrist. Despite her back being fully visible, Ingres made sure that we can at least see one breast, but it looks like she is holding an orange in her right armpit. The background is black, but there is a blue curtain with a floral pattern draped in the right third of the composition.
Grande Odalisque is one of many, many works of art that stars a nude passive woman that I am just expected to appreciate because it is “Art.” If I object to the seemingly endless parade of languid provocative women, I’m labeled as “uneducated” and I’ve been told that I don’t appreciate art. I have heard arguments that when men artists depict nude women, it’s really about lofty philosophical themes such as “truth” or “beauty.” These compositions could also all be about form, design, or color, but they just happen to have nude women in there. If I think these splayed nude women represent sex or ownership by the heteronormative male audience or artist, then I am wrong and clearly don’t understand art. Even though I earned an MFA in painting, which is the terminal degree in my field, I still have been criticized by others if I express displeasure or annoyance at the overwhelming objectification of women in Western art. I’m going to tell you that if you can’t see the artistic merit in every single representation of a nude woman it’s completely okay. If this type of art makes you uncomfortable, that is absolutely fine. You’re probably not the intended audience for this artwork anyway, because the odds that you are a bourgeois 19th century heterosexual French man are pretty slim.
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In case you haven’t noticed, I like to engage with art history by arguing with long dead artists, philosophers, art critics, and colonizers. This is why I invented the “brodalisque,” who is a bro that reenacts the passivity of odalisques from Orientalist art. I started a series of brodalisque paintings recently to challenge passive representations of women, and you can see photographs of my art on my website klairelockheart.com if you want to compare my paintings to Orientalism. To update the trope of creating a “realistic” painting in a prohibited space, I paint the brodalisques within the hidden mysteries known as the man cave. I render these forbidden environments representationally to persuade the viewers that these compositions are factual and not at all fictitious. If the original odalisque paintings that I reference really truly are about form and aesthetics, not sex and ownership, then my paintings are completely serious and not remotely silly.
I’m not the only contemporary artist who challenges the status quo of accepting the popular objectification of women in the art world. In 1989 a group of anonymous feminist artists called the Guerrilla Girls created a poster called Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum? This horizontal poster has a bright yellow background, and the question, “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” is printed near the top edge in a bold black sans-serif font. The bottom left corner of the poster includes a black and white copy of Ingres’s Grande Odalisque lounging on magenta cushions. The artists obscured the model’s face with a large gorilla mask. The bottom right section of the poster includes more bold text, but it is slightly smaller than the headliner question. The text proclaims, “Less than 5% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.” They updated the poster in 2005 and discovered that only 83% of the nudes were of women, but more than 97% of the art was made by men. The Guerrilla Girls updated their poster again in 2012, and the text revealed, “Less than 4% of the artists in the Modern Art Sections are women, but 76% of the nudes are female.”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art isn’t the only art institution that doesn’t display enough artwork created by women. Artnet and In Other Words did a joint study of acquisitions by prominent American museums in 2018, and they revealed that only 11% of the acquired artwork was made by women. One of the reasons I paint in a realistic, representational way is to engage with this history of Western art, and I want my artwork to look like it belongs in museums. I also paint a lot so I have a many canvases ready to go just in case an art director or curator suddenly realizes that 11% is slightly less than 50%, and perhaps they should have an art collection created by artists that reflects the population of their community. I personally think it would fun to hang a few of my Brodalisque paintings in an Orientalist gallery between all the traditional odalisques just to see how patrons would react.
Anyway, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres created more than one influential Orientalist composition. In 1863, the same year as the Salon des Refusés, Ingres made the Turkish Bath, which is also at the Louvre. The diameter of this round painting is about 3.5 feet across, and it is packed full of writhing, swooning nude women. The vast majority of the “Turkish” women are white, but there appears to be a couple women of color in the background, but I wouldn’t give him credit for being inclusive. Unfortunately, white artists sometimes included Black women to contrast with the white models to make the white women look more appealing to the presumed white audience. Keep in mind that this painting was made at the same time the United States was embroiled with the Civil War. Some of the women in this scene are wearing hats, jewelry, or hair coverings, but a few of them have flowing blond hair. Ingres was in his 80s when he made this painting, and he did it because he wanted to show off that he could still ogle women like a young man. Once again, the figures Ingres created defy human anatomy, but many historians and critics will argue that he made these bodies contort with rubber skeletons on purpose. Ingres has received more praise for his erotic and unrealistic bodies than criticism, and many 20th century critics saw his distortions as a success.
However, Ingres did receive some negative criticism for his work during his lifetime. After seeing Ingres’s portrait of Monsieur Bertin, photographer Nadar exclaimed, “Look especially at the right hand. Look at this fantastic bundle of flesh… under which, instead of bone and muscle, there can only be intestines, this flatulent hand whose rumblings I hear! I have dreamed about it, about your horrible hand!” While it’s likely that Ingres used a camera lucida for some of his paintings, and this could account for the distortions around the edges in the 1832 Portrait of Monsieur Bertin, I really just enjoy that Nadar was terrified of a floppy, farting hand.
Compared to Ingres’s frequent distortions of his figures, Jean-Léon Gérôme prided himself on creating “realistic” paintings and sculptures. I am invoking sarcastic air quotes for the word “realistic” because Gérôme had an agenda, and his style of painting was used to persuade his audience. He made a reputation for himself as an artist that was attentive to detail, and he was one of the few Orientalists who actually travelled to the locations he depicted. He took photographs on his journeys so he could use them as references when he returned to his studio in France, but it is important to note that he couldn’t get Egyptians to pose for the camera, and so sometimes he and his traveling companion would dress up for the pictures.
I will share more about Gérôme’s paintings after the break.
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When he painted, Jean-Léon Gérôme would create his compositions with many pieced together elements from various sources. It would be like making a collage out of stack of old National Geographic magazines without regard for the original sources. He would mix and match different landscapes, architecture, clothes, and objects together to create a composition that he thought looked good. “Cinematic” is a great way to describe his paintings, which is quite remarkable considering that he made a lot of his art before the first movie was filmed. The artist died over a decade before the first Technicolor film was created as well. If you’re unfamiliar with his art, picture the movie Gladiator because the director was strongly influenced by Gérôme’s painting Pollice Verso, which is housed at the Phoenix Art Museum. There are many other movies that mix and match cultures, histories, and costumes in a way that makes zero sense, yet they are presented as historical. This is a tradition of cultural appropriation that can be traced back to Jean-Léon Gérôme and other artists. If you’ve ever wondered why Roman emperors in your sword and sandal films are dressed like they’re headed to a Renaissance festival while the women look like they’re at a luau themed Halloween party, this is one of the reasons. However, if you show any displeasure about these paintings, Gérôme might ask you, “Are you not entertained?”
In 1879, Gérôme completed the Snake Charmer, which is a 4 foot wide horizontal composition. This canvas is at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts. This painting is set inside of a room with a mosaic wall of blue, teal, and turquoise tiles. There are five full arches along the wall, and the top of the wall features white calligraphy. The wall meets the floor about 1/3 away from the bottom edge of the canvas. The floor is composed of tiles in various shades of brown. On the left half of the canvas, leaning up against the wall, there are ten men. They are wearing various robes, galabeyas, or caftans. Many wear turbans, and one is wearing a helmet. A few of them are passively holding weapons. The oldest man is wearing a green headdress, and he is reclining with his legs stretched out in front of him. He has a saber, but his sword flops across his lap.
These men make up the audience to watch the snake charmer, who is standing in the right third of the canvas. He is a nude boy with his back to the viewer. He is undressed to assure his audience that there are no tricks up his sleeve because he doesn’t have sleeves. His skin is light brown, and he has the lightest skin color out of everyone in the painting. He is standing on a rug, and there is a large wicker basket to his left. The lid is leaning up against the basket, because the boy took out the snake, which is wrapped around his body. The serpent would be very long if it was uncoiled, but the child holds its head in his upraised left hand. The snake wraps around over the boy’s right shoulder, around his waist, forms a coil at his right hip, and the boy holds the tail in his right hand.
To the right of the snake charmer is an elderly man playing a wind instrument, such as a ney. He holds the instrument to his lips, and it protrudes forward. His left hand is higher up on the flute than his right. The man is sitting with his legs crossed on the floor, and he is wearing dull yellow-green puffy pantaloons. He has a white beard. There is a barrel shaped drum on the floor, parallel to his left thigh. Like many of Gérôme’s paintings, he pieced together various elements from different cultures and sources to create his narrative. Another common characteristic of Gérôme’s artwork is that he erases the visible presence of the Western tourist/voyeur/colonizer from the composition. However, Linda Nochlin argued that there is a Western presence his work when she wrote “The Imaginary Orient.” Nochlin stated, “The white man, the Westerner, is of course always implicitly present in the Orientalist paintings like the Snake Charmer; his is necessarily the controlling gaze, the gaze which brings the Oriental world into being, the gaze for which it is ultimately intended.”
The Snake Charmer was used for the cover of Said’s book Orientalism, but it wasn’t because this painting was seen as good example of ethnographic study even though Gérôme wanted to convince his patrons that he was recreating reality. The artist wanted the viewers to forget that his art was actually art. He painted smoothly to hide his brushstrokes, and he included minute details to persuade his viewers that he was a reliable narrator. He even included broken tiles and missing pieces from the blue wall in the Snake Charmer. While a contemporary viewer might see his attention to detail as being authentic, at the time Orientalists depicted crumbling architecture as a metaphor for corruption in Islamic society. Western artists viewed Muslims as lazy, and the message with the Snake Charmer is that Gérôme thought Middle Eastern people would rather lounge about and play with snakes than prevent their civilization from collapsing. As I mentioned earlier, this is a problematic art movement.
I do want to mention that not everything Gérôme made appears overtly racist, and some of his paintings do seem sympathetic towards his subjects. The Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, NE has two of the least problematic examples of Orientalism I’ve seen in person. Gérôme created The Meuzzin in 1865, and this is a painting of a meuzzin singing the call to prayer while standing atop a minaret on a mosque and overlooking the city. Gérôme painted The Grief of the Pasha twenty years later, and this is a scene within a hypostyle hall. The focal point of this painting is the deceased tiger upon a large blue-green rug, with pink flowers strewn around the tiger’s head and paws. A grieving man is sitting on the far right corner of the rug. I’ve also seen reproductions of some of his portraits that appear respectful of his subjects. I believe that if viewers see these types of paintings first, they will be more forgiving of his more questionable artwork later.
For example, I know several belly dancers who adore Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1875 oil painting Sabre Dance in a Café, which is at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum in New York. This horizontal canvas is set in a cafe with a stone or brick arch that encompasses the top and sides of the composition. There are sun beams shining down from the top left corner, which creates a spotlight that illuminates the dancer at the center of the canvas. She is dancing on the balls of her feet with a sword balanced on top of her head. She clutches a second sword with her right hand, and it is pointing down toward the rug she is dancing upon. Her hair is covered by a green veil, and it appears slightly windy since the fabric is billowing, which makes her sword balancing look even more impressive. She is wearing a sheer blouse, a short pink vest, a blue scarf tied around her hips, and her chest is completely covered with gold coins. The background is fairly dark, with a few musicians and audience members, but her back would be to all of them. She is performing for the painting’s viewer.
The woman in this painting is an almeh, and the original definition of the word meant she was an educated singer or dancer. But shortly after Napoleon invaded Egypt, and caused thousands of deaths, the awalim were seen as sex workers by the European colonizers. Gérôme made many paintings with other awalim, and he depicted many of these women with see-through blouses so their breasts are clearly visible. These paintings were made to appease the male gaze. From photographs I’ve seen of the awalim and the Ghawazee, these performers wore opaque shirts. It appears that their chests were secured by their short vests as well, which would make sense because dancers tend to want to wear secure costumes, not only to maintain their dignity, but also for their comfort. The Ghawazee are a dancers from Egypt, and the Banat Mazin family still performs these traditional dances to this day. All documentation I’ve seen of the Banat Mazin performances included fully clothed dancers.
As I mentioned, Gérôme took many liberties with his artwork, but he made his paintings appear realistic to convince his Western audience to trust that he was sharing what he actually saw on his travels. While he would sometimes paint active women that modern Western women can appreciate, his overall depiction of women wasn’t fantastic. In addition to using his art to promote the outdated colonialist attitude that Europeans were superior to everyone else, he also pushed the theme that men were dominant over women. If you really want to find an offensive painting, seek out The Slave Market, which is at the Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts.
Overall, Orientalism is a problematic art movement that hit its peak at the end of the 19th century in France. The most popular artists were white heteronormative men, and they created colorful and often detailed paintings for a presumed upper-class European audience of men. These compositions appeared “realistic” in order to combat Impressionism, but Renoir painted Orientalist themes with his Impressionist style. The women models depicted by Orientalists were fantasies and were often passively draped over cushions in French studios because these men would not have been permitted in actual harems. Orientalist paintings and prints not only objectify women, but they also promote bigoted colonialist attitudes. Not all the paintings in this genre are racist and sexist, but the most famous ones seem pretty offensive.
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Thank you so much for spending your time with me to explore the Modern Art movement of Orientalism. Please join me next time to learn about Postimpressionism. To find a transcript of this episode, the resources I used, or to become a patron, please visit klairelockheart.com and click on the “Media” tab. That’s K-L-A-I-R-E-L-O-C-K-H-E-A-R-T dot com. Find me on Instagram @klairelockheart to see my current projects, or you can find me on Facebook by searching for Klaire A. Lockheart.
The History of Modern Art with Klaire was created by me, Klaire Lockheart. This podcast was recorded with equipment generously provided by Aaron C. Packard of Aaron C. Packard Productions. Check out his artwork at aaronpackard.com, spelled A-A-R-O-N-P-A-C-K-A-R-D dot com.
I genuinely appreciate your support and positive feedback. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast so you won’t miss future topics. Thank you once again for joining me!
Resources
Torey Akers, “You Can't Make Me Care About Renoir: Some Thoughts On Dead Sexists,” Artspace, October 04, 2019, https://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/in_depth/you-cant-make-me-care-about-renoir-some-thoughts-on-dead-sexists-56274
Kristian Davies, The Orientalists: Western Artists in Arabia, the Sahara, Persia & India. (New York: Laynfaroh, 2005).
Laurence des Cars, ed., The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme. (Los Angeles : J. Paul Getty, 2010).
Julia Halperin & Charlotte Burns, “Museums Claim They’re Paying More Attention to Female Artists. That’s an Illusion,” Artnet, September 19, 2019, https://news.artnet.com/womens-place-in-the-art-world/womens-place-art-world-museums-1654714
Mohja Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: from Termagant to Odalisque. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.)
Peter Kalb, ed., H. H. Arnason History of Modern Art, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Inc, 2004).
Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation. (London: Routledge, 1996).
Laurel Ma, “The Real and Imaginary Harem: Assessing Delacroix’s Women of Algiers as an Imperialist Apparatus,” Penn History Review, Fall 2011.
Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” in Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth Century Art and Society, (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), 35-59.
Carol Ockman, Ingres’s Eroticized Bodies: Retracing the Serpentine Line. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
Edward Said, Orientalism. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
Chad M. Topaz, “Diversity of artists in major U.S. museums,” PLoS One, March 20, 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6426178/
Karin van Nieuwkerk, A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.)
Emily M. Weeks, 19th Century Orientalist Paintings from the Collection of Terence Garnett: Gérôme – Deutsch – Bauernfeind. (London: Sotheby's, 2007).
Kristian Davies, The Orientalists: Western Artists in Arabia, the Sahara, Persia & India. (New York: Laynfaroh, 2005).
Laurence des Cars, ed., The Spectacular Art of Jean-Léon Gérôme. (Los Angeles : J. Paul Getty, 2010).
Julia Halperin & Charlotte Burns, “Museums Claim They’re Paying More Attention to Female Artists. That’s an Illusion,” Artnet, September 19, 2019, https://news.artnet.com/womens-place-in-the-art-world/womens-place-art-world-museums-1654714
Mohja Kahf, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: from Termagant to Odalisque. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1999.)
Peter Kalb, ed., H. H. Arnason History of Modern Art, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, Inc, 2004).
Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation. (London: Routledge, 1996).
Laurel Ma, “The Real and Imaginary Harem: Assessing Delacroix’s Women of Algiers as an Imperialist Apparatus,” Penn History Review, Fall 2011.
Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” in Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth Century Art and Society, (New York: Harper and Row, 1989), 35-59.
Carol Ockman, Ingres’s Eroticized Bodies: Retracing the Serpentine Line. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
Edward Said, Orientalism. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
Chad M. Topaz, “Diversity of artists in major U.S. museums,” PLoS One, March 20, 2019, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6426178/
Karin van Nieuwkerk, A Trade Like Any Other: Female Singers and Dancers in Egypt. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.)
Emily M. Weeks, 19th Century Orientalist Paintings from the Collection of Terence Garnett: Gérôme – Deutsch – Bauernfeind. (London: Sotheby's, 2007).