Charming Snakes: Taste as Knowledge and the New Narratives of Middle Eastern Orientalist Collections

Abstract

This article examines collections of nineteenth-century European art located in the Middle East and their potential to reconfigure and expand the definition of Orientalism. It investigates how the migration of Orientalist artworks produced in Europe to the spaces they allegedly represent may generate new art-historical narratives that challenge the canonic Saidian postcolonial discourse. First, by addressing the notions of taste and knowledge, it explores the ways representations of racial and gender stereotypes are renegotiated as they enter the collection. Second, it uncovers some aspects of the understudied local histories of Orientalism through artworks produced by artists from the region, so as to broaden its narrative and emphasize its multiple dimensions. Finally, this article reflects on the notion of nostalgia as a possible framework to critically reflect on the apparent ambiguity of the increasing acquisitions of European Orientalist art by Middle Eastern collectors.

Keywords:

• Orientalism
• collecting
• Middle East
• Jean-Léon Gérôme
• nostalgia
• decolonization

Notes

1 See https://www.clarkart.edu/ArtPiece/Detail/Snake-Charmer.

2 After his release from prison in 1919, Hidayet set up his studio in Antikhana Street in Cairo, where many other artists were established. He exhibited regularly in the Cairo Salon and held several solo shows in his studio between 1925 and 1927. Hidayet mainly painted watercolour landscapes, some of them very large, of the Egyptian countryside and the shores of the Nile, as well as views of temples and ruins of Ancient Egypt. During the 1930s, he produced graphic advertising posters for the promotion of tourism in Egypt. His works can be seen at the Turkish Embassy in Cairo and at the Agricultural Museum in Cairo.

3 The technique of aquarelle would become increasingly popular in Egypt as of the 1940s when young artists were sent on governmental grants to Great Britain. Hidayet’s mastering of the technique may suggest a trip to England or that he may have been in contact with British painters in Turkey before travelling to Egypt.

4 Translated from French by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nadia Radwan

Nadia Radwan is Assistant Professor of World Art History at the Institute of Art History and the Centre for Global Studies of the University of Bern, Switzerland. She has been a researcher and has taught at the American University in Cairo, the American University of Dubai, and the University of Zurich. Her research focuses on transnational histories of the avant-garde, Arab feminisms, Middle Eastern contemporary art, primitivism and decolonization and the global museum. Her book, Les modernes d’Égypte, was published in 2017 (Peter Lang) and she is currently finishing another, Concealed Visibilities: Sensing the Aesthetics of Resistance in Global Modernism. She has published many articles on visual arts in the Middle East and collaborated on exhibition catalogues (Kunsthaus Zurich, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Sharjah Art Museum, and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts). Radwan is the co-founder of the Swiss Platform for the Study of Visual Arts, Architecture and Heritage in the Middle East and the editor-in-chief of Manazir Journal.