[Bilimsel Haber] Pera Müzesi'ndeki "Dogu'nun Cazibesi" sergisi dolayisiyla

[Gonul Pultar]

Agustos 2008'de H-TURK'te dagitilan bir mesaj:
REV-CONF: Orientalism revisited: Art and Politics of Representation [M 
Hartmuth]


From: maximilian_hartmuth <melange at gmx.at>

Cross-posted from H-MUSEUM...


ORIENTALISM REVISITED : ART AND THE POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION

A Symposium at Tate Britain
Friday 13 June 2008, 10.00–18.00

Reviewed for H-Museum by Prof. Dr. Antoine Capet, University of Rouen
E-Mail: antoine.capet at univ-rouen.fr

As we pointed out in a previous review,(1) it is now _de rigueur_ to
organise conferences and study days in connection with major 
Exhibitions, and the Tate management very competently mounted an 
international symposium to complement its excellent _The Lure of the 
East: British Orientalist Painting_ Exhibition, which opened the week 
before. After a general presentation by Paul Goodwin (Cross Cultural 
Curator, Tate Britain), the first session, on "Orientalism and Art 
Histories", was introduced by its Chair, Christine Riding (Curator, 18th 
and 19th Century British Art, Tate Britain, and co-curator of the 
Exhibition).

The first speaker was Professor Mary Roberts (John Schaeffer Associate
Professor of British Art, University of Sydney), who discussed portraits 
"At the Margins of British Orientalism". Starting from the example of
David Wilkie, Professor Roberts suggested that the genre allowed a range 
of aesthetic forms, including photographic parodies and "Ottoman
Orientalism." If one speaks of an "indigenous engagement with 
Orientalism", one may suggest the addition of Middle East participants 
to the logic of European Orientalism. The cross-cultural boundaries are 
renegotiated by the arts – in this instance portraits – with an 
interplay between self and other and centre and periphery, pointing to 
the contingency of boundaries formation. Another example would be that 
of John Young (1755-1825), with his _Series of Portraits of the Emperors 
of Turkey_ – the London book of 1815 with his engravings derived from 
Ottoman miniatures (and paintings commissioned in 1808 by Selim III, 
with vignettes on "my victories" chosen by the Sultan himself) being 
dedicated to the Prince Regent.(2) Then there are the two portraits (3) 
by David Wilkie in 1840 of _ Sultan Abdul Mejid_.* The finished one was 
commissioned by none less than Queen Victoria for reasons of high 
politics: British diplomacy was seeking an Anglo-Ottoman alliance 
against Egyptian expansion. The Sultan took the occasion to remind the
British that he was a modernising head of State (he ascended the throne
the year before, in 1839) through the “Western” uniform which he is
wearing (though the “Oriental” connection is recalled thanks to the fez 
and scimitar). A dress reform had been introduced by his father in 
1828-29, and he clearly makes the point that he intends to continue on 
the path of "Westernisation." The unfinished portrait (commissioned and 
oversighted by the Ottoman Sultan) does not fit easily within 
conventional understandings of British Orientalism, and it seems 
therefore appropriate that this portrait should not have been included 
in the Tate Exhibition.(4) In contrast, _His Highness Muhammad Ali, 
Pasha of Egypt_** (also by Wilkie, 1841) is shown in "Oriental" dress – 
the only concession to modernity on the part of the governor of Egypt 
from 1805 to 1849 being the fez. All this can be  interpreted as showing 
the Ottoman Empire renegotiating its place in contemporary international 
politics, notably the three-cornered transactions between Britain, the 
Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman-Egyptians.

In her paper on "The Lure of Orientalism: View from the East",
Professor Zeynep Çelik (Distinguished Professor of Architecture, New 
Jersey Institute of Technology) confirmed: Orientalism is not an 
exclusively Western phenomenon, as Ottoman Orientalism surfaced in the 
mid-19th century. Paying tribute to Edward Said, she insisted that 
Orientalism cannot be divorce from politics. Ottoman intellectuals like 
Halid Ziya in his 1908 novel _Nesl-i Ahir_ (The First Generation) were 
aware of European blindness, and odalisk paintings were criticised 
notably by the novelist Ahmed Mithad in his _Avrupa’da Bir Cevelan_ (A 
Tour in Europe, 1889) and by Fatma Aliye Hanim in her _Nisvan-i Islam_ 
(Women of Islam, 1893). One can also contrast the paintings of Osman 
Hamdi Bey (1842-1910), characterised by a form of intellectual Islam, 
with the titillating representations of his master Jean-Léon Gérôme 
(1824-1904).(5) Likewise, in "harem" scenes, there is a world of 
difference between the restraint shown by John Frederick Lewis in _Harem 
Life, Constantinople_ (1857)*, and the overt eroticism of Gérôme’s
paintings.(6) Ethnographic research, for instance into costumes, led to
such publications as _Costumes populaires de la Turquie (1873).(7) At 
the same time, a popular form of Ottoman Orientalism was clearly visible 
on advertisements and packaging for cigarette paper or cough syrup.
Ottoman architecture was naturally prominent at the Ottoman Exhibition 
held in Istanbul in 1863, but Professor Çelik also showed a photograph 
of the impressive Turkish Pavilion at the _Exposition universelle_ of 
Paris, 1900, (8) and an undated drawing (probably from the late 1880s) 
in the Prime Minister’s Archives in Istanbul of the Benghazi Barracks in 
Libya – obviously built in the "Western" style. The talk concluded with 
an image taken from a special issue of  _Servet-i Fünun_ (nos. 592-593, 
1902) on the Hijaz Railroad, showing a train on a modern bridge being 
welcomed by local people in traditional dress – except the officer 
standing for the Ottoman administration. All this made it clear that the 
Ottomans aligned themselves with the "civilised world".

This first session ended with Questions & Answers. Both speakers agreed
that Hamdi Bey presented women as a puzzle, as opposed to the "Western"
(especially French) eroticism associated with the harem. The vocabulary
is also important: although the terminology is fluctuating, speaking of
"the Emperors of Turkey" suggests that the country can be managed, 
unlike "the Ottoman Emperors", which points to the parallel between the 
Ottoman Empire and the British Empire as entities difficult to manage.

After a pause, Dr Nicholas Tromans (Senior Lecturer in Art History at
Kingston University, London, and curator of the Exhibition) treated
"Orientalism and the Place of the Visual". He started from Said’s
critique of Lane’s _Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians_ (9) - 
its supposed absence of narrative and the fact that it was "bogged down 
in descriptions," as Said puts it.(10) – and explained that in the 
Catalogue (11) he tried to show that this very faltering of narrative 
suggested by the intervention of the image allowed some painters to 
believe in the authenticity of their own Oriental projects: for them, 
the visual legitimately aspired to be that mode of experience which 
could not be digested by the self-perpetuating processes of Orientalism. 
These are the projects that form the basis of the exhibition. Said was 
sceptical of the visual –and he was not alone (12). This tradition
was invoked by Timothy Mitchell in his 1988 book _Colonising Egypt_,
in which the act of 'picturing' (of fixing the gaze) is made to do a 
great deal of the work of Orientalism, and indeed of colonialism – 
probably, we may now feel, rather too much of the work. Dr Tromans 
recalled a quotation in the book from an Egyptian educationalist who had 
visited Paris in the 1820s, and later explained that "one of the beliefs 
of the Europeans is that the gaze has no effect." Certainly, European 
tradition long upheld the innocence of the eye and the associated 
potential of the picture to offer transparent representation. Equally 
certainly, a Western tradition that Orientals were unable to grasp these 
principles forms a central plank of the visual culture of Orientalism. 
This may explain why an uncomprehending William Holman Hun "felt 
tantalised by the restrictions imposed" on his looking, as he described 
his experience in Palestine in 1854: hence perhaps his _Self-Portrait in 
Oriental Costume_ (after 1875)*, which reflects his frustrations. Later 
nineteenth-century Orientalist painting has of course long been 
recognised as a kind of last stand of the Academic tradition: many of
its pictorial values are precisely those now looking vulnerable back in
London or Paris, and Linda Nochlin did not fail to contrast Gérôme (for
instance his _Charmeur de serpents / Snake-charmer_ of c.1883, which Dr 
Tromans showed as a slide) and Manet. The paper then made a plea in 
favour of attending more directly to the technologies of visual culture 
in order to comprehend the power relations around representations. In 
_Interior of a Mosque, Afternoon Prayer (The 'Asr)_ (before 1857)**, 
John Frederick Lewis seems to be conscious of these limitations, 
cultivating repetitive ambiguities: he is himself the “sitter” (as in 
some others of his paintings), and this leads us to wonder who is
drawing the limits: the artist or the pictures? Turning to Lacanian 
reflections on perspective and vision, Dr Tromans showed a slide of
_Pyramids Road_(1873), a tree-lined avenue connecting Cairo to Giza, by
Edward Lear, the peripatetic artist, harried from location to
location, "manipulated" in Lacan’s terms by the demands of the 
perspectival field. The talk concluded on the problem of the authority 
of beauty as a political end: the twentieth century blamed the Middle 
East for not living up to the West’s beautiful image of it. This raises 
the question of the West’s culpability: we in the West can no longer 
envisage a beautiful Middle East – we visualise it as ugly. It is rather 
the West that betrayed beauty, perhaps because we no longer have the 
political hope to allow us to believe in it.

The last paper of the morning, on "The Modern and the Anti-Modern: The
Lessons from the Orient", was given by Professor John MacKenzie 
(Professor Emeritus in Imperial History, Lancaster University), who 
began by saying that, being himself interested in art – or vision – he 
initially found Edward Said’s book full of intriguing insights. But this 
was a brief impression, which soon wore off. When hearing Said talk of 
Verdi’s _Aida_ at a conference in Brighton, he thought that something 
did not ring true: Said did not analyse the text, the ideology, speaking 
of a "plot that ends in deadlock and entombment". On the contrary, 
Professor MacKenzie argued, _Aida_ is about nationalism and 
anticlericalism; in it, Verdi celebrated the underdog, and the end is an 
apotheosis. Said is also wrong in that the victims of internationalism 
were able to maintain their _cultural_ independence, and all through the 
19th century we find a ubiquitous juxtaposition of the modern and 
anti-modern. A good example is that of the Great Exhibition of 1851. On 
the surface, it is the archetype of modernity, with its buildings of 
iron and glass, but the interior was largely anti-modern. Besides the 
"wonders of industry" one could find a recurring insistence on 
handicrafted objects, and the same dichotomy between the industrial and 
the non-industrial was to be found in all other exhibitions. The South 
Kensington Museum (which became the Victoria & Albert Museum) was the 
best showcase of this revival of handicrafts. It must be remembered that 
each British country-house had to have a display of artefacts from 
Ethiopia, India, the Sudan – notably weaponry: international loot, in 
fact. One can also mention Leighton’s Arab Hall in Holland Park, all 
this culminating perhaps with James Millar’s cast-iron ornaments for the 
"Eastern Palace" built for the 1901 Glasgow International Exhibition, or 
"Baghdad by the Kelvin" as it was dubbed by sceptics. The general trend 
was towards a relief from industrially-produced goods, and towards a 
world lost which they wished to regain, indicating a sort of 
civilisational disease - and in conclusion Professor MacKenzi drew a 
parallel between the attitudes of the Victorian middle classes and
those of the middle classes of the Middle East today, arguing that they 
have a good deal in common.

The final Questions & Answers session of the morning, which merged with
a panel discussion including all the morning speakers, largely revolved
around the authoritativeness or otherwise of Edward Said’s and Linda
Nochlin’s writings. While Professor MacKenzie said that we can pick 
holes in them, Dr Tromans reminded the audience that it was not the 
authors who were to blame, but the readers who made too much of their 
theories: one cannot reproach them for the popularity of their writings, 
even if it sometimes rests on doubtful foundations. Linda Nochlin tried 
to deal with aesthetics in relation to politics. There must have been 
among the Orientalist artists a sense of challenge: they were conscious 
of the difficulties and hostility facing them, but they believed that 
art could overcome these barriers, and they recorded their troubles in 
great detail. Beauty can be an oppressive experience. The works in the 
Exhibition express a fear before the possible disappearance of _real_ 
Africa, of the _real_ Middle East, and they betray the Europeans’ 
anxiety. Professor MacKenzie added that there was a long tradition of 
absorbing the culture of the Other (e.g. with the Chinese in the 18th 
century), and that international travellers admired the "natives"’ 
understanding of Nature, while Professor Çelik drew attention to the 
importance of photography. Very often, these artists started from 
photographs, which they embellished in their works, choosing rich 
colours in a bright light. If one considers again Lewis’s self-portrait 
as a beautiful old man in _Interior of a Mosque, Afternoon Prayer (The 
'Asr)_**, whose beauty is it? Dr Tromans believes that the definition 
was a shifting one: the beautiful matched with images from other 
cultures in the 19th century. This led Professor Roberts to wonder what 
the priorities were in the particular field of research into Orientalist 
paintings if one was to go beyond the important work already done by 
Edward Said and Linda Nochlin. Dr Tromans’s priority would go to 
devoting more attention to the technologies of visual culture. Professor 
Çelik would choose further questioning of the boundaries and Professor 
MacKenzie would like to see much more cross-disciplinary analysis, 
including for instance the history of tourism. Dr Tromans pointed out 
that it should be the scholar’s duty all the time - Professor Roberts 
adding in conclusion that rigorous investigation remained the order of 
the day.

The afternoon’s theme was "Orientalism and the Politics of
Representation," Raficq Abdulla, MBE (Visiting Fellow, Faculty of 
Business and Law, Kingston University) being in the Chair – and the 
first speaker, Dr Charles Small (Director of the Yale Initiative for the 
Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism, Yale University), entered the 
political field straightaway with his paper on "From the Gaze of the 
Colonial and Post-Colonial: Judeo-phobia, Empire, Islamism". He began by 
showing excerpts from a Syrian-produced television series, ‘Al-Shatat’ 
(the diaspora). This harrowing episode, “Jews Murder a Christian Child 
and Use His Blood for Passover Matzos”,(13) deriving from the notorious 
forgery, the _Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion_, and broadcast on 
Eid al-Fitr (end of Ramadan) evening, 20 October 2005, on a Jordanian TV 
network, _Al-Mamnou'_, was used by Dr Small to make his central point 
that one must distinguish between Judaeophobia, which has to do with 
discrimination, and Anti-Semitism, which is genocidal. For him, the 
Hamas Charter (14) is evidence of the genocidal intentions of radical 
Islam, and he showed other pictorial examples of Anti-Semitism in the 
Middle East. The connection with Edward Said is that he was an Arab and 
that according to Dr Small, he saw Jews as usurpers. In this reading of 
Said’s work, the author of _Orientalism_ made no distinction between 
Jews and Christian Europeans – they were perpetrators rather than 
victims: successionists, in fact. Dr Small sees Said’s impact as leading 
to the de-Judaeisation of Orientalism: for Said, Orientalism was 
directed against the Arabs, not the ews.

Dr Kamran Rastegar (Lecturer in Arabic and Persian Literatures, 
University of Edinburgh) followed with "Curating Diaspora Artists of
Muslim-majority Societies in the Metropole: A Third Space, or 
Neo-Orientalism?" He remarked that Said’s intention is not the point. 
His book led to the emergence of a small industry, which is not always 
good. Art institutions like museums and art galleries canonise art 
objects and give status to artists, and curators do the same. The museum 
is a form of cultural tourism, and this is especially true of 
Exhibitions devoted to the Islamic world, which have no connection with 
the culture of religious people. In the West, the sacred and the profane 
are mixed, and the coherence of Islam is lost. He took as an example the 
2006 Exhibition at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA),(15) of 
artists who "come from the Islamic world, but do not live there," in the 
words of the curator, Fereshteh Daftari. The show avoided political 
discussion altogether, with artists only being "consumed" within the 
frame of Islam, and even the one section (out of five) on "Identity in
Question" was inadequate. Dr Rastegar commented upon a number of works, 
notably Mona Hatoum’s _Exodus II_ (2002), an image (the hole left by a 
car bomb) from Atlas Group’s _My Neck is Thinner than a Hair_ 
(2000-2003),(16) Anoush Abrar’s _Portraits of Iranian Jews in Los 
Angeles_ (17) Kamrooz Aram’s _The Gleam of the Morning’s First Beam_ 
(2005),(18) and Emily Jacir’s _Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages 
which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in
1948_ (2001).(19) Discussing Kutlug Ataman’s phallic calligraphy, he saw 
it as meaningless and wondered about the Islamic dimension in it. He
concluded on the West’s misconception of Islamic art as an instrument of 
cultural control. Is Islamism a universal framework? Like all art, 
Islamic art is a reflection of and a response to the world in which it 
is produced.

After Dr Small answered questions on the propriety or otherwise of
showing such clips, and no Israeli anti-Arab propaganda, and Dr Rastegar 
others on whether he had met the MoMA curator and discussed the _Without
Boundary_ Exhibition with her (he had not) and why he had not 
(apparently his request for an interview did not materialise), the 
Chairman introduced Professor Ziauddin Sardar (Columnist and author 
[notably of _Why Do People Hate America?_ 2002], Visiting Professor of 
Postcolonial Studies, City University, London), who spoke on 
"Orientalism: Then and Now."

"Where is the East?", Professor Sardar asked first. Orientalism is about 
Islam and Muslims. When he sees the pictures of harems in the current 
Exhibition, he thinks of his wife, his mother, his daughter and of the
Westerner’s reaction. Is it only representation? Or does it have other
consequences? What is the Westerner’s gaze at Muslim women in Bradford? 
He does not like that – he is worried, and he is in the Said industry.
Orientalism is a discourse, a structure of knowledge, based on ignorance 
– and it has a long history, which begins with Islamism. The Muslim
"terrorist," violent, untrustworthy, has a long history – it is part
of Western Orientalism – dating back to the Saracens, the "Barbarians,"
justifying a pathology of fear: the West is always looking for weapons
of mass destruction. This can be internalised by Professor Sardar, or he
can start "Orientalising" himself. The paintings shown in the Exhibition
freeze the stereotypes, which can be invoked when necessary. The hate is
perpetuated by such constructions, though Professor Sardar does not
deny that some have beauty. But one must never look at these images out 
of context, and the constant question must be "what is it saying about 
my neighbour"? Orientalism is an aesthetic of saying, but the time has 
now come for listening.

The last speaker was Professor Bashir Makhoul (Head of the Winchester 
School of Art, University of Southampton), on "Occupation of an Equal 
Space." For the author of _Orientalism_, he argued, it is a negative 
term – and we agree with Said. It is seductive, erotic, exotic, and it 
troubles Professor Makhoul. The Exhibition is a tourists’ exhibition: 
what we have is not artists with their brushes but tourists with their 
cameras. Turning to today’s politics, he showed a montage with the 
colours of the Palestinian flag, commenting that the penalty for showing 
this in Israel is six months’ imprisonment. He then showed some of his 
works relating to the conflict, like _Points of View_, a "wallpaper 
pattern" which is based on bullet impacts on walls in Beirut,(20) or _My 
Olive Tree_, a tree with no roots, with no land, and a moving image, 
_Jerusalem_. All these works show that in the Middle East (as everywhere 
else in the world) art is indissociable from politics.

After a pause, all the speakers joined in a general round table. 
Professor MacKenzie launched the debate by declaring that he was opposed 
to State executions and that there were many such executions in Iran – 
how is he to represent his opposition without falling into the 
Orientalist trap? Professor Sardar answered that you "Orientalise" 
people not by criticising, but by stereotypes. A question from the 
audience raised the issue of demonisation: for instance President 
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was insulted during his visit to Columbia
University on 25 September 2007. Professor Small believes that we
cannot be bound by racist Orientalism. But there is a narrative of 
genocide – which also affects India and Pakistan - coming from Empire 
and decolonisation, with stories of the poisoning of wells, even of 
Mohammed poisoned by Jews. The problem is how to stop this genocidal 
hatred. For Professor Sardar, who wonders how much film there is on 
Palestine murders by Israel, Professor Small falls into the trap of 
over-generalisation. He glosses over the immense complexity of the 
situation, even in Iran – and this weakens his argument. The discussion 
then turned to the idea that, for Said, Lane was a sexual tourist. 
Professor Sardar believes that an Orientalist painting is the creation 
of a certain representation, which continues today in the British
media – and this must stop. How can the pattern be broken?, a young
artist from the audience asked: she wants to practise a _positive_
Orientalism, and not to be a tourist – which led Professor Makhoul to 
point out that the context is not the same. The objective today must be 
to make people more aware. Professor Sardar agreed: it is all a question 
of intention – Said was right. Christine Riding wonders whether 
Orientalism is still a useful term and she invited questions on 
curatorial choices. To launch the discussion, she could for instance say 
why Lewis's 1850 watercolour _The Hhareem_ was not in the current 
exhibition: in spite of all efforts (including diplomatic channels) it 
proved impossible to borrow it. Professor Çelik asked her why the choice 
was made to stick with paintings, when so much can also be conveyed by 
photographs, journals and film. Dr Tromans pointed to the practicalities 
of getting and showing a number of objects – but this was not the main 
reason: behind the Exhibition, there was a desire to make progress in 
our knowledge of _British_ _painting_. Of course, the curators were 
aware that this is only one medium, and of course they were aware of the 
drawbacks. Professor Roberts posed the problem of expatriates like 
Henriette Browne,* wondering whether the category "Orientalism" does not 
introduce unwelcome limitations. Christine Riding recalled that this is 
the first exhibition of its kind in Britain: naturally, such extensions 
would be good for future events. The title of the Exhibition was debated 
for two years, and "The Lure of the East" is not a curatorial, but a 
marketing decision: half jokingly, one could say that it is a Government 
demand to counter the lure of football.(21) Professor Sardar sees a 
Nationalist note in the decision to include only _British_ painting: why 
exclude the French Orientalists? One reason, given by Christine Riding, 
is that the Tate is in fact the National Gallery of British Art; 
another, conceded by Dr Tromans, is that Yes, there was a Nationalist 
agenda: they wanted to show the British way of doing things – one can 
discern a British "regional variety" of Orientalism, with more 
precision, more accuracy in some of the paintings. The French way is
more "erotic" – the archetype being Gérôme’s _For Sale: Slaves at 
Cairo_.* Professor Roberts concluded by saying that it will be 
interesting to see the reactions to that when the Exhibition moves to 
Istanbul. Uneasiness was expressed by a member of the audience at 
labelling the painters as “Orientalists.” Was this not a form of 
political posturing, a way of proclaming "I’m the only true voice of the 
Orient"? Another found "the East" in the title problematic – to which 
Christine Riding replied that the team had spent five years discussing 
this. Professor Sardar repeated that he does not like the Exhibition, 
because these representations are clichés. He does not recognise himself 
in it, and he does not want to be represented like that. Dr Tromans 
underlined that this is exceptionalism generated though the medium, i.e. 
British painting, to which Professor Çelik added that this is historical 
material – what is one to do with it? Letting the other voices in today 
would not solve the problem: we must have a historical approach. 
Professor Small disagreed: the Other is necessary – and Professor Sardar
somehow concurred: the "East" is the opposite of the "West", and by 
using the word "lure", we yield to all constructions. Not unexpectedly, 
a member of the audience asked whether it was too cynical to see the 
"lure" as the oil: what about the fact that the Exhibition was due to 
travel to Istanbul and Sharjah? The panel agreed with a smile on that 
possible interpretation of the "lure", but Christine Riding explained 
that no concessions had been made, except on one point, for which the 
curatorial team entertained grave doubts anyway: the word “Arabesque”, 
which had been suggested at some stage in the preparatory phase, was 
rejected out of hand in Istanbul. The title _The Lure of the East: 
British Orientalist Painting_ will be kept in both venues, however.


Notes

An asterisk* denotes that a painting is part of the Exhibition.

Two asterisks** denote that a painting is part of the Exhibition and
shown on the Tate’s dedicated site:
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/britishorientalistpainting/explore/


(1) 'Millais, Hunt and Modern Life' Symposium, 30 November 2007. See
H-Museum Archive:
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-museum&month=0712&week=b&msg=m4aCTXQs00%2bxJCl%2b2adG3g&user=&pw=

The Exhibition itself was reviewed on 2 December 2007. See H-Museum
Archive:
http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-museum&month=0712&week=a&msg=GJXuiM2AZ8HQp2nNBqhczw&user=&pw=

(2) _A Series of Portraits of the Emperors of Turkey, from the
Foundation of the Monarchy to the Year 1815. Engraved from Pictures 
painted at Constantinople. Commenced under the auspices of Sultan Selim 
the Third, and completed by command of Sultan Mahmoud the Second. With a 
biographical Account of each of the Emperors. Recueil des portraits des 
empereurs ottomans. Suite des portraits des empereurs turcs, depuis la 
fondation de la monarchie jusqu'à l'an 1815_. By John Young, engraver in 
mezzotinto to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent. London : Printed by 
W. Bulmer & co., 1815.

(3) This is a complicated story. There were to have been three
versions. Only one (shown at the Exhibition, and now in the Royal 
Collection) was finished. The second version (ordered by Abdulmecid 
[Abdul Mejid] himself, and now at Topkapi Palace) was  left unfinished 
at Wilkie’s death in 1841. A third one, which had been commissioned by 
Mehemet [Muhammad] Ali, Pasha of Egypt, when Wilkie went to Alexandria 
to paint his own portrait, was never started.

(4) The finished one shown in London will not go to Istanbul because it
is too fragile to travel.

(5) The Exhibition shows his _For Sale: Slaves at Cairo_, c.1871.

(6) See for instance:
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/verat/Jean_Leon_Gerome.htm

(7) Osman Hamdi Bey et al. _Les costumes populaires de la Turquie en
1873: Ouvrage publié sous le patronage de la Commission impériale 
ottomane pour l'Exposition universelle de Vienne_. Texte par Son 
Excellence Hamdy bey ... et Marie de Launay ... Phototypie de Sébah. 
Constantinople: Imprimerie du "Levant Times & Shipping Gazette", 1873.

(8) A typically Western “Orientalist” picture can be seen on:
http://www.bridgemanartondemand.com/art/164823/The_Turkish_Pavilion_at_the
_Universal_Exhibition_of_1900_Paris

See also:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/brooklyn_museum/2485984359/in/set-72157604656089762/

(9) Lane, Edward William, 1801-1876.  _An Account of the Manners and
Customs of the modern Egyptians_. Written in Egypt during the Years 
1833, 34, and 35, partly from Notes made during a former Visit to that 
Country in the Years 1825, 26, 27, and 28. Two volumes. The Library of 
Entertaining Knowledge. London: Charles Knight & Co, 1836-1837.

(10) Said, Edward W. _Orientalism_. New York : Pantheon Books, 1978
(“With a New Afterword”. London: Penguin, 1995), p. 162.

(11) Tromans, Nicholas [Editor]. _The Lure of the East: British
Orientalist Painting_. With texts by Rana Kabbani, Fatema Mernissi, 
Christine Riding and Emily M. Weeks. London: Tate, 2008. Paperback, 224 
p. ISBN: 1854377337; 9781854377333.

(12) Martin Jay. _Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in
Twentieth-Century French Thought_. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1993.

(13) The clip is visible on the site of the Middle East Media Research
Institute:
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/895.htm

(14) The Charter is reprinted on the Yale University site:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/hamas.htm

(15) _Without Boundary: Seventeen Ways of Looking_ February 26–May 22,
2006
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2006/15_ways.html

(16) Visible on the Tate site:
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=84100

(17) Visible on:
http://www.anoush.ch/images/Iranianjews/iranian-jewish.html

(18) Visible on:
http://www.kamroozaram.com/works/12.html

(19) Visible on:
http://www.stationmuseum.com/Made_in_Palestine-Emily_Jacir/jacir.html

(20)  Visible on:
http://www.drumcroon.org.uk/Arch1/Still/Bashir.html

(21) For the benefit of H-Museum subscribers outside Europe, it must
be recalled that the opening of the Exhibition almost coincided with the
European Football (soccer) Cup, with matches lasting for several weeks
and attracting a massive television audience every day.

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E-mail: visiting.britain at tate.org.uk

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