orientalism & reality

Orientalism as Told by Jean-Léon Gérôme

The Truth About Reality as Revealed by Henry Mercier

orientalism & reality

Orientalism as Told byJean-Léon Gérôme

The Truth About Reality as Revealed byHenry Mercier

Gérôme: Turkish Bath or Moorish Bath, Two Women.

Mercier: Berber wedding ceremony in Morocco

Artist Overview and Origins of Work

Depictions of Everyday Life

Geographical and Architectural Representation

Results and Contributions Made to Society

Conclusions

With criticism from Edward Said’s Orientalism,

Linda Nochlin, Nezar AlSayyad, John House,

and commentary by Nadine and Laura Sobrado

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Contents

Artist overview and origins of workBiographies by Gerald M. Ackerman and Louis Brunot. Translated by Nadine Sobrado

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Gérôme: Self-Portrait Photograph of Henry Mercier in a bazaar in Marrakesh, Rabat or Tangier. Mercier Spoke fluent French, Arabic and several dialects of the indigenous Berber languages of Morocco and Tunisia.

“I think his love of Morocco was higher He was very fond of the desert, and as you can see on some pictures, surrounded with very Moroccan style furniture, while some other Colonials would prefer to live in a more western way.”

-Nadine Sobrado (on Heny Mercier)

“I think his love of Morocco was higher He was very fond of the desert, and as you can see on some pictures, surrounded with very Moroccan style furniture, while some other Colonials would prefer to live in a more western way.”

-Nadine Sobrado (on Heny Mercier)

than his military, social, colonial life.

Artist Overview and Origins of Work

Jean-Léon Gérôme: Henry Mercier:Professor Henry Mercier was born in Tunisia December 8, 1903. He passed with high honors, the challenging exams of military translator in Alger, Algeria at 18 years old, [which was an unusual young age at the time] and ranked first among all the ones who passed those exams. In Morocco, in 1922, he again ranked first for the second part of the military translator, which was a training/practice “in the field,” probably related to some intelligence work. Very soon, his own studies on the local dialects and social customs for those North African regions called the attention of the high authorities of the “Arabic” experts department. He was then mandated to perform classified mis-sions that allowed and favored a deep relationship with the different parts of the moroccan population. He always had a natural curiosity in social and political matters, and those missions allowed him to gain a huge knowledge of Islam in Morocco, and to extend tremendously his linguistic understandings of the local dialectes. He patiently gathered and organized those in a form of note cards. At that point, he decided to form a new way of teaching spoken Arabic that use methods and systems completely new at the time (no Berlioz at the time, or Rosetta Stone). He used the phonetics to allow the new legion officers to get familiar and fluent with Arabic in a way that is simple, with non complicated rules. For example, he presented the verbs (mostly irregular) in a way that made them all regular and easier to learn. Soon he was recognized for his work and studies and the Institute of High Moroccan Studies called him as a Maitre de Conferences (like a PhD Chair person) to teach and share his work. Also, at the same time, he had to run the department of History of the Muslim dialects and institutions at the School of High Rank Officers. He was to chair the same department at l’Ecole d’Administration de Paris. After several years, he decided to put an end to his military carreer to dedicate his time to develop and improve his linguistics approach of the Arabic

Jean-Léon Gérôme was born in Vesoul and was the first son of Pierre Gérôme, a goldsmith, and his wife Claude Françoise Mélanie Vuillemot, a merchant’s daughter. At school in Vesoul he had much academic success from an early age, in his final year receiving first prize in chemistry, an honourable mention in physics and another prize in oil painting, having commenced painting lessons when aged 14 after five years of drawing classes. His drawing master was Claude-Basile Cariage, a strict task master in the academic methods who is thought to have once worked in the atelier of either J. B. Regnault or of Ingres. His schooling complete, in 1840 at the age of 16, he set out for Paris with a letter of introduction to Paul Delaroche who was then at the height of his fame. Delaroche’s style, which he naturally communicated to his students, was a fusion of the academic Neo-classical school and the dramatic subject matter of the romantics in which the uni-versal themes of the former were replaced with the personal psychological studies typical of the latter, resulting in, what might be termed, a historical genre painting style. He was later to refer to his year in Rome as the happiest and best time of his life.In Italy, he spent much time studying the antiquities, which formed the basis for many of his later motifs, and it was in the Naples museum that he encountered the fa-mous gladiatoral armour from Pompeii that was to inspire his gladiatorial scenes. However, his stay in Italy was cut short by a bout of typhoid fever and his mother had to travel from Vesoul to nurse him. Returning to Paris in the autumn of 1844, he entered the atelier of the famous Swiss painter and teacher Charles Gleyre (1806-1874) who had more or less taken over from Delaroche. He was a popular teacher and an excellent and erudite draughtsman, with a technique in oils considered to be one of the most secure at the time - this when oil paint was not yet supplied in tubes and a careful scientific mixing was required to avoid rapid deterioration of the pigments over time. Amongst his many later famous students, to whom he had obviously imparted his special techniques, were

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Gérôme in his suit for the French Legion of Honor, The Work in Marble, Gérôme at work in his studio

Monet, Renoir, Bazille and Whistler. Besides the usual drawing or painting from a model or cast, Gleyre also taught composition— a rare occur-rence in an atelier. Remembering his own poverty as a student, he never charged attendance fees at his classes.Gleyre’s traditional empathy with Phidias and Ra-phael was at a time when the Realist movement was developing and his own compositions might have seemed somewhat old-fashioned, however his students reacted inventively, keeping their master’s classical figures and settings with their idealized backgrounds, but instead of employing elements of the grand manner to paint historical, biblical or mythological subjects, they painted an-tique genre scenes. His students became known as the Pompeïstes or Neo-grecs and Gérôme—doubtlessly due to the learned and sophisticated wit of his compositions together with their fresh-ness and accuracy—became known as the leader of this small group. However, in addition to Gleyre’s attention to correct and accurate settings in his composi-tions which seemed to either parallel or influence

those of Gérôme, he also had an enthusiasm for the Near East—an area which was ultimately to become Gérôme’s destiny. When Delaroche returned to Paris from Rome, summoned to work on an important com-mission, Gérôme left Gleyre’s studio to become his assistant and he stayed for almost a year. Delaroche encouraged him to prepare paintings for the Salon and he was soon commissioned to paint a reproduction for the Queen. For this he was given a studio in the Louvre. It was to be the first of a long series of official commissions. He also worked on “The Cock Fight,” a large canvas combining nude studies with animals, which he intended for the Salon of 1847. Having got a taste for oriental travel after visiting Turkey in 1855 to make studies for a large official commission, he was soon to visit Egypt in preparation for the Salon of 1857 in which his first Egyptian genre paintings were shown. Gautier saw in them a true and fresh view of the Near East. The variety of subjects and themes he presented were astonishing and this was to mark the start of his career as an Orientalist or a peintre

ethnographique. At the end of 1861 Gérôme planned an eight month visit to Egypt and the Near East when he also visited Judea, Syria and the Holy Places. In January 1868, he set off upon a three-and-a-half month excursion to the Middle East in the company of 8 other friends, including the young photographer Albert Goupil. By this time he had learned Arabic and was a seasoned traveller as well as a lively and convivial companion. Gérôme was at the height of his career: regularly a guest of the Empress at the Imperial Court at Compiègne; he was a professor at the École; elected a member of the Imperial Institute in 1865; promoted from a knight to an officer in the Legion of Honour in 1867; elected an honorary member of the British Royal Academy in 1869; and awarded a decoration, the Grand Order of the Red Eagle, Third Class, by the King of Prussia. In the autumn of 1869 he was invited to be among the distinguished group of French artistic and literary élite to see the opening of the Suez Canal. During the latter part of his life Gérôme was

19th century map of Morocco, photograph of Mercier in Rabat, permit authorized by the French-Moroccan government ackowledging authoritative position in Morocco

language. He was eager to render the language in itself accessible, therefore promoting a better communication between the 2 different com-munities. He also had at heart to promote the Moroccan culture through the social, intellectual and family life.-Louis Brunot

French-Arabic Dictionary:M.H. Mercier has given us, several years ago, a language that has entered the hands of all Arabists, [those with interest in the Arab stud-ies]. It has been said here all the good that one has thought to think of this indispensable tool of work. In 1951, he published a new Arabic-French dictionary, in response to the his first publication (French-Arab), conceived according to the same principles/organization. Those two volumes offered a totally innova-tive approach (at the time) by using latin charac-ters in a non-latin writing. For the first time, the French libraries had offered such material. This innovation would not have been enough

if those volumes also had not brought more clarity and convenience in this language, which they do. As from that time, the Arabists, now had the opportunity to use a very homogeneous en-semble of different material (dictionaries, dialect studies, social and political gatherings etc.) to understand better who the Moroccans were. Written: <<The lexicographic work don’t have a point of endness.>> One will not make grievance to Mr. Mercier to have omitted from this to there some vocabularies or rare expres-sions or metaphors. Who will claim to collect all the words that were used for more than a million of Morocans linguistically very diverse? The essential is that the chosen words-and all their ways that each can receive—to be from a standard use. Now Mr. Mercier has given us fifty thousand. This is to say that he greatly exceeded the minimum that one could reclaim from one book practice. The author attained their goal. A <<daunting task>> is the classification of terms. The classifying by roots is evidently logical and we gladly hope it the same for the European language dictionaries. However, if these last

languages have conserved the alphabetic clas-sification —perfectly arbitrary and illogical—it is without doubt because it became impossible to easily detect and from the first sight the root from the word. In Arabic it is easier in most cases, but one must identify that the Semitic root was not discovered until after a grammatical stripping of terms, and that the modifications and their evanescences of stroke ((hamza), w and y) complicate work, like a knot in a lace of a shoe at the moment of taking off your shoes. Also, one understands that when on coming to adopt for Arabic noted in Latin characters the universal alphabetic order that scatters all the pages from an artificial dictionary the different words derive from the same root fiah = he opened, under F, meftah =clef (music?) under M, llejtah = it was opened, under T, etc. This is what Mr. Mercier re-solved not without anticipating the reader which the vowels could alterate to the completion of a derivation or in certain positions from the word in the phrase, or even disappear. The truth is, that the long vowels are stable and if Mr. Mercier has marked them, one way

Artist Overview and Origins of Work11

Collectives of Gérômes work as a student and rising painter in France before his journeys to the “Near” and “Far East” where he utilizes tra-ditional techniques but abandones mythological and subjects from antiquity; begins his “Orientalist” genre of panting: L-R, and top to bottom CLeopatra and Caesar, The Cock Fight, The Death of Caesar, The Virgin, Infant Jesus and St. John, Phyrne, GrecianInterior, Le Gynece.

a vehement opponent of the Impressionist move-ment in painting. He caused a scandal over his opposition to the Caillebotte bequest to the state where he encouraged the Institute to write a letter to the Minister of Public Instruction protesting the exhibition of the large collection of Impressionist works in the Luxembourg Gallery - to no avail however - the collection was ultimately to become the foundation of the Musée d’Orsay collection. He also organised a public demonstration in his atelier and gave interviews to reporters. Similarly he objected to the Manet memorial exhibition at the École in 1884.

These are engravings that Mercier collected while he was in and around cities like Rabat, Marrakesh and Tangier. Although Mercier, like many of the com-manders represent a part in the greater French Colonialism during the 19th and early 20th century, he became an inte-gral part of local Moroccan society with his contributions to Moroccan both the French and Moroccan cultures.

or another, the difficulty of classifying the words holds accountable the vowels which have been eased, from less the usages from a dictionary they will have had the certainty what they didn’t have to fear the possible modifications of these obliged vowels. One will respond that the text (oral or written) that supplied the given <<length of the vowel>> before the consultation from the glos-sary and that from the doing of uneasy disappear. However, one will persist to feel that the length of the vowels to an importance large that must be noted above all for the French of whom the lan-guage is absolutely devoid of this discriminative mark of numerous grammatical values in Arabic.

The General Bonaparte in Cairo, Audience of the Siam Ambassadors at Fontainebleu

“The period of immense advance in the institutions and content of Orientalism coincides exactly with the period of unparalleled European expansion;

Every continent was affected, no more so than Africa and Asia.” -Edward Said

from 1815 to 1914, European direct colonial dominion expanded from about 35% of the earth’s surface to about 85% of it.

“He had been invited to several Berber wed dings, which usually they would not do that much. I think my grandfather was admired in the colonial circle for his knowledge, but considered a high rank officer, period.” -Nadine Sobrado

An old fortress, in Marrakesh or Rabat, A dynamic and beautifully composed letter sent to Mercier among many, many others during his career

“The period of immense advance in the institutions and content of Orientalism coincides exactly with the period of unparalleled European expansion;

Every continent was affected, no more so than Africa and Asia.” -Edward Said

from 1815 to 1914, European direct colonial dominion expanded from about 35% of the earth’s surface to about 85% of it.

“He had been invited to several Berber wed dings, which usually they would not do that much. I think my grandfather was admired in the colonial circle for his knowledge, but considered a high rank officer, period.” -Nadine Sobrado

Artist Overview and Origins of Work15

Depictions of everyday lifeWith criticism and commentary from Edward Said’s Orientalism and Linda Nochlin

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The Black Poet Street Vendor in Rabat

“They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.” -Karl Marx, the Eighteenth Burmaire of Louis Bonaparte

During his time, Gérôme was considered to be an ethnographer and that his paintings were mere relections of his experiences in the Islamic world. As Mercier’s photographs clearly show true everyday life in Morocco, we have a concrete foundation with which we can really believe or disagree with Gérôme’s imagery. “One absence in Gérôme’s painting’s is the absence of history. Time stands still as it does in all imagery qualified as “picturesque,” in-cluding nineteenth-century representations of pesants in France itself. Gérôme suggests that this Oriental world is a world without change, a world of timeless, atemporal customs and

“They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented.” -Karl Marx, the Eighteenth Burmaire of Louis Bonaparte

Old Clothing Merchant in Cairo Vendors in Marrakesh

Markos Botsaris The Sultan of Morroco, Sidi-Mohammed and his vizers

rituals, untouched by the historical processes that were “afflicting” or “improving” but, at any rate, drastically altering Western societies at the time. Yet these were in fact years of violent and conspicuous change in the Near East as well, changes affected primarily by Western power—technological, military, economic, cultural—and specifically by the very French presence Gérôme so scrupulously avoids. A ‘naturalist’ or ‘authenticist’ artist like Gérôme tries to make us forget that his art is really art, both by concealing the evidence of his touch, and, at the same time, by insisting on a plethora of authenticating details, especially on what might be called unnecessary ones...Such details,

supposedly there to denote the real directly, are actually there simply to signify its presence in the work as a whole. As Barthes points out, the major funtion of gratuitous, accurate details like these is to announce “we are the real.” They are signifiers of the category of the real, there to give credibility to the “realness” of the work as a whole, to authenticate the total visual field as a simple, artless reflection—in this case, of a sup-posed Oriental reality” (Nochlin 34-48). But these paintings are not real. They are based on a plethora of different romanticised images that Gérôme collected from all over the Islamic world and compiled into idealized images

that he wanted to present to the West. Look at the differences in the imagery depicted in the paintings and photographs. In Gérôme’s work, the details of the material items dominate the picture and it is hard to imagine what is really the message versus, blindly trust-ing that they are historical accounts of Gérôme’s expereince. In Mercier’s photographs, the importance lies in the people-the clear focus of the image. Gérôme’s work clearly supports Said’s words when he describes how the Orient is a kind of exotic experiemental territory in which the impe-rial powers are in awe as well as control:

Depictions of everyday life19

Arab and His Horse Gathering for assembly, Marrakesh or Rabat

Arabs Arguing Market in Rabat

Arabs Crossing the Desert A man and his Camels in Marrakesh

“The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe’s greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West) as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience. Yet none of this Ori-ent is merely imaginative. The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a mode of discourse with supporting insti-tutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles” (1-2). “There emerged a complex Orient suitable for study in the academy, for display in the museum, for reconstruction in the colonial office, for theoretical illustration in anthro-pological, biological, linguistic, racial, and historical theses about mankind and the universe, for instances of economic and sociological theories of development, revolution cul-tural personality, national or religious character” (7-8).

Tapestry Merchant in Cairo A busy street in Marrakesh

Leaving the Mosque Men and women gathering in Casablanca, Rabat or Marrakesh

Woman of Constantinople Berber women in the Atlas mountains

Depictions of everyday life21

Geographic and architectural representation With criticism from Edward Said’s Orientalism and Linda Nochlin

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Les Champs de Repose, or literally, the place of rest Within a fortress’s courtyard, in Marrakesh or Rabat

“His objective description surpassed

The intense precision of Gérôme’s drawing and the affectionate care of his finish-oddly disdained by modern critics as an academic exercise-revealed such a love of communicating the visual truth thtat his reporting could not be doubted.”

-Gerald M. Ackerman

while it destroyed the imagined Near East of the romantics which, and usually dramatic, had been marvelously

although exciting inaccurate.

The Prayer (in Cairo) An interior in Rabat

A Muezzin Calling From the Top of a Minaret The Faithful to Prayer, Marrakesh

Marrakesh

This section refers to geography as a literal entity as well as a psychological and utilitar-ian one. Gérôme idealizes Islamic architecture and geography as an exotic commodity which is on one hand, emotionally distant fom the West, and yet so accesible through the eyes of the naïve Western viewer, through Gérôme’s presentation. On the other hand, geography refers to the psychological notion of posession that Europe-ans dominated in the 17th century. In a sense, Gérôme’s paintings illustrated what “belonged” to Europe in a way. When I say “utilitarian” this is meant to refer to architecture and geography

as elements integrated and contextual-ized with the native people or vice versa, as depicted in Mercier’s real documentation of Moroccan culture. “To speak of scholarly specialization as a geographical “field” is, in the case of Oriental-ism, fairly revealing since no one is likely to imagine a field symmetrical to it called Oc-cidentalism. Already the special, perhaps even eccentric attitude of Orientalism becomes apparent (50). When a learned Orientalist traveled in the country of his specialization, it was always with unshakable abstract maxims about the

“civilization” he had studied; rarely were Ori-entalists interested in anything except proving the validity of these musty “truths” by apply-ing them, without great success, to uncompre-hending, hence degenerate, natives. Finally, the very power and scope of Orientalism produced not only a fair amount of exact positive knowledge about the Orient but also a kind of second-order-knowledge-lurking in such places as the “Oriental” tale, the mythology of the mysterious East, notions of Asian inscrutability-with a life of its own, what V.G. Kiernan has aptly called “Europe’s collective day-dream of the Orient (52).

Geographical and architectural representations25

The First Kiss of Light, Outskirts of Rabat, Oasis, Marrakesh center, Top: The Harem’s Excursion, Bottom: Outskirts of Rabat

But if we agree that all things in history, like history itself, are made by men, then we will appreciate how possible it is for many objects or places or times to be assigned roles and given meanings that acquire objective validity only after the assignments are made. This is especially true of relatively uncommon things, like foreigners, mutants, or “abnormal” behavior. It is perfectly possible to argue that some dis-tinctive objects are made by mind, and that these objects, while appearing to exist objectively, have only a fictional reality (54). The keynote of the relationship was set for the Near East and Europe by the Napoleonic inva-sion of Egypt in 1798, an invasion which was in many ways the very model of a truly scientific ap-

propriation of one culture by another, apparently stronger one. For with Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt processes were set in motion between East and West that still dominate our contemporary cultural and political perspectives. And the Napo-leonic expedition, with its great collective monu-ment of erudition, the Desciption de l’Egypte, provided a scene or setting for Orientalism, since Egypt and subsequently the other Islamic lands were viewed as the live province, the laboratory, the theater of effective Western knowledge about the Orient. The specialist does the immediate translation of mere Oriental matter into useful substance: the Oriental becomes, for example, a subject race, an example of an “Oriental” mentality, all for the

enhancement of the “authority” at home. “Local interests” are Orientlalist special interests, the “central authority” is the general interest of the imperial society as a whole (42-44). When one uses categories like Oriental and Western as both the starting and the end points of analysis, research, public policy, the result is usually to polarize the distinction- the Oriental becomes more Oriental, the Westerner more Western-and limit the human encounter between different cul-ture, traditions, and societies (45). The Orient was therefore subdivided into realms previously known, visited, conquered, by Herodotus and Alexander as well as their epigones, and those realms not previously known, visited, conquered. Christianity com-

“As for his translation of the Koran, this was NEVER authorized to any non-Muslim at the time, and it is only because of his

from the circle of highly educated Arabsto several Muslim friends and they werevery well their religion [which was the

“As for his translation of the Koran, this was NEVER authorized to any non-Muslim

to the people of Alexandria. Napoleon tried every-where to prove that he was fighting for Islam; ev-erything he said was translated into Koranic Arabic, just as the French army was urged by its command always to remember the Islamic sensibility. Compare, in this regard, Napoleon’s tactics in Egypt with the tactics of the Requerimiento, a docu-ment drawn up in 1513-in Spanish-by the Spaniards to be read aloud to the Indians: “We shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses [the King and Queen of Spain] may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, etc.”] (82). Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier:

pleted the setting up of main intra-Oriental spheres: there was a Near Orient and a Far Ori-ent, a familiar Orient, which Rene Grousset calls “l’empire du Levant,” and a novel Orient (58). As a discipline representing institutionalized Western knowledge of the Orient, Orientalism thus comes to exert a three-way force, on the Orient, on the Orientalist, and on the Western “consumer” of Orientalism (67). Philosophically then, the kind of language, thought and vision that I have been calling Orien-talism very generally is a form of radical realism; anyone employing Orientalism, which is the habit for dealing with questions, objects, qualities, and regions deemed Oriental, will designate, name, point to, fix what he is talking or thinking about

with a word or phrase, which then is considered ei-ther to have acquired, or more simply to be, reality. Rhetorically speaking, Orientalism is abso-lutely anatomical and enumerative: to use its vocabulary is to engage in the particularizing and dividing of things Oriental into manageable parts. Psychologically, Orientalism is a form of paranoia, knowledge of another kind, say from ordinary historical knowledge. These area few of the results, I think, of imaginative geography and of the dramatic boundaries it draws (72). From the first moment that the Armee d’Egypt appeared on the Egyptian horizon, every effort was made to convince the Muslims that “nous sommes les vrais musulmans,” as Bonaparte’s proclamation of July 2, 1798, put it

Geographical and architectural representations27

acceptance that he was allowed to put his nose into it. On a side note, I showed his translation shocked to see 1) that he had been allowed and 2) that his translation was honoring best compliment he could receive].”

Napoleon and his General Staff

“The military failure of Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt did not also destroy the fertility of its over-all projection for Egypt or the rest of the Orient. Quite literally,

as interpreted from within the universe of discourse founded by Napoleon in Egypt, whose agencies of domination and dissemination included the Institut and the Description.”

-Edward Said

the occupation gave birth to the entire modern experience of the Orient

the occupation gave birth to the entire modern experience of the Orient

Kairoen Berber Tents

Napoleon wanted to offer a useful European example to the Orient, and finally also to make the inhabitants’ lives more pleasant, as well as to procure for them all the advantages of a per-fected civilization. None of this would be possible without a continuous application to the project of the arts and sciences (85). The military failure of Napoleon’s occupation of Egypt did not also destroy the fertility of its over-all projection for Egypt or the rest of the

Orient. Quite literally, the occupation gave birth to the entire modern experience of the Orient as interpreted from within the universe of discourse founded by Napoleon in Egypt, whose agencies of domination and dissemination included the Institut and the Description (87). On the Suez Canal: Despite its immemorial pedigree of failures, its outrageous cost, its astounding ambitions for altering the way Europe would handle the Ori-

ent, the canal was worth the effort...There was only “our” world, “one” world bound together because the Suez Canal had frustrated those last provincials who still believed in the difference between worlds (90-92). There was only “our” world, “one” world bound together because of the Suez Canal had frustrated those last provincials who still believed in the difference between worlds (92).

Geographical and architectural representations29

Results and contributions made to societyWith criticism from Edward Said’s Orientalism and work by Nezar AlSayyad and John House

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Bathing Scene Mercier (left), an important Moroccan official and commander drinking tea. This is considered an unusually wonderful situation

“Psychologically,

knowledge of another kind, say from ordinary historical knowledge. These are a few of of the results, I think, of imaginative geography and the dramatic boundaries it draws”

-Edward Said

Orientalism is a form of paranoia

“as never a white would ask a Moroccan to sit among them this way. Tea was part of a huge sign of hospitality,

tolerance and respect. “

-Nadine Sobrado

Orientalism is a form of paranoia

Results and contributions made to society

News Flyer advertising for the new Euro-African edition of Mercier’s Koran, booklet-catalogue cover for Mercier’s edition of the Koran

Moorish Bath, before and after: modifications or “Westernization” of images to make them more acceptable

sidered a high rank officer, period. As for my grandfather, I think his love of Morocco was higher than his military/social colonial life. He was very fond of the desert, and as you can see on some pictures, surrounded with very Moroccan style furniture, while some other Colonials would prefer to live in a more western way.” On commenting about Mercier’s translat-ing the Koran from Arabic to French she said that “This was NEVER authorized to any non-Muslim at the time, and it is only

As was this wave of Orientalism in Europe, Mercier was one of the few that was not content with the status quo. Not only did he help break misconceptions about the colo-nized cultures, he had a deep appreciation for Moroccan culture. He was so motivated to help the situation between France and Morocco and to work with the Arabs, not against them. As his granddaughter Nadine Sobrado recalled: “My grandfather was admired in the colonial circle for his knowledge, but con-

because of his acceptance from the circle of highly educated Arabs that he was al-lowed to put his nose into it. on a side note, I showed his translation to several Muslim friends and they were shocked to see 1) that he had been allowed and 2) that his transla-tion was honoring very well their religion [which was the best compliment he could receive].” A published description of Merciers’ work states: This work complies with the general desire to have at hand an orderly Koran

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From top: The Snake Charmer, Bottom, Black Bashi Bazouk (an “unusual Turkish soldier,” The Black Servant Girl, The Teaser of the Narghile or the Pipelighter

“Realist painters wanted to paint people and nature as objective study reealed to them without aesthetic manip-ulation. This objectivity was borrowed from contempo-rary scientific theories on how one should handle

characters and

Results and contributions made to society

French-Arabic Braille Guide, developed and executed by Mercier

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setting in novels” -Edward Said

reduced to the essential verses which alone should be known in the sacred book of Islam. So far, research into any precise dogmatic, moral or legal points was found to be tedious because the verses dealing with the question are dispersed throughout countless suras. This waste of time is avoided in Henry Mercier’s new presentation where carefully selected verses to avoid repetitions are grouped according to each subject in the same chapter.” Mercier also introduced braille for Arabic. It should be obvious that Mercier’s contribu-tions do not reflect French imperialism, but rather the improved communicative connections that are now possible between two very different cultures. What Gérôme has accomplished, on the other hand, is portfolio exemplifying top craftsmanship and rendering of both actual subject-matter and

more-so, his imagination: “What is largely omitted from Orientalist paintings is the European presence, with the process of conquest and colonisation, and also the particularities of poverty and suffering; the favoured inclusions — the fabric of the western image of the Orient — are the idleness, sensuality, and cruelty of the Orientals, their religious customs and the picturesqueness of their world (John House 307). So what art historians and researchers are left with minus the idealized figures in the paintings, is the architecture which can actually be applied [indirectly] to the knowledge of Western eyes. AlSayyad and his team of technicians worked to build a virtual reconstruction of Cairo with the help of images from Orientlist paintings:We

undertook a more complicated task of qualifying those images after a closer examination of the artists’ methods and backgrounds revealed that the representations of street life depicted were innacurate, perhaps including images or symbols imported from other locations both inside and out-side of Cairo alltogether (in reference to Gérôme’s Snake Charmer). Our task in these cases entailed “cleaning up” the images we decided to use by erasing what we could prove were gross inaccura-cies, delibarate misrepresenations or loose artistic licenses” (98). Once all these inaccuracies were removed, an image almost identical to the existing mosque of Aqa Sunqur-or the blue mosque of Cairo-was revealed. The adjusted image became useful as a historic document.

Conclusion

5

The Dance of Almeh Moroccan and French guards, Rabat

39 Conclusion

One of the most important lessons that I have learned at RISD is that art is most beautiful when its true func-tionality is apparent to the viewer: to be able to look at a thing objectively and subjectively, and still say that it is beautiful, is the indication that the artist has succeeded in communicating his or her message. I believe that the two artists presented in this book not only differ in their purposes and messages through their art, but they also differ in their method of communication which utimately, can be equated with their level of success. Despite Gérôme’s negative criticism over the cen-tury, it is no doubt that he was the master painter of Orientalism. He was the by-product of his time-period and so it is not surprising that his work is as innacurate as it is idealistic. The method by which he communicated was through photo-realistic rendering, while picking and choosing the marketable aspects of Islamic and Arab culture to sell to the naïve viewers in Europe and America. Art historians and critics cannot understand the reasoning as to why Gérôme would morally speaking do such a thing. His paintings were created not for the best inter-est of either “Occidental” or “Oriental” culture; his work hurts both worlds because the opposing elements he uses togther cause friction and fog any clear message which can be racially interpreted for

either side. Thus, subjectively, his work is breathtak-ingly beautiful but upon knowledge of its functional-ity, his work is disgusting. Henry Mercier was an exception to the Oriental-ist/Colonialist movement. He truly used it as an op-portunity not to enforce power, but to enforce deep communication with foreign culture-not the kind of openness to expect from such a powerful, dominating nation at the time. His visual documentation in this short presenta-tion is only but a small representation of the amount of time and dedication that he put towards the con-tributions for Moroccan society. You cannot doubt the sincerity in his photographs. The strong relationships that Mercier developed with the people is something that no person can hide or “imagine” through realistic renderings/photography or what have you. Upon my commenting that Mercier’s photog-raphy is utterly beautiful, his granddaughter Nadine replied ”but his work is interesting.” And not only is it interesting, but its function is to show one man’s love, kindness, respect and equality that he had for fellow members of a culture that was considered inferior during his career. And this makes his work subjectively and funcionally beautiful. Special thanks go to Nadine Sobrado, Nadine and Irene Mercier for exposing me to Mr. Mercier’s historic, cultural patrimony.

Works Cited:

Jean-Léon Gérôme Biography; Ackerman, Gerald M. The life and work of Jean-Léon Gérôme : with a catalogue raisonné / Gerald M. Ackerman. London;: Published for Sotheby’s Publications by P. Wilson Publishers ; New York, NY : Sotheby’s Publications, Harper and Row, 1986

Henry Mercier French Dictionary Review; Louis Brunot

AlSayyad, Nezar. Virtual Cairo: An Urban Historian’s View of Computer Simulation. Léonardo, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1999. MIT Press.

House, John. The Orientalists. London, Royal Academy. The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 126, No. 974 (May 1984. The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd.

Nochlin, Linda. The Politics of Vision, Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society. Harper & Row, Publishers, New York. 1989

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York : Vintage Books, c1994

This book was designed and printed by Laura Sobrado in Krzysztof Lenk’s Type III Class at Rhode Island School of Design in April 2009.

The headlines and quotations are set in Goudy Old Style and the body text in Syntax LT Std.