Lynne Thornton

This book is much more like what I had hoped for in my disappointed reading of Idols of Perversity, Bram Dijkstra's feminist study of representations of women in fin-de-siècle culture. Despite the small page format of this ACR PocheCouleur Orientalists series, the illustrations are in color throughout, and they embrace a terrific range of paintings organized by theme. It appears that Orientalist art expert Lynne Thornton's text was written with free reference to the whole universe of such works, and she has been to some trouble to acquire rights to very many of them. The optimal reading technique here requires regular reference to the index of illustrations at the back of the book, in order to find works and artists mentioned while reading Thornton's characterizations of them.

Thornton's account treats both the realities and the European perceptions of various institutions in the 19th-century Muslim world, including the harem, the hammam (i.e. public bath), and slavery. She often has recourse to the relevant commentary of European women from the period, such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Lady Anne Blunt, Lady Duff Gordon, and Mabel Bent.

Although this book is genuinely a work of art history and aesthetic criticism, rather than the polemic of Dijkstra's book mentioned above, Thornton is culturally astute and incisive. She offers insightful comments regarding the projection of European sensibilities in 19th-century depictions of the Near East and North Africa (the "Orient" in question for these Orientalist painters). For example, "It is, however, extremely rare to find an Orientalist painting in which the woman is sexually satisfied" (122). This remark coordinates with others to demonstrate that despite the sometimes salacious exoticism of the whole Orientalist art project, moral and sexual license were if anything more inhibited than in other subject matter of the period, but similarly circumscribed by masculine appetites.

The art images in the book are very well reproduced on heavy glossy paper, representing a comprehensive survey of the field indicated in the title.… (mer)

From the 1700's until the 1920's the West thought the Orient to be poetical, erotic, and violent. That it was also an object of fascination shows among others from the depiction of Oriental life in European painting. Such paintings showed scenes of elite Europeans in Oriental costumes, but also scenes of slave markets and Turkish baths. Orientalist paintings almost always have secular themes, unlike the turbans appearing in Biblical depictions of 17th century Dutch paintings.

This book was originally written in French, and most of the paintings show l’orientalism au français. Whereas Victorian painters rarely depicted harem scenes, the French had few qualms about them. Near Eastern women in their quarters were their most popular theme. Male strangers could not visit a harem, and harem scenes were therefore prime objects of imagination. Both domesticities and voluptuous fantasies were painted. It did not matter that harem depictions of men surrounded by nude women (usually slender with seductive curves) and basking in an atmosphere of heady fragrances, soft music and over-indulgence had little relation with reality, and the inertness of women depicted in these paintings reflected equally well on elite society in Europe at the time. Equally, the cigarette and narghile smoking common in these paintings also reflected the growing popularity of this habit in Europe. Often the women portrayed were supposed to be Circassian (i.e. white), surrounded by their black servants.

Few of the paintings in this book hang in top rank musea. With a few exceptions most are by minor masters of all schools and styles of figurative painting. That does not mean that they are not nice to look at. Some, e.g. Jean-Leon Gerome's, look like scenes from Hollywood movies, as indeed some of his other pictures have been used for. And if you've spent half your school years' time for homework suffering Fernweh while reading your atlas, no modern critique of Orientalism will stop you from enjoying this little booklet. It is also quite informative about hammam visits and other Near Eastern practices.… (mer)