Thread: "The Imaginary Orient" by Linda Nochlin

I recently read an interesting essay by an art historian named Linda Nochlin who talked about Orientalist art from the perspective of the society in which the artists lived and the motives behind them painting what they did.

The essay includes some analysis of the work by Jean Leon Gerome, whom we know as the artist who painted "Almeh with Sword" (ie, the cover art for Serpent of the Nile) and "Dance of the Almeh". It doesn't discuss these two specific pieces of art, using as examples instead some of his other work. Still, the points it makes about him can be applied to these two works as well. It also talks about works by other Orientalist painters.

I found this essay in a book called "The Politics of Vision", which I was able to buy used on Amazon. But I think it may have appeared in some other books as well.

For those who want to connect the dots between Orientalism and our dance, this essay is worth a look.

Care to share some of the points, Shira? I wrote a paper that included some stuff about Gerome too, so I'm always interested in other viewpoints.

One interesting comment about Gerome that Nochlin made was that, although he had a reputation for realism, his paintings were characterized just as much by what he omitted as by what he included.

For example, he depicted quaint scenes of locals, while omitting the presence of any Western influence which, by his time, was pervasive. Nochline pointed out that if one of Gerome's paintings depicted a group of people watching an entertainer, all those observers would be locals in traditional attire, while in real-life if Gerome was present to witness it then probably so were a number of other Westerners. Yet he didn't include them in the picture....

Nochlin also writes about how it was common back then for artists to hire prostitutes to serve as models for the nude paintings, and then purchase other, ah, services from those women after putting away the paintbrushes. Many of the allegedly-Oriental nude paintings of the day were painted in Europe using such models.