Why is this painting being used to illustrate the Viking slave trade?
Google slave trade in orientalist art and this is what comes up on the images for "slave trade in orientalist art".
Orientalism, racism, Islamophobia?
The Slave Market (1910) by Otto Pilny (1866 - 1936), a Swiss painter who specialized in Orientalist genre scenes.
Google Otto Pilny art for images and this what you get.
Pilny made a great success from his "fascination" with the orient, and the taste for the imagery of orientalist art.
The contradiction is that there is NO contradiction!The contradiction is that there is no contradiction in the artists' fascination with the Bedouin of North Africa and the representation of an "otherness", that is embedded in the European "mindset" and the "fear of the other", the "foreign" and the foreigner, the "outlander"!
In the book Orientalism (1978), the cultural critic Edward Said redefined the term Orientalism to describe a pervasive Western tradition — academic and artistic — of prejudiced outsider-interpretations of the Eastern world, which was shaped by the cultural attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. The thesis of Orientalism develops Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony, and Michel Foucault's theorisation of discourse (the knowledge-and-power relation) to criticise the scholarly tradition of Oriental studies.
The analyses are of Orientalism in European literature, especially French literature, and do not analyse visual art and Orientalist painting. In that vein, the art historian Linda Nochlin applied Said's methods of critical analysis to art. Nochlin was one of the first art historians to apply theories of Orientalism to the study of art history, specifically in her 1983 paper, "The Imaginary Orient." Her key assertion was that Orientalism must be seen from the point-of-view of "the particular power structure in which these works came into being," in this case, 19th century French colonialism.
Nochlin focused primarily on the 19th century French artists Jean-Leon Gérôme and Eugène Delacroix, who both depicted 'orientalist' themes in their work, including, respectively, The Snake Charmer and The Death of Sardanapalus.
In Gérôme's "The Snake Charmer," from the late 1860s, Nochlin described how Gérôme created a sense of verisimilitude not only in his rendering of the scene with such realistic precision one almost forgets a painter painted it, but in capturing the most minute details, such as meticulously painted tiles.
As a result, the painting appears to be documentary evidence of life in the Ottoman court while, according to Nochlin, it is in fact a Westerner's vision of a mysterious world.
In Delacroix's "The Death of Sardanapalus" from 1827, Nochlin argued that the artist used Orientalism to explore overt erotic and violent themes that may not necessarily reflect France's cultural hegemony but rather the chauvinism and misogyny of early 19th century French society.
The Death of Sardanapalus, inspired by Lord Byron, which although set in antiquity has been credited with beginning the mixture of sex, violence, lassitude and exoticism which runs through much French Orientalist painting.In 1832, Delacroix finally visited what is now Algeria, recently conquered by the French, and Morocco, as part of a diplomatic mission to the Sultan of Morocco. He was greatly struck by what he saw, comparing the North African way of life to that of the Ancient Romans, and continued to paint subjects from his trip on his return to France. Like many later Orientalist painters, he was frustrated by the difficulty of sketching women, and many of his scenes featured Jews or warriors on horses.
However, he was apparently able to get into the women's' quarters or harem of a house to sketch what became Women of Algiers; few later harem scenes had this claim to authenticity.
The women of the harem are "white", the servant/slave? is black!
White and black!
Orientalist Interior, ca. 1851–1852 by Théodore Chassériau, a French Romantic painter noted for his portraits, historical and religious paintings, allegorical murals, and Orientalist images inspired by his travels to Algeria. Early in his career he painted in a Neoclassical style close to that of his teacher Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, but in his later works he was strongly influenced by the Romantic style of Eugène Delacroix.
A white slave trade?
An American art museum, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, wants a German party to stop using a painting from their collection in the European Parliament election campaign.
Damit aus Europa kein "Eurabien" wird!
Update 2019So that Europe does not become "Eurabien"!
Anti-immigration party AfD is using provocative 19th-century work on its posters for the upcoming European elections
The Art Newspaper ran this story by Catherine Hickley 30th April 2019
The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts, the owner of a provocative painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, has called on a German right-wing party to stop using the work to deliver an overtly xenophobic message in its campaign for the European elections in May.
“We strongly condemn the use of the painting to advance AfD’s political stance and have written to them insisting that they cease and desist,” says Olivier Meslay, the director of the Clark Art Institute, in a statement. “We are strongly opposed to the use of this work to advance any political agenda.”
Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Slave Market (1866)
While Gérôme travelled extensively in Egypt and is considered a leading proponent of Orientalism, it is unlikely he ever visited a slave market, according to the Clark Art Institute’s analysis of the painting. “The naturalism of the scene is thus open to question on a number of levels,” it says.
As the art historian Linda Nochlin wrote in an article in 1983, Gérôme relied on “the unassailable Otherness of the characters in his narrative”—a narrative that helped consolidate European imperialism.
The work simultaneously dehumanises the woman and censures the exotic traders exploiting her, granting its 19th-century Western male viewers the dual luxury of a sense of moral superiority and erotic titillation, she said.
The AfD's Berlin campaign also uses the word “Eurabia”, often used by right-wing conspiracy theorists to describe alleged Arab plans to dominate Europe. The German media have pointed out that the term was used by the Norwegian mass-killer Anders Behring Breivik, who was convicted of murder and terrorism in 2012.
The political poster is part of a series that the AfD says on its Facebook page “use several images from European art history to point to common values that it is more important than ever to defend today”.
But for Jürgen Zimmerer, a professor of African history at the University of Hamburg, the lesson from the poster is that confronting the colonial legacy is essential in combating modern-day racism. “The fantasy images created back then still linger in minds,” he wrote on Twitter.
Meslay says the Clark Art Institute did not supply a copy of the image to the Berlin branch of the AfD. “As the painting is in the public domain, however, there are no copyrights or permissions that allow us to exert control over how it is used other than to appeal to civility on the part of the AfD Berlin,” he says.
“The fantasy images created back then still linger in minds”
In a eurocentric global information environment "White" slavery is "clickbait"!
As Linda Nochlin said of Gérôme: "The work simultaneously dehumanises the woman and censures the exotic traders exploiting her, granting its 19th-century Western male viewers the dual luxury of a sense of moral superiority and erotic titillation."
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