The fascination for the Orient which runs throughout the history of Western art peaked in the nineteenth century. Orientalism enjoyed a golden age between Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign (1798-1801) and Matisse’s stay in North Africa in 1906.
The views of Egypt brought back by the artists on Bonaparte’s expedition, along with the illustration of the first events in the Napoleonic legend, were the first milestones in the European public’s rediscovery of the East. Sparking a Europe-wide craze for
Pharaonic history, they generated a sustained interest in anything to do with the Orient, prompting Victor Hugo to say: “In Louis XIV’s century we were Hellenistic, now we are Orientalist.”
Orientalism cannot be separated from European colonial expansion. The decline of the Ottoman Empire and the European powers’ encroachment on the Middle East and North Africa gave European artists a glimpse of a world which had previously been almost inaccessible. The shock of this encounter opened up new perspectives in art. Delacroix’s trip to Morocco in 1832 seemed to respond to his deep desire for something new. For him, the Orient was a throbbing sensual place and Antiquity – the reference for all artists with a classical training – was revived in full colour before his very eyes.
So the first generation of these artists structured the imaginative oriental world which others developed throughout the century.
From Ingres to Gérôme, the lasting success of wild harem fantasies amplified the notion of troubling Oriental sensuality. Far from misty Europe, the raw power of colour and light was expressed in splendid costumes and grandiose landscapes, and most particularly in views of the desert.
Many painters soon made the trip across the Mediterranean and some even stayed in North Africa for long periods. They were then faced with the reality of the countryside and the everyday life of the conquered peoples. Alongside the colourful exotic fictions which increasingly delighted the European public, there quickly developed a more realistic and already ethnographic approach, which was more attentive to these fascinating foreigners.
The great figures of modernity were far from insensitive to the oriental temptation. Renoir, Matisse, Kandinsky and Klee also made the trip to the east. But although the most familiar leitmotivs of Orientalism are to be found in their work – odalisques, luminous landscapes, whitewashed sun-drenched cities – their very personal approaches are visibly different. Their experimental work so radically renewed the genre, that they somehow put an end to it by infusing it with completely different meaning.
With over 120 paintings and sculptures from major international museums and private collections, Orientalism in Europe, from Delacroix to Matisse will give a sweeping view of Orientalism, not only in France but throughout Europe: alongside masterpieces by Ingres, Delacroix, Fromentin and Gérôme it will show works by English artists such as Lewis or Alma-Tadema, Germans, (Bauernfeind, Müller), Belgians, (Portaels, Evenpoel), Spaniards (Villegas, Sorolla) Italians, (Fabbi, Simoni), and even a Paristrained Turkish Orientalist, Osman Hamdi Bey. Renoir, Matisse, Kandinsky, Klee and Macke will illustrate the last section of the exhibition on modernist Orientalism.
This exhibition is a foretaste of the ambitious art programme that Marseille is planning as Cultural Capital of Europe in 2013.
