Delacroix's Orientalism

Eugene Delacroix
Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement =
Algerian Women in their Apartment
Salon de 1834
oil on canvas
Musee du Louvre


I think is is pretty interesting that the Louvre chose to shoot its works in their frames, something I've never seen.

A classic work by a classic artist, Women of Algiers has its own Wikipedia page.
" 'The last of the great artists of the Renaissance and the first modern'; thus Baudelaire on Delacroix." (Gilles Neret) This work was striking in 19th century France with its sexual content, Orientalism, and use of light. The influence of the work continues to echo. Picasso was supremely influenced producing a number of works after The Women of Algiers, inspiring their own exhibition recently, Picasso-Delacroix, at the Louvre. The harem was one of the most popular subjects for painters of the 18th century interested in the Orient (present-day Turkey, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa). While many artists got their inspiration and information from travelogues and literature available in Europe, some, including Delacroix, got their subjects from direct experience on journeys to the region, though westerners may not have been allowed entrance, they culled their experience and fantasies for their paintings. "Beyond their implicit eroticism, harem scenes evoked a sense of cultivated beauty and pampered isolation to which many Westerners aspired." (Meagher, Orientalism in Nineteenth-Century Art)

Contemporary Portrait

Le Roi a La Chasse
Kehinde Wiley
oil on canvas
8' x 6'
2006

Another new find of mine, the work of Kehinde Wiley. We have one of his paintings at the TMA and I recently came across a catalog for the show, RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture that included his work.

The poses and objects in his work reference portraits throughout the history of art. His models choose poses from his collection of art books, in turn the paintings often represent something within the model himself (Ice T chose a portrait of Napoleon). Modern African American men melded with art historical references, these paintings are life size and commanding. Wiley simplifies the setting of the portraits, prettifying them in a way, which seems to make a bit of fun of the process as a whole at the same time as commenting on the reception of stature in history.

Le Roi a La Chasse is after Anthony van Dyck's portrait of Charles I of England.


Anthony van Dyck
Charles I of England
c. 1635
Oil on canvas
266 x 207 cm (104 3/4 x 81 1/2 in.)
Musée du Louvre, Paris