This sweeping exhibition explores the influence of the ‘Orient’ on French painting through the centuries. Beginning with Napoleon and ending with Paul Klee, it tracks the power of the imagined East on Western art.
Did you know that abstract painting, with its bright colours and dehumanised forms, stems ultimately from ‘exotic’ art? Oriental Visions tracks this centuries-long trajectory, and in doing so offers a new historical perspective on modern painting.
Napoleon’s conquest of Europe brought large parts of the Mediterranean into France’s orbit. This area was reimagined as a French “Orient”. This contrasted with the far eastern and Turkish Orients, which are more familiar to the English-speaking world. Inspired to travel to these areas, French artists in the early 19th century set painting down a whole new path.
The exhibition shows these painters’ initial focus on the female figure, rendered mysterious or even invisible by Mediterranean culture. Ingres’s Small Bather (1828) is turned away from us, as is the woman in Debat-Ponsan’s Massage (1883). You’ll see how, under the pressure of this taboo, painters began to emphasise a figure’s surroundings. This focus in turn leads to the strange transformation of landscapes from detailed and realistic to idealised or flattened, such as in Marquet’s Calm Sea (1923).
Turning from its human figure section to its architecture section, Oriental Visions shows us the start of modern art. The strange landscapes of the orientalists are turning geometrical, totally unreal, and the bright colours of the Mediterranean outdoors have been converted into colour for its own sake. You’ll see Kandinsky’s Oriental (1909) and Klee’s Interior Architecture (1914).
The magic of this exhibition is that you see modern art unfolding before your eyes. You’re not being forced to consider a single “period” or “style”. So even if painting isn’t your thing, you may well enjoy this free-flowing display.