British Orientalist Painting Exhbition, London

Suheir · 06-08-2008, 06:37 PM

This looks interesting: Tate Britain| Current Exhibitions | The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting

I'll pay it a visit and see if the descriptions pander to the fantasies!

taheya · 06-08-2008, 09:03 PM

Oooh thanks Suheir looks really interesting, going to try and go.

maylynn · 06-10-2008, 09:22 AM

That DOES sound good! I'm going to try to go this weekend.

Suheir · 07-03-2008, 09:41 PM

Has anyone else been to see the exhibition? I went a couple of weeks ago, it was fantastic, both from the art point of view and the (sometimes completely fanciful) social history.

The most interesting room of paintings for me was entitled "Harem" - all of the paintings, bar one, were male sexual fantasy! The solitary painting by a female artist (Henriette Browne, professional name of the french artist Sophie de Saux) "Harem Interior, Constantinople 1860" was the only one to feature fully-clad women and a child, engaged in their normal domestic business and didn't portray the women's quarters as "a sexual prison people by indolent women".

Apart from the wonderful array of paintings there was also a slide show of photos. My favourite was "Egyptian Harem Women At The Dressmaker's Shop, 1900". The two women in the photo, dressed entirely in white, looked exactly like any other corsetted, fashionably-dressed, upper-middle class Western woman of the time, except they both had white veils swathed around the lower parts of their hats and faces. The polar opposite of the ridiculous fantasy of the corpulent, scantily-clad sex-slave who spends all her time longing for her turn at writhing about on her Sultan (!).

I also liked "Hotel D'Angleterre, 1860" which was an aerial street scene from Cairo. Almost everybody in the photo was wearing totally Western dress, riding bicycles, again looking no different to the Western upper-middle classes.

There was also a wall projection which showed the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire and how new modes of travel had opened up the "Orient" to Westerners. Steamboat travel in the 1830s, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the arrival of the railways in the latter half of the 19th century all further opened up the Middle East to British commercial, diplomatic and military travellers and, of course, those with enough money to travel for pleasure.

The first paintings in the exhibition were 17th century portraits of a merchant and his wife, so Egypt was hardly unknown in England at that time. I'm sure the merchants' wives were delighted by the colourful silks and many of the paintings show families dressed in the Ottoman style.

I remembered I hadn't written-up the exhibition yet when I read this nonsense on a UK teacher's website this evening:

"In the days of the sultans, the women of the harem had little to do all day except sit around on cushions, gossip, eat sweetmeats and dance for each other. So we decided it was about time we brought the best bits of the harem back for ourselves"

06-08-2008, 06:37 PM	#1 (permalink)
Suheir V.I.P. Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Europe - London Posts: 1,227	British Orientalist Painting Exhbition, London This looks interesting: Tate Britain\| Current Exhibitions \| The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting I'll pay it a visit and see if the descriptions pander to the fantasies!

06-10-2008, 09:22 AM	#3 (permalink)
maylynn Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Location: London Posts: 155	That DOES sound good! I'm going to try to go this weekend. __________________ http://www.urbanamazon.co.uk

06-08-2008, 09:03 PM	#2 (permalink)
taheya Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: uk Posts: 502	Oooh thanks Suheir looks really interesting, going to try and go.

07-03-2008, 09:41 PM	#4 (permalink)
Suheir V.I.P. Join Date: Jul 2006 Location: Europe - London Posts: 1,227	Has anyone else been to see the exhibition? I went a couple of weeks ago, it was fantastic, both from the art point of view and the (sometimes completely fanciful) social history. The most interesting room of paintings for me was entitled "Harem" - all of the paintings, bar one, were male sexual fantasy! The solitary painting by a female artist (Henriette Browne, professional name of the french artist Sophie de Saux) "Harem Interior, Constantinople 1860" was the only one to feature fully-clad women and a child, engaged in their normal domestic business and didn't portray the women's quarters as "a sexual prison people by indolent women". Apart from the wonderful array of paintings there was also a slide show of photos. My favourite was "Egyptian Harem Women At The Dressmaker's Shop, 1900". The two women in the photo, dressed entirely in white, looked exactly like any other corsetted, fashionably-dressed, upper-middle class Western woman of the time, except they both had white veils swathed around the lower parts of their hats and faces. The polar opposite of the ridiculous fantasy of the corpulent, scantily-clad sex-slave who spends all her time longing for her turn at writhing about on her Sultan (!). I also liked "Hotel D'Angleterre, 1860" which was an aerial street scene from Cairo. Almost everybody in the photo was wearing totally Western dress, riding bicycles, again looking no different to the Western upper-middle classes. There was also a wall projection which showed the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire and how new modes of travel had opened up the "Orient" to Westerners. Steamboat travel in the 1830s, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the arrival of the railways in the latter half of the 19th century all further opened up the Middle East to British commercial, diplomatic and military travellers and, of course, those with enough money to travel for pleasure. The first paintings in the exhibition were 17th century portraits of a merchant and his wife, so Egypt was hardly unknown in England at that time. I'm sure the merchants' wives were delighted by the colourful silks and many of the paintings show families dressed in the Ottoman style. I remembered I hadn't written-up the exhibition yet when I read this nonsense on a UK teacher's website this evening: "In the days of the sultans, the women of the harem had little to do all day except sit around on cushions, gossip, eat sweetmeats and dance for each other. So we decided it was about time we brought the best bits of the harem back for ourselves"