British Orientalist Painting, Tate Britain, London
British Orientalist Painting, Tate Britain, London
Perhaps moving on from Edward Said's groundbreaking study 'Orientalism' this is a full-scale attempt to come to terms with, interpret, explain, account for Britain's continuing involvement in Middle East affairs from the seventeenth-century onwards. The Renaissance period is indeed the exhibition's starting point with an already evolved and evolving interface between Britain and the Ottoman Empire. It has to be remembered that the West developed in tandem with the East and didn't really begin to accelerate in terms of its development until 1870 or so, when it adopted dynamite, the machine gun and other modern, epoch-defining inventions. The exhibition references this and intriguingly attempts to contrast British images of the Orient with French ones, perhaps the most revealing aspect of this exhibition for it subtly contrasts and sends up two attitudes. The exhibition maintains that French artists tended to state sexuality as a prime interest which is much more explicit than British images and depictions of the Orient. British interest is discrete, wearing silk pyjamas. French is very overt, so overt as to be summed up in depictions of Arab bums, tits and quims (only one thing on a Frenchman's mind...).
The exhibition is well-structured, but a bit unbalanced, seeming to emphasize most of its goodies at the very beginning. Chronological verisimilitude is acknowledged, but, for instance, the famous portrait of T.E.Lawrence by Augustus John is put at the exhibition's very beginning. Of course, it has nothing to do with the chronology of the exhibition, but it's wise to get the best bits over quickly and then get onto more duff stuff. Unfortunately this strategy is more distracting than rewarding. But the portrait of Lawrence is a classic and quite at odds with the other exhibits, which constantly attempt to depict the Orient as alien as the surface of the moon. The portrait of Lawrence is simultaneously distant and very, very familiar and possibly so familiar as a result of David Lean's film.
One of the highlights of the exhibition are works by Richard Dadd (1817-1866) who was invited to do an art tour of the Levant before returning to England, killing his father and subsequently getting himself confined to psychiatric hospitals for the rest of his life, dying in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. Presumably the stress of this journey abroad triggered his psychosis, for a trip to the Levant must have been extremely stressful at this time. With all the structures of normalcy removed, it's easy to see why a sensitive artist might become displaced. This indeed is the overwhelming sense of the Middle East evoked here as a place where (white western) men might go mad. Of course people tend to go 'mad' when they are wrenched out of their culture, shown either themselves or the structures that surround them in a quite different light. A Freudian analysis might contend that Dadd discovered through his journey that the taboos and systems of repressions his society dealt in were quite temporal and arbitrary and therefore, he presumably concluded, utter nonsense and dispensable. Of course his problems might be evoked in Oedipal terms, for it's all too obvious that a journey and exposure to another entirely different, utterly exotic culture might remove the structures of custom and the Oedipus complex and it's attendant taboo is a fundamental structure of life in western societies. The logical conclusion of this might have been an exploration in paintings of the contrasts between the two civilisations, but instead the clash articulated itself in Dadd's psychosis and parricide. The work that Dadd produced in those institutions are opulent, exotic evocations of his journey, marked by a tendency to abstraction and hallucinatic, glowing, luminous colour, very like the depictions of latterday lsd imbibing artists.
Another highlight is James Sant's portait in Afghan garb of Captain Colin McKenzie, who survived the debacle of the first Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842). Instead of returning to England and hiding under a stone somewhere until the disaster receded in the public mind (an entire British army was wiped out at the Battle of Kabul, 1842), McKenzie here dons the costume of an Afghan in a show of bold, obstinate, stubborn pride and stupidity which seems shocking in its arrogance, scorn and contempt for the context of what actually happened. The debacle is explicable then in terms of men like McKenzie who exhibited all the worst traits of the Imperialist, perhaps telling us that the British army really deserved everything it got (and the only thing which was at all wrong was the escape of McKenzie, who, it might be conjectured, must have been a real-life Flashman.). However, is there anything substantially different from T.E.Lawrence donning Arab constume and Captain McKenzie wearing Afghan garb? There is a change of context, of course, but why should Westerners feel that they can adopt the constume of peoples of other civilisations? The answer is, because they can and so can people of other civilisations wear western costume and only people of a rather plain, narrow-minded outlook would argue that this is unacceptable. Of course there's something camp and hilarious about it, but then dressing up in silly costumes or enjoying silly hobbies is a very British trait and a laudable one.
The exhibition is structured carefully and intelligently, with 6 major themes as well as an additional focus on some of the major travellers to the Middle East, so the primary emphasis is not on individuals. One of these travellers was Lord Byron, the portrait of him, possibly summarising the elan of Romanticism, in Oriental dress is foregrounded. Byron seems to have travelled to Greece via Gibralter, moved onto Constantinople before further wanderings in Morea and the Peloponnese. A major theme of Romantic literature is the journey, but this is coupled with a sense of indirection, loss of purpose, futile wanderings with a diminishing horizon. Lord Byron was eventually to die in a rather meaningless way at Missolonghi of fever, having travelled all the way to Greece to participate in the Greek Civil War, a war of nationalism and liberation from the Ottoman Empire. His effect was negligible but his death far away from home is nevertheless still commemorated in Greece today.
One final painting is an aerial view from a biplane of Damascus and at this point photography presumably begins to take over from painting, but this is something the exhibition fails to comment on or could have made more of (perhaps a screening of extracts from Lean's epic?). It might have been a good idea to end the exhibition with that or a contemporary photoshoot of Damascus or Gaza.
But contrasts are not ultimately of great interest to the curators of this exhibition, except for contrasts of a rather stereotypical nature. Horny Frenchmen, cold, repressed adopted Englishmen like T.E.Lawrence.
Paul Murphy, the Tate Britain, London
Perhaps moving on from Edward Said's groundbreaking study 'Orientalism' this is a full-scale attempt to come to terms with, interpret, explain, account for Britain's continuing involvement in Middle East affairs from the seventeenth-century onwards. The Renaissance period is indeed the exhibition's starting point with an already evolved and evolving interface between Britain and the Ottoman Empire. It has to be remembered that the West developed in tandem with the East and didn't really begin to accelerate in terms of its development until 1870 or so, when it adopted dynamite, the machine gun and other modern, epoch-defining inventions. The exhibition references this and intriguingly attempts to contrast British images of the Orient with French ones, perhaps the most revealing aspect of this exhibition for it subtly contrasts and sends up two attitudes. The exhibition maintains that French artists tended to state sexuality as a prime interest which is much more explicit than British images and depictions of the Orient. British interest is discrete, wearing silk pyjamas. French is very overt, so overt as to be summed up in depictions of Arab bums, tits and quims (only one thing on a Frenchman's mind...).
The exhibition is well-structured, but a bit unbalanced, seeming to emphasize most of its goodies at the very beginning. Chronological verisimilitude is acknowledged, but, for instance, the famous portrait of T.E.Lawrence by Augustus John is put at the exhibition's very beginning. Of course, it has nothing to do with the chronology of the exhibition, but it's wise to get the best bits over quickly and then get onto more duff stuff. Unfortunately this strategy is more distracting than rewarding. But the portrait of Lawrence is a classic and quite at odds with the other exhibits, which constantly attempt to depict the Orient as alien as the surface of the moon. The portrait of Lawrence is simultaneously distant and very, very familiar and possibly so familiar as a result of David Lean's film.
One of the highlights of the exhibition are works by Richard Dadd (1817-1866) who was invited to do an art tour of the Levant before returning to England, killing his father and subsequently getting himself confined to psychiatric hospitals for the rest of his life, dying in Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. Presumably the stress of this journey abroad triggered his psychosis, for a trip to the Levant must have been extremely stressful at this time. With all the structures of normalcy removed, it's easy to see why a sensitive artist might become displaced. This indeed is the overwhelming sense of the Middle East evoked here as a place where (white western) men might go mad. Of course people tend to go 'mad' when they are wrenched out of their culture, shown either themselves or the structures that surround them in a quite different light. A Freudian analysis might contend that Dadd discovered through his journey that the taboos and systems of repressions his society dealt in were quite temporal and arbitrary and therefore, he presumably concluded, utter nonsense and dispensable. Of course his problems might be evoked in Oedipal terms, for it's all too obvious that a journey and exposure to another entirely different, utterly exotic culture might remove the structures of custom and the Oedipus complex and it's attendant taboo is a fundamental structure of life in western societies. The logical conclusion of this might have been an exploration in paintings of the contrasts between the two civilisations, but instead the clash articulated itself in Dadd's psychosis and parricide. The work that Dadd produced in those institutions are opulent, exotic evocations of his journey, marked by a tendency to abstraction and hallucinatic, glowing, luminous colour, very like the depictions of latterday lsd imbibing artists.
Another highlight is James Sant's portait in Afghan garb of Captain Colin McKenzie, who survived the debacle of the first Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842). Instead of returning to England and hiding under a stone somewhere until the disaster receded in the public mind (an entire British army was wiped out at the Battle of Kabul, 1842), McKenzie here dons the costume of an Afghan in a show of bold, obstinate, stubborn pride and stupidity which seems shocking in its arrogance, scorn and contempt for the context of what actually happened. The debacle is explicable then in terms of men like McKenzie who exhibited all the worst traits of the Imperialist, perhaps telling us that the British army really deserved everything it got (and the only thing which was at all wrong was the escape of McKenzie, who, it might be conjectured, must have been a real-life Flashman.). However, is there anything substantially different from T.E.Lawrence donning Arab constume and Captain McKenzie wearing Afghan garb? There is a change of context, of course, but why should Westerners feel that they can adopt the constume of peoples of other civilisations? The answer is, because they can and so can people of other civilisations wear western costume and only people of a rather plain, narrow-minded outlook would argue that this is unacceptable. Of course there's something camp and hilarious about it, but then dressing up in silly costumes or enjoying silly hobbies is a very British trait and a laudable one.
The exhibition is structured carefully and intelligently, with 6 major themes as well as an additional focus on some of the major travellers to the Middle East, so the primary emphasis is not on individuals. One of these travellers was Lord Byron, the portrait of him, possibly summarising the elan of Romanticism, in Oriental dress is foregrounded. Byron seems to have travelled to Greece via Gibralter, moved onto Constantinople before further wanderings in Morea and the Peloponnese. A major theme of Romantic literature is the journey, but this is coupled with a sense of indirection, loss of purpose, futile wanderings with a diminishing horizon. Lord Byron was eventually to die in a rather meaningless way at Missolonghi of fever, having travelled all the way to Greece to participate in the Greek Civil War, a war of nationalism and liberation from the Ottoman Empire. His effect was negligible but his death far away from home is nevertheless still commemorated in Greece today.
One final painting is an aerial view from a biplane of Damascus and at this point photography presumably begins to take over from painting, but this is something the exhibition fails to comment on or could have made more of (perhaps a screening of extracts from Lean's epic?). It might have been a good idea to end the exhibition with that or a contemporary photoshoot of Damascus or Gaza.
But contrasts are not ultimately of great interest to the curators of this exhibition, except for contrasts of a rather stereotypical nature. Horny Frenchmen, cold, repressed adopted Englishmen like T.E.Lawrence.
Paul Murphy, the Tate Britain, London
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