Revival of Western visions fails to live up to its Eastern promise
Orientalism was a 19th-century art movement that essentially meant visions of the East by artists of the West. Numerous European painters, such as England’s John Frederick Lewis, travelled to areas of the Near East, Middle East and North Africa and were left wide-eyed at the exoticism of what they saw. Though hugely popular in the 19th-century, Orientalist pictures have been distinctly unfashionable here for several decades now, often seen as rooted in crude stereotypes and imperialism.
Credit to the British Museum, then, for deciding the movement deserves a shot at reassessment – and devoting a new exhibition to it.
The story starts as far back as 1500 or so, as trade between Europe and its neighbours greatly expanded. Spices and silks were among the commodities that flooded into the West. There also grew a fondness for richly decorated objects in ceramics and glass – so much so that Europeans soon started creating imitations of “Oriental” originals. The exhibition includes a host of these, including a strikingly turquoise French bottle, inspired by 17th-century pottery from Persia.
The core part of Inspired by the East, though, is its paintings. In the 19th century, as the British started exerting colonial influence in lands such as Egypt and Sudan, and the French did likewise in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, these places became increasingly accessible to artists.
Scenes include hookah smokers, dice players, snake charmers and jug sellers. The Paris-based painters, Ludwig Deutsch and Jean-léon Gérôme, are responsible for two of the boldest images on view: At Prayer and
The Grain Threshers respectively. The former depicts an old man praying; the latter two oxen pulling a grainthreshing contraption across a field.
For those who like their paintings as escapism, to transport them instantly to some faraway place, the Orientalists take some beating. For those who like their paintings rooted in accuracy and historical fact, however, this isn’t a show for you.
The exotic allure of the East became so fashionable among Europe’s late-19th-century elite that many artists began exaggerating scenes – or, in some cases, completely inventing them. The likes of Gérôme were known to buy lamps, pipes, carpets and other objects abroad; take them home; and artfully deploy them as props for paintings in their studio.
One of the most recurring subjects in Orientalism was the harem. These were private, women-only spaces which no male could ever access, but that didn’t stop European artists letting their imaginations run wild. They now had the perfect excuse to paint women in various states of undress, in scenes that might otherwise have been deemed pornographic in London or Paris.
Strangely, there’s barely a harem scene included at the British Museum. Nor, for that matter, is there a single painting by Eugène Delacroix, who – with work such as The Fanatics of Tangiers in the 1820s and 1830s – was the godfather of Orientalist art. There’s no look either at 20th-century artists
such as Matisse who, though not out-and-out Orientalists, were influenced by the movement.
These omissions can be put down to the fact almost all the exhibits are from the BM’S own collection or that of the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia (IAMM), where this show tours next year. In other words, the pool of works from which Inspired by the East is drawn is disappointingly small.
One final regret is that there’s no acknowledgement of a most interesting, recent twist in the tale. Which is that, over the past 10 to 15 years, many big new museums have been springing up in the Islamic world – and ignited the market for Orientalist painting (museums such as IAMM, in fact). They’ve voraciously bought these visual records of their heritage, from a time when Islamic edicts against figuration meant local artists didn’t produce similar scenes.
Inspired by the East may be a colourful affair – but the story it tells has so many gaps, it’s disorienting.
From Thurs to Jan 26; 020 7323 8181; britishmuseum.org