"The Imaginary Orient" - Linda Nochlin

The 1982 exhibition called Orientalism: The Near East in French Painting, 1800-1880, brings up a lot of questions to Linda Nochlin about the depiction of 'The Other'. Knowing that the rise of Orientalist paintings came directly from European colonialism, should we look at these paintings by turning a blind eye to this context, like the art history has done? The organizer of the exhibition and author of the accompanying catalog-book, Donald A. Rosenthal, stated that "French Orientalist painting will be discussed in terms of its aesthetic quality and historical interest, and no attempt will be made at a re-evaluation of its political uses."Nevertheless, as Nochlin noticed, many of these works cannot be analyzed without the particular power structure it moves in. She proves her point through some exemplary paintings in the art history of Orientalist paintings.

A frequent appearing tendency in Jean-Léon Gérôme's Snake Charmer from the late 1860s is that of the 'Picturesque'. As a result of this characteristic, we are haunted by certain absences in this painting. The first one is the absence of history. The time stands still. There is a strange paradox going on in Orientalist paintings where they present the East as archaic, but in real-time there were efforts of the Ottoman government to reform and modernize itself. This was under pressure from the colonizers who instructed elements of their high Western civilization on them. Through art and literature, 'The Other' was trapped within a frame. Another absence is that of the Westerner. They were present in large numbers as a result of colonialism and tourism, but in art only implicit. It was the Westerners controlling gaze that was always near and brought the East into being. The strategy of Gérôme was pretending to be objective, a 'realist' painter. Maybe it's better to call it pseudo-realist because what Gérôme does is a mystification of the Orient. He let his public forget that he 'brings the East into being', but his works aren't facts nor is there slightly a hint of truth. This brings us to an additional absence, that of art. The artist sees himself as an 'authenticist' and tries to make us forget that this art. With a bunch of details, he wanted to show that this 'is the real'. The final absence in these works is that of scenes of work and industry. It didn't fit in the frame.

With the example of Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus, Nochlin points out that The Orient is a place to project your imagination on. Therefore with the male Western controlling gaze, it is filled with an erotic ideology, even sadistic. During Delacroix's time, there was a mundane assumption that men were naturally entitled to the bodies of certain women, as Nochlin explains. This vision was shared with that type of class that could afford to buy these paintings. In the same way, we can analyze Gérôme's Slave Market. It gives satisfaction to the moralistic voyeur. "The (male) viewer was invited sexually to identify with, yet morally distance himself from, his Oriental counterparts depicted within the objectively inviting yet racially distancing space of the painting." as Nochlin cunning articulate. 

Later in the essay, Linda Nochlin repeats the dilemma around 'Picturesque'. Every sense of life and nod to the reality of the East was omitted. It was apparently the function of 'Picturesque' to mask conflict that was going on with the appearance of tranquillity. The West was preserving what they were destroying. In this way, 'The Other' will always stay framed as inferior and completely different. These Orientalist paintings have proven to be important political documents that show a particular period within colonialism. These testimonies hide under the term of visual art and  'Picturesque', supported by the illusion of the real.

The most crucial question Nochlin asks is: 'How then should we deal with this art?' She suggests an interdisciplinary method by using the deconstructive techniques from sociology and film history. It should be an analysis of visual propaganda rather than mainstream art history. With her essay, she opened the doors for an essential debate on the discourse of art history. What does art history? And how should we talk about it?