Orientalist Painting

Claire Russo Material Worlds Response Paper, week 3

In “The Location of Culture,” Homi Bhaba discusses the creation and perpetuation of stereotypes by Westerners in their conquering of peoples and lands outside of their intellectual and cultural domains. Colonial discourse, Bhaba maintains, allowed Europeans to control conquered peoples of the western coast of Africa and the “Orient,” for example, mainly through the general stereotyping of these local peoples. Stereotypes allowed Europeans to categorize and simplify the immensity of the territories which they were beginning to conquer. They also clarified the mission of colonization by perpetuating the idea that indigenous groups needed Europeans to rescue them from the general moral decrepitude of their daily lives.

In order to group millions of square miles of territory into a few specific stereotypes, colonial powers relied on public imagination and artistic creativity to cement stereotypes successfully. From the “Orient,” which spanned the near and far east, blossomed stereotypes categorizing local peoples as having fallen into societal unrest and sloth. Colonial discourse “…is an apparatus that turns on the recognition and disavowel of racial/cultural/historical differences… The objective of colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest and establish systems of administration and instruction” (Bhaba, 101.)

In order to demonstrate to Europeans the necessity of colonization, governments perpetuated these colonial stereotypes with the dispersion of artistic references supporting colonial motives. Orientalist painting, which grew very popular during the Victorian Era, particularly in France, served a distinct purpose in the formation of colonial discourse by demonstrating, through the valid and accredited medium of fine art, that the indigenous tribes conquered by western governments truly needed the guidance of colonial governments. Bhaba revels that artists, with the liberty to portray the Orient as romantically as they pleased, cemented many stereotypes as reality. He cites Said, who was aware the “Orientalism… is, on the one hand, a topic of learning, discovery, practice; on the other, it is the site of dreams, images, fantasies, myths, obsessions, and requirements” (Bhaba, 102). Orientalist artists, therefore, expertly combined elements from the realities of the colonial near East, as well as played up the romantic fantasies circulating European society at the time. Images and concepts of the decay of the ancient civilizations of the east, the fall in glory the Oriental peoples had suffered, and the possibility for European revival of the region were displayed to an eager public on canvases sporting bright colors, accurate depictions of architecture and landscape, and romantic embellishments of race, sexuality, servitude, and sensuality in individuals.

Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps, a young French artist, traveled the Middle East and painted the glories he witnessed in the beginning of the 19th century. Decamps was one of the first artists to exploit the romantic mirage posed by the Middle East. His The Turkish Patrol, 1831, captures the drama of a chase through the antique streets of a Turkish town. Mysterious shadows, unruly Turks wielding swords, and racing horses demonstrated to the Europeans who flocked to see the work that the Orient was a land seeped in both spontaneity and danger, a far cry from the orderliness which dominated European town life.

Jean-Leon Gerome, a contemporary of Decamps, and perhaps the most famous of Orientalist artists, successfully portrayed the subjects of his paintings as simultaneously glamorous and in desperate need of the stability European order would bring. His Pool in Harem, 1876, for example, demonstrates the public nudity and general slovenliness of the women lounging around a bath, that, it follows, European colonialism could set straight. Gerome remained a favorite of the French court, and was commissioned for many paintings and sent around the Middle and Near East, as well as Egypt, to paint paintings for the royal family.

European artists eagerly aided their colonial governments in cementing a concept of the Orient that revolved around the romantic portrayal of a mysterious region in need of European sovereignty and salvation. Artists of the time created works that appealed to the imagination of the European psyche, and therefore both developed and reinforced stereotypes about the peoples of the east. Bhaba reveals that Orientalist artists, in fact, contributed a great deal to the European perception of the realities of colonialism and the necessity and justification of colonial rule.

Bibliography: Artcyclopedia. Alexandre-Gabriel Decmaps. http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/decamps_alexandre-gabriel.html .

Artcyclopedia. Arists by Subject Matter: Orienatlists. http://www.artcyclopedia.com/subjects/Orientalism.html .

Bhaba, Homi; 2004. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge.

Jean-Léon Gérôme - His Life, His Work 1824-1904", Gerald M Ackerman, ACR Edition, http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/d/decamps/t_patrol.html .

Jean-Leon Gerome. http://www.mezzo-mondo.com/arts/mm/orientalist/european/gerome/gerome.html .