READING OBJECTS
IN THE CONTACT ZONE
Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler,
and Anna Sophia Messner
Editors
HEIDELBERG
UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING
Reading Objects in the Contact Zone
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality – 9
Series Editors:
Reuven Amitai, Jerusalem; Christiane Brosius, Heidelberg;
Beatrix Busse, Cologne; Prasenjit Duara, Durham;
Christian Henriot, Lyon; Madeleine Herren, Basel;
Nikolas Jaspert, Heidelberg; Monica Juneja, Heidelberg;
Joachim Kurtz, Heidelberg; Thomas Maissen, Paris;
Joseph Maran, Heidelberg; Axel Michaels, Heidelberg;
Barbara Mittler, Heidelberg; Sumathi Ramaswamy, Durham;
Rudolf Wagner (†), Heidelberg; Roland Wenzlhuemer, Munich
Reading Objects
in the Contact Zone
Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler,
and Anna Sophia Messner
Editors
HEIDELBERG
UNIVERSITY PUBLISHING
ORCID®
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
Kerstin Schankweiler
Anna Sophia Messner
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5536-9460
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8357-0492
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3629-7048
This publication was financed in part by the open access fund for
monographs and edited volumes of the Freie Universität Berlin.
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie. Detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at
http://dnb.dnb.de.
This book is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (CC BY-SA 4.0). The cover is subject to the Creative
Commons License CC BY-ND 4.0.
Published by Heidelberg University Publishing (heiUP)
Heidelberg 2021.
The electronic, open access version of this work is permanently available on Heidelberg
University Publishing’s website: https://heiup.uni-heidelberg.de.
urn: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-heiup-book-766-5
doi: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766
Text © 2021, by the authors.
Cover image: Installation view of the exhibition ‘African Negro Art’, MoMA, NY, March 18,
1935 through May 19, 1935. New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Photographic
Archive. The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. IN39.1 © 2020. Digital image,
The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence
ISSN 2365-7987 (Print)
ISSN 2365-7995 (eISSN)
ISBN 978-3-96822-051-2 (Softcover)
ISBN 978-3-96822-050-5 (Hardcover)
ISBN 978-3-96822-049-9 (PDF)
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... ix
Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler and Anna Sophia Messner
On the ‘Objectscape’ of Transculturality. An Introduction ........................... 1
Part I: Economies of Photo-Objects ................................................ 17
Anna Sophia Messner
Migratory Memories: A Suitcase as Photo Archive ..................................... 18
Katharina Upmeyer
Portrait of Space: Lee Miller’s Photograph
as Surrealist Contact Zone ............................................................................. 26
Erin Hyde Nolan
Two-Faced: Translations of a Portrait of Abdülhamid II ............................. 35
Elahe Helbig
Transnational Encounters: A Photograph of Mozaffar
al-Din Mirza from an Italian Mission to Persia ............................................ 42
Part II: Utility and Representation ................................................... 49
Theodore Van Loan
Multiple Temporalities and the Scene of Time: A Pair
of Wooden Doors at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo .......................... 51
Maria Sobotka
Displaying Cross-Culturality: A Water Basin from
Mosul in Berlin ................................................................................................ 58
Matthias Weiß
Cytherian China ............................................................................................... 66
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part III: Building Transcultural Modernity ....................................73
Sonja Hull
The Weizmann House: Staging the Nation-Building
Process of Israel .............................................................................................. 74
Cristiana Strava
Critical Appropriations of Modernity: Michel Écochard’s
8 by 8 Meter Housing Grid, Hay Mohammadi, Casablanca ....................... 82
Part IV: Displaying Stories in the Contact Zone ........................ 91
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
Constellations of Memory and Representation:
A Lunar Sample Display in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi .............................................. 92
Alison Boyd
A Modernist Display at the Barnes Foundation:
Curating Formalism, Primitivism, and Democracy .................................. 101
Westrey Page
Translating Prehistory: Empathy and Rock Painting
Facsimiles in the New York Museum of Modern Art ............................... 108
Lea Mönninghoff
A “Non-Existing Existence” in the Contact Zone:
Emily Jacir’s stazione (2008–2009) .............................................................. 116
Part V: Figurative Objects, Trajectories, and Valuations .... 123
Frederika Tevebring
Baubo on the Pig: Travel across Disciplines ............................................. 125
Felicity Bodenstein
The Global Market Trajectories of Two Brass
Leopards from Benin City (1897–1953) ..................................................... 132
Kerstin Schankweiler
Double Trophy: Gou by Akati Ekplékendo ................................................. 140
Rhea Blem
Becoming a Masterpiece? The Batcham Mask
and its Display at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich .................................. 148
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part VI: Iconographies of Encounter and Translation ......... 155
Lisa Heese
The Camposanto in Pisa by Leo von Klenze: The Encounter
between a Classicist and an Islamic Artwork ........................................... 157
Janna Verthein
Qajar Women and Madonnas? Mother and Child
by Muhammad Hasan ................................................................................. 164
Emily Neumeier
Portrait of Ali Pasha: Cultural Mobility on the
Periphery of Empire ..................................................................................... 172
Part VII: Perceptions between Image and Text ...................... 179
Sria Chatterjee
The Arts of Science in the Contact Zone:
A Satirical Picture ......................................................................................... 181
Tom Young
Art and Sociability in Colonial India: The Behar
Amateur Lithographic Scrapbooks ............................................................... 188
Isabella Krayer
Between the Visual and the Aural: Elias Canetti’s
The Voices of Marrakesh ................................................................................ 196
Key-Terms ................................................................................................. 203
Affect, Agency, Allelopoiesis, Appropriation, Canon, Circulation,
Commodification, Constellation, Cultural Mobility, Cultural Transfer,
Decolonizing, Detail, East / West, Empathy, Entangled Histories,
Europerie, Exoticism, Expanded Contact Zone, Fragment, Gender,
Heritage, Hybridity, Masterpiece, Microhistory, Multiple Modernities,
Nation, North / South, Object Ethnographies, Orientalism, Othering,
Periphery, Photo Archive, Primitivism, Resilience, Return, Spolia,
Translation, Visuality
About the Authors ......................................................................................... 253
vii
Acknowledgements
This book presents research that was executed within the framework
of my Max Planck Research Group “Objects in the Contact Zone – The
Cross-Cultural Lives of Things” at Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz –
Max-Planck-Institut between 2011 and 2018. I therefore thank the
Max-Planck-Society for providing the funds and structures for this
undertaking.
I am very grateful to Gerhard Wolf and Alessandro Nova for the consistent support of this research group in Florence. The project would
never have flourished as well as it did without the KHI’s outstanding academic environment, and our work has benefitted greatly from a lively
exchange with numerous colleagues who have worked and visited there
over the years. The idea for this volume grew out of conversations with
Anna Sophia Messner, who was a doctoral fellow in my group, and with
Kerstin Schankweiler, who stayed a close academic friend of the project
after having spent a short term as a visiting researcher in Florence. Their
steady commitment made it possible to continue working on this publication together, even after the sometimes much too fast-paced rhythm
of academic commitments had led us to other places. Lea Mönninghoff
helped as a student assistant in the first stages of preparation of the
manuscript in Florence, Marie Hummel at TU Dresden assisted when we
finalized it for submission. An important step along the way was a writing
retreat that brought almost all contributors together for several days in
the summer of 2017 in Hohenems. Hanno Loewy, the director of the Jewish Museum Hohenems, generously provided us with space to work—and
by way of his museum’s splendid exhibition he introduced us to his take
on objects and their historic agency, which we found very much in tune
with ours.
Monica Juneja, Russell Ó Ríagáin, and two anonymous peer reviewers
provided great encouragement along with valuable critical feed back. They
made it possible to turn the manuscript into a splendid book at Heidelberg
University Press, where it is most aptly placed within the Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality series. The open access version of this volume was
generously supported with a grant from the University Library of Freie Universität Berlin, I thank Robert Ave and the team edocs as well as Kerstin
Schankweiler and Tobias Wendl who facilitated this.
Last but not least, most heartfelt thanks go out to the authors of
this book. They have all been collaborators or fellows of my Max Planck
Research Group. Each of them embraced the spirit of “Objects in the
Contact Zone” from a different angle. Yet, the keen interest in enhancing
and developing our perspectives provided ample common ground and
Troelenberg, Eva-Maria. 2021. “Acknowledgements.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone,
edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, ix–x.
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10394
ix
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
was a constant confirmation for the timeliness and relevance of crosscultural art history and visual studies.
Utrecht, December 2019
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
x
Eva-Maria Troelenberg , Kerstin Schankweiler
and Anna Sophia Messner
On the ‘Objectscape’ of
Transculturality. An Introduction
One of the major challenges facing art history in recent decades has been
the issue of globalization and its cultural implications—with regard to
both retrospective historical narratives and contemporary methods. As art
production, art audiences, and scholarship on art and visual culture are
becoming more and more internationalized—and, indeed, transcultural—a
(self-)critical analysis of disciplinary standpoints seems more important
than ever and is at the center of ongoing discussions within and beyond
academia. Over the past decades, a significant and extensive body of literature has been published on issues of art history in times of globalization and accelerated cultural exchange (see e.g. Elkins 2007; Zijlmans and
Van Damme 2008; Casid and D’Souza 2014; Bachmann et al. 2017; Dornhof
et al. 2018). Research initiatives, projects, and institutions tackle the major
challenges facing art history and related disciplines by reconsidering historically conditioned Eurocentrisms from a critical postcolonial perspective
and focusing on transcultural processes in the field of art. This anthology
is rooted in a project that was developed in close connection with such
initiatives: the Max Planck Research Group “Objects in the Contact Zone.
The Cross-Cultural Lives of Things”—which was carried out at Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Planck-Institut between 2011 and 2018.
Like most research initiatives with transcultural agendas, “Objects in the
Contact Zone” has operated within a limited time frame, and the question
remains how critical transcultural approaches will become established and
institutionalized in the coming years and how they will be reflected in art
history curriculums. Empirically and methodologically, the “map” of transcultural art history still has many blank areas and the transcultural paradigm is far from being standard. There is, by now, a critical mass of scholars
who have been trained in—often temporary—programs on transcultural art
history. Many of these scholars are still in the early stages of their careers,
yet aspire to rise in the ranks of their respective faculties. Hence, there is
much to suggest that in the not too distant future transcultural approaches
will be normalized and productively integrated into the humanities.
Far from claiming to provide a comprehensive survey of the field of
“art history in a global context,” or a historiographic introduction into
transculturality in art history (see e.g. Bachmann et al. 2017; Juneja 2018),
Troelenberg, Eva-Maria, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner. 2021.
“On the ‘Objectscape’ of Transculturality. An Introduction.” In Reading Objects in the Contact
Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner,
1–15. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University
Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10395
1
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG, KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER AND ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
this volume follows a “hands-on”, object-based approach, as it assembles
a wide range of case studies to create a compilation of readings of paradigmatic objects developed by the individual research projects of the research
group’s fellows and students. Complementary to this, a set of “key terms”
provides an instrument to introduce important concepts for the study
of transcultural visual cultures and art histories, reflecting the dynamic
moment of ongoing debate. The publication is intended to exemplify a format of interaction between advanced academic research and emerging
scholars. It shows how advanced students can be involved in research projects and develop their own perspective, thereby actively shaping future
developments in an evolving field. As such, this approach is very much in
line with the rise of research master programs and graduate schools that
promote reciprocity between teaching and research.
Mapping Transcultural Art History
We consider transculturality as a cultural phenomenon, thus as a subject
for study—but not in the sense of an unconditional fact as it were. Rather,
we want to look at the “concrete modalities of processes and the dynamics
inherent to it” (Bachmann et al. 2017, 15; with a reference to Flüchter and
Schöttli 2015). Accordingly, transcultural research is associated with a multi-layered approach. It links various regional, cultural, and historical contexts and, in the process, draws on a wide range of scholarly approaches
and insights. It aims to leave behind national, civilizational, or disciplinary
principles. In the traditional, academic study of art and artistic practices
from so-called other cultures, such principles can constitute a form of
“epistemological violence” that often works in the context of asymmetric
power constellations of colonialism (Bachmann et al. 2017, 15). A perspective that considers transculturality both as a subject for study and
as a critical method allows a more nuanced, differentiated, and reciprocal understanding of exchange and encounter, and it takes into account
multiple factors and constellations of power. It thus seeks to unravel processes of transfer, appropriation, adaption or also rejection and allows us
to tell art histories across space and time, as the travel of objects and ideas
always adds new layers of significance (see Juneja 2011, 2012, and 2018).
Such a reciprocal understanding of transculturality avoids the trap of naïve
and primarily affirmative notions of mobility or even entanglement (as
recently criticized by Gänger and Osterhammel 2020) that are often still
informed by Eurocentric notions of progress and expansion. Methodologically, we thus aim at a set of methods, transgressing national or disciplinary boundaries and conventional research areas. This does not mean that
local or regional expertise become obsolete or secondary. On the contrary,
associated competences (language skills, intimate knowledge of the field,
etc.) are necessarily of eminent importance, but regional expertise should
not be understood and practiced as an unconnected entity. In line with
2
ON THE ‘OBJECTSCAPE’ OF TRANSCULTURALITY. AN INTRODUCTION
this, the model of scholarship put forward by transcultural research is not
based on comparison, but on a relational perspective. It focuses on transfers between cultural spaces, always placing the object in relation to its
specific local and historical context of perception. This includes processes
that can be read in terms of appropriation, creolization, or a range of concepts linked to the observation that cultural spaces are not homogeneous
entities but in a constant process of exchange and therefore share inextricably interwoven histories.
A relational approach also reflects the premise that the past is no
longer understood as one single story and the need to explore the ramifications and possibilities, in both cultural and social terms, of a horizontal
historical landscape of multiple histories. Viewing historiography as more
than the study of the writing of history and of written histories, the contributions in this volume reflect on both traditional and alternative histories
of representation. The chapters look at displays, objects, encounters and
remains that are not necessarily only text-based and fall within, outside
of, and in between established canons. Accordingly, the notion of “reading
objects” as spelled out in the title of this volume, is not limited to a logocentric understanding—it rather is meant to address historical and contemporary processes of performing, placing, and looking at a conceptually wide
range of objects. One important objective of the research represented in
this volume is to think about the ensuing contingencies of agency and perception. It looks at space, time, people, and things in visual and material
terms—and reviews historical narratives, in order to question established
ontological and epistemological categories and to explore contemporary
methods of (re)thinking transcultural histories (for this premise see also
Troelenberg and Chatterjee 2018).
The Paradigm of the Case Study
The objects discussed range from antiquity to the present, while the frameworks of perception are predominantly modern ones, from the 1800s to
present. This is based on the idea that methodological-theoretical perspectives in the field of transcultural art history need to be developed
inductively drawing on an existing, broad, transcultural research practice.
Rooted in art history and visual studies, this research centers the object
and its visual and material impact. In order to fully grasp this impact or
agency of the object, our work includes the methods and perspectives
of neighboring disciplines from relevant area studies as well as museology, history, archaeology, or anthropology. It taps and critically questions both institutional and informal collections and archives and their
conditions of perception: What is the difference between an image or an
object we encounter in a national museum, and one we find in a forgotten
suitcase? What is the range of intellectual and practical instruments we
need in order to find, reach, and understand such different constellations
3
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG, KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER AND ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
of encounter? Which questions can we answer with these case studies?
Within the project “Objects in the Contact Zone”, some scholars were, for
instance, initially interested in a certain material quality of an artwork,
and they needed to understand the transcultural context in which it was
produced, circulated, or collected in order to make sense of this material. Other scholars were interested in a particular historical moment
of cross-cultural encounter, and they found that an object or an image
might tell the story of this encounter—not as a mere illustration, rather
as a material or visual source in its own right, whose ‘eloquence’ is always
bound to a historical constellation as it plays out across both time and
space. Lorraine Daston has described such epistemic processes in her
study on “Things that Talk”: “[…] things in a supersaturated cultural solution can crystallize ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. These thickenings of significance are one way that things can be made to talk. But their
utterances are never disembodied. Things communicate by what they are
as well as by how they mean. A particular cultural setting may accentuate
this or that property, but a thing without any properties is silent.” (Daston
2004, 20). In this sense, the book’s project can be seen as making a case
for the contextualized case study and its potential to challenge, but also
expand and develop the theoretical and methodological frameworks of
art history beyond a linear, additive, or comparative history of techniques,
styles, and iconographies. In that sense, placing objects in dynamic contact zones productively destabilizes conventions and academic cultures
that, for a long time, were used to “read[ing] a ‘culture’ off a thing in a glass
case” (Juneja 2018, 469).
The choice of examples in the volume altogether reflects the staggering presence of non-European objects particularly in European or North
American collections. It thus hints at a historical and material reality which
is directly linked to asymmetries of power during and in the aftermath
of colonialism. While this does put heavy emphasis on so-called western
institutions and agencies, the volume thus also represents a problemconstellation that can contribute to current debates on privileges of access
and interpretation, on ownership, and restitution (Sarr and Savoy 2018).
In order to tackle this problem-constellation, we adapt the notion of
the “contact zone” and develop it further by linking it directly to objects.
This idea initially started out from the premise that non-European objects,
which are displayed and stored in museums or collections and reproduced, described, analyzed, and categorized through visual media and
arts, are situated in a contact zone. Mary Louise Pratt introduced the
notion of contact zones as places of asymmetrical, but potentially reciprocal spaces of encounter, negotiation, and also conflict. This was crucial for the understanding of a transculturalism which works in multiple
directions, breaking up simplistic binaries of East and West or centers and
peripheries, and thus questioning traditional linear narratives of history
(Pratt 1992). While Pratt focused on textual analysis, the anthropologist
James Clifford connected this reciprocal understanding of contact zones
4
ON THE ‘OBJECTSCAPE’ OF TRANSCULTURALITY. AN INTRODUCTION
into the realm of museum theory and practice (Clifford 1997). Museums,
particularly those whose histories and collections were entangled with
colonialism and imperialism, found a way to address their contested heritage by understanding themselves as contact zones. In a very practical,
concrete sense, the museum as contact zone became a place for different
stakeholders to meet, discuss and negotiate new, reciprocal practices and
heritage policies beyond the colonial appropriation and representation of
artefacts. At the same time, artefacts, interpreted in dialogue or translation between different communities, can be understood as materialized
contact zones. Subsequently, the nexus between museum and contact
zone also became a conceptual term of postcolonial practice—and, one
could critically argue, over time is has become a topos which museums
use to signal an attitude of collaborative, postcolonial self-critique. However, as has for instance been argued by Robin Boast, this can’t undo the
lasting “asymmetry [that] is built, literally and figuratively, into our institutions” (Boast 2011, 66). Any collection, display, and documentation of
artefacts and artworks remains entrenched in power relations. It is for this
reason that we work with case studies that first center objects or groups
of objects, and then we expand the analytical gaze towards these objects’
agencies and layers of meaning as they play out under shifting institutional, political, and historical conditions of representation. We thus ask,
on the one hand: What does an object do, metaphorically speaking, by
way of its intrinsic material and aesthetic qualities? On the other hand,
we critically question the conditions of display or representation that may
make an object speak, but also may silence, change, enhance, challenge,
or obscure what it says or means. Accordingly, looking at “objects in the
contact zone” for us opens a space to critically expound the dynamics at
play in a multi-layered concept of transculturation.
Object-driven
Objects as loot, gift, fetish, relic, commodity, work of art, and collection
piece embody processes of exchange and social interaction between
individuals, cultures, and societies. Their mobilization, de- and recontextualization, evaluation and presentation, appropriation and consumption
materialize social relations. The high interdisciplinary potential of the
notion of the object connects art history with anthropology, religious studies, sociology, economic history, museum studies, etc.
In his seminal volume The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective (1986), anthropologist Arjun Appadurai draws on the research
of his French colleague Marcel Mauss. In the now classic “Essai sur le don”
(1923 / 1924) Mauss thoroughly theorized the notion of the gift pointing to
the profound sociality of exchanging material objects. Appadurai developed
Mauss’ insights into an analysis of the flows of cultural goods in the globalized world. In a similar vein Nicholas Thomas (1991) has extended the
5
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG, KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER AND ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
binary polarization of gift / commodity to the model of a dynamic simultaneity of different concepts of object and ways of dealing with them. As Thomas
has demonstrated, notions of value-making can be expounded productively
through a context-based focus on materiality. Bruno Latour has extended
the argument that to understand the relationship between humans and
objects is to understand social relationships: he has proposed to profoundly
rethink the notion of the object in favor of the theoretically more open
notion of the “thing,” arguing that the social is not exclusively a human affair
but that it emerges as an actor-network that connects all kinds of entities,
including humans, and objects (2005). This is of course against the backdrop
that classical concepts of agency are based on the idea of an intentional
subject, which is constituted in demarcation from passive objects. In questioning this distribution, objects and other entities are admitted to also have
the ability to be active, to also become carriers of agency.
The notion of “object” that is shared in our group and the present
case studies is informed by this academic debate around the status of
materiality and its mobility, adopting it for the discipline of art history in
a cross-cultural context. Considering materiality as a unifying element of
the anthology, we effectively seek to question the “common distinction
between works of art, artefacts and ‘pure’ material objects, goods or commodities,” a distinction traditionally central to canonical Western concepts
of art history (Saurma-Jeltsch 2010, 12). It is about tackling the question
of how “[…] human and object histories inform each other” (Gosden and
Marshall 1999, 169). Following Esther Pasztory’s argument for a “cognitive
interpretation of things,” the approach transcends conflicted or historically
charged notions of “art” and thus goes beyond a terminology that inevitably
becomes contested when moving to the cross-cultural field (Pasztory 2005,
esp. 4). It also transcends simple models of “stimulus-response” or “influence,” and essentialist theories of “exoticism” or “Orientalism” by following
a potentially asymmetric, but basically reciprocal or polycentric, working
hypothesis of transculturation. In doing so, it seeks to move towards a concept of “migratory aesthetics” (Bal and Hernández-Navarro 2011).
Reflecting on the notions of “object” and “thing,” this project suggests a variety of connotations from the physical to the philosophical
and from claims for objectivity (or objectivation) to entanglement that
can be addressed by one and the same entity over time and space and
from different constellations of perception (see, e.g., Pointon 2004). This
approach allows distinguishing between a range of epistemic variations
within a field of reciprocal exchange. Additionally, the emancipation of
objects as agents opens up a perspective on more complex relations of
the distribution of action and power that does not force itself into the
dichotomy of active / passive and not to attributions such as human / thing,
human / animal, animated / inanimated, intention / tool, perpetrator / victim,
oppressor / oppressed, and center / periphery.
The contact zones that the objects of our research reside and move in
create particular conditions of encounters, perception, and reception as
6
ON THE ‘OBJECTSCAPE’ OF TRANSCULTURALITY. AN INTRODUCTION
a result of the object’s provenance or biography and the recipient’s predispositions and intentions (Kopytoff 1986; Gell 1998; Osborne and Tanner 2007)
as well as the object’s own “aura” or aesthetic eloquence (Saurma-Jeltsch
and Eisenbeiß 2010). Objects are understood as a fulcrum between material migrations and social relations. These observations may pertain to single objects, but they can also address more complex object constellations
such as museum displays or urban structures that potentially shed significant light on the transcultural production of knowledge. All case studies
are united by a diachronic perspective that considers the object itself and
its historical setting on an equal footing with, and in relation to, its agency
and reception history across time and space to the present day.
Our examples can be placed within and between various geographical
contexts and thus map modern transcultural histories and pre-histories of
our present globalized art world (Juneja and Kravagna 2013). They open
up a geographically, temporally, and conceptually multi-faceted “objectscape” of transculturality (on this notion see also Juneja and Grasskamp
2018, 11). Connecting the idea of “scapes” (Appadurai 1990) to the analysis of cross-cultural object itineraries, we seize on the current heightened
awareness of the destabilized and deterritorialized state of cultures as
both a challenge and chance that can lead to a better understanding of
alternative histories. Taking its cue from objects and their biographies, our
approach opens up a very tangible dimension within a larger landscape
of “cultural flows” (Appadurai 1990) and global connectivity. In this way,
it addresses both the epistemic potential of the “aesthetics of difference”
(Schmidt-Linsenhoff 2014) and the asymmetries and misunderstandings
that can emerge when objects move and / or become transformed, thereby
entering cultural contact zones (see e.g. Maihoub 2015).
The concept of the “objectscape” also allows us to respond more productively to the post-global condition and its spaces and networks. Within this
condition, we operate with terms such as “cross-cultural” or “transcultural,”
“transregional,” and “transnational.” We use them to describe cultures of
encounter, but also to locate us in a methodological field. In both respects,
such terms do potentially still bear an echo of historically generated, politically motivated notions of difference and distance: the concepts of culture,
region, and nation speak of closed or circumscribed entities and borders.
Transgressing or crossing them, both as a lived experience and as an intellectual enterprise, will therefore understand borders and differences not
in a limiting sense, but rather as landmarks of epistemic significance and
potential. As Monica Juneja has argued with a particular eye on the discursive concept of “culture,” “the prefix ‘trans-’ enables an emancipation from
this concept” (Juneja 2018, 466). This appears related to a dynamic, epistemically productive dimension of “border thinking” (Mignolo and Tlostlanova
2006). The idea of the “object-scape” allows us to look at objects and images
as a materialization of social relations which develop, shift, and indeed
migrate across time and space. Placing objects in an ‘objectscape’ supports our relational perspective. It transcends any additive or comparative
7
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG, KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER AND ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
understanding of ‘global art history’ which tends to include non-Western
regions or cultures merely as an extension of the map and object-canon of
an academic discipline, seeking to signal cosmopolitan virtues without fully
acknowledging the need for a systematic reconsideration of canons, terms,
and concepts (see e.g. Pfisterer 2008; for a deeper historiographic critique
of such additive positions see also Juneja 2018, 464).
This leads directly to another critical question that deserves increased
attention: To what extent are some projects of “global” art history still Eurocentric in themselves? And how, if at all, is global or transcultural art history relevant for scholars based in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, or for
those working on indigenous cultures or First Nations in North America
or the Pacific? As Pauline Bachmann et al. have pointed out when looking
back to the early twentieth-century, pre-history of transcultural art history,
“[w]ithout non-European agents and the relatively unknown interpreters,
merchants, collectors, intellectuals, and artists, there would not have been
any basis for transcultural exchange” to begin with (Bachmann et al. 2017,
12). Against this background, a diachronic perspective seems crucial: teleological models of art and cultural history typically lead up to a normative idea
of modernism and contemporaneity and its agents—and even proponents
of transcultural or global modernity tend to understand the present and the
recent past as a culmination of cross-cultural exchange and connectedness.
The distances between geographies, cultures and agents may thus appear
‘smaller’ today than they used to appear one or two decades ago—however,
this hardly does justice to the complexity of standpoints and perception
modes between past and present. Focusing diachronically on the ‘lives of
things’ and their object-biographies across time and space allows us to tie
in with a concept of transculturation which addresses the “specific dynamic
between distance and proximity that operates within individual and different historical periods and different sites across the globe” (Juneja 2018, 470).
Reading Objects in the Contact Zone
Against this larger theoretical and disciplinary background, the object
essays in this volume are loosely grouped according to formal criteria such
as media, material, or function. At the same time, our sections consider the
dynamics between moments of production and perception in the itineraries of objects: What is the potential of an object, what response does it trigger in a certain context, how does it elicit shifting resonances over time?
Bearing in mind the pitfalls of chronological / teleological, taxonomic, or
geographical classifications, and hierarchies, we seek to avoid the curricular categories and genres of art history which are rooted in often static
European concepts of art. For example, the term “sculpture” is not appropriate for a mask that was, in fact, part of a costume and, indeed, a whole
performance involving dance and music. The juxtaposition of varied case
studies in each section demonstrates both the conceptual potential and
8
ON THE ‘OBJECTSCAPE’ OF TRANSCULTURALITY. AN INTRODUCTION
the challenges of a transcultural art history seeking to productively expand
traditional disciplinary categories.
Economies of Photo-Objects
By understanding photographs as three-dimensional visual and tactile
objects that are active in time and space (Bärnighausen, Caraffa et al. 2019),
the essays in this section focus especially on notions of circulation, multiplication, and appropriation with regard to photographic practices. Anna Sophia
Messner discusses “Migratory Memories: A Suitcase as Photo Archive” by
reading it as a “lieu de mémoire” of the Holocaust. The suitcase and the
photographs appear as a micro photo archive relative to the macro-historical context of visual culture and socio-political history in both Germany and
Palestine / Israel, and at the same time as an archival object whose physical
map(ping) constructs an autobiographical memory. In “Portrait of Space,”
Katharina Upmeyer analyzes “Lee Miller’s Photograph as Surrealist Contact
Zone” between Egypt, Europe, and the US by pointing to surrealist aesthetics and artistic practices as well as notions of appropriation, exile, and loss.
And in “Two-Faced: Translations of a Portrait of Abdülhamid II,” Erin Hyde
Nolan examines the circulation, cross-cultural translation, and networks of
exchange in imperial Ottoman portrait photography, demonstrating this
genre’s capacity to embody multiple and subjective identities when translated across material platforms and cultural borders. Elahe Helbig discusses
the configurations of power based on the example of a “Photograph of
Mozaffar al-Din Mirza from an Italian Mission to Persia.” Asking about the
construction of political iconography and the definition of dynastic-national
identity through photography, she examines the interplay between visual
spheres and social spaces and their multiplication.
Utility and Representation
This section reflects on the cross-cultural transfer of aesthetics and motifs in
an applied-arts context. Historically, such objects were often representative
or, indeed, luxury objects that ended up in museums, i.e. in a space that
opens up complex temporalities of perception. This is the case in Theodore
Van Loan’s essay “Multiple Temporalities and the Scene of Time: A Pair of
Wooden Doors at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo.” Van Loan examines
the role of time, duration, and visual perception, developing a historiographic critique regarding the (re)construction of the past lives of objects.
Maria Sobotka analyzes “Displaying Cross-Culturality: A Water Basin from
Mosul in Berlin,” by focusing on notions of hybridity and the “masterpiece discourse” surrounding this piece in its modern museum context. At the same
time, the Chinese and Mongolian imagery decorating the thirteenth-century
northwestern Iranian water basin is illustrative of the historical transcultural
9
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG, KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER AND ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
exchange between China and the Islamic world. Matthias Weiß’ essay
“Cytherian China” interprets an export piece produced in China for the European market as a case of appropriation that can be read as a reverse “Chinoiserie” or “Europerie” and, in doing so, offers an exemplary conceptual
discussion of exchange processes and their trajectories and terminologies.
Building Transcultural Modernity
The case studies in this section discuss ideas and theories of modernity,
utopia, appropriation, and translation in the context of nation-building processes. In her essay on “The Weizmann House: Staging the Nation-Building
Process of Israel,” Sonja Hull examines the architectural design of the presidential residence against the background of Erich Mendelsohn’s utopian
idea of an “East-West synthesis” as well as the symbolic role of the building
in the Zionist nation-building process. Cristiana Strava analyzes “Critical
Appropriations of Modernity” based on the example of “Michel Écochard’s
8 × 8 Meter Housing Grid, Hay Mohammadi, Casablanca.” Against the background of anti-colonial movements in the 1950s, the bidonvilles (slums) of
Casablanca served as a laboratory for modernist architectural utopias and
experiments with new urban planning and architectural forms.
Displaying Stories in the Contact Zone
This section focuses on the installation of objects in museum displays. The
display as a research object in its own right concerns modes of (re)presenting objects and placing them in a (new) context. Each museum display
reveals a decision—consciously or unconsciously—to tell a particular story.
Eva-Maria Troelenberg looks at “A Lunar Sample Display in Al Ain, Abu
Dhabi” as an example of “Constellations of Memory and Representation”
that visualizes modern Arab identity as situated in between the global and
local, tradition, and modernization. Alison Boyd analyzes “A Modernist
Display at the Barnes Foundation” in Philadelphia that combines objects
from various cultures and periods. Her essay focuses on the ways in which
“foreign” objects are appropriated in this particular setting of reception
and reads the display as a form of “Curating Formalism, Primitivism, and
Democracy.” Westrey Page asks how prehistory is translated in the 1937
exhibition of “Rock Painting Facsimiles in the Museum of Modern Art” in
New York. She discusses the exhibition project as conceptualized straddling
disciplines (art history and cultural anthropology) and identifies “empathy” as a central approach of the exhibition in presenting objects remote
in time and place. Lea Mönninghoff discusses “stazione (2008–2009),” an
artistic intervention by Palestinian artist Emily Jacir for the 53rd Venice
Biennale, as “A ‘Non-Existing Existence’ in the Contact Zone” that highlights
the diverse cross-cultural contact zones linking Venice to the Arab World.
10
ON THE ‘OBJECTSCAPE’ OF TRANSCULTURALITY. AN INTRODUCTION
Figurative Objects, Trajectories, and Valuations
This section looks at four three-dimensional figurative objects whose individual provenances and histories of reception demonstrate how transcultural trajectories are connected to notions of economic and cultural value.
Frederika Tevebring’s essay “Baubo on the Pig: Travel across Disciplines”
focuses on a small terracotta statuette most likely from Hellenistic Egypt
that, today, is in the Altes Museum in Berlin. Tevebring looks at the object’s
modern afterlife and how modern interpretations have become ancient
truths. Felicity Bodenstein follows “The Global Market Trajectories of
Two Brass Leopards from Benin City (1897–1953).” Stolen during the British military expedition to Benin City in 1897, these pieces have a telling
ownership, market, and display history and, today, are among the “masterpieces” of the Nigerian national collection in Lagos. Bodenstein investigates how the price development of the pieces has been linked to their
trajectories. A figure representing the Vodun divinity Gou is the subject of
Kerstin Schankweiler’s essay “Double Trophy: Gou by Akati Ekplékendo.”
This sculpture is discussed as an example of a transcultural art history on
three levels: that of the material of European origin used in creating it; that
of its context of production and usage as a power figure against enemies;
and, finally, that of the object’s canonization in museums in France. Rhea
Blem examines “The Batcham Mask and its Display at the Museum Rietberg
in Zurich” and traces the mask’s “Becoming a Masterpiece.” Taking a critical look at the reception and display of African arts and aesthetics in contemporary “Western” museums, she asks how a shift towards a nonlinear
understanding of art history might be achieved.
Iconographies of Encounter and Translation
This section looks at cultural flows and agencies embodied in iconographic
choices and, in doing so, examines the epistemic value of figural painting
from a cross-cultural perspective. Lisa Heese analyzes “The Camposanto in
Pisa by Leo von Klenze: The Encounter between a Classicist Architect and
an Islamic Artwork” by pointing out how the inclusion of an Islamic bronze
griffin into an idealized classicist exhibition ensemble resulted in its artistic
transformation. Based on the example of Muhammad Hasan’s Mother and
Child, Janna Verthein discusses the iconography of a painting alluding to
the visual formula of a Madonna against the background of the beginning
cultural shift in nineteenth-century Iran. Taking up a Christian subject, yet
giving the mother and child facial features and clothing that met Persian
standards of beauty, the painter did not simply translate the subject of the
Madonna into Qajar painting, but, in fact, endowed it with new meaning. In
her essay “Portrait of Ali Pasha: Cultural Mobility on the Periphery of Empire,”
Emily Neumeier describes “micro-movements” across imperial boundaries
as relevant to the formation of taste in Ottoman borderlands. In a context
11
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG, KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER AND ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
which might at first sight be deemed peripheral we thus find trajectories,
triangulations, and entangled experiences that transcend binary notions.
Perceptions between Image and Text
The contributions to this section discuss examples where the cross-cultural and the cross-medial intertwine. In her essay “The Arts of Science
in the Contact Zone: A Satirical Picture,” Sria Chatterjee examines a print
by Gaganendranath Tagore from a portfolio of “satirical pictures” published in 1921 and titled “Reform Screams.” Beyond the general context
of political feeling and social reform in pre-independence India, this specific print addresses the presence of environmentalist thinking and thus
reveals a contact zone that is not just geographic but also connects human
and nonhuman worlds. Tom Young focuses on “The Behar Amateur Lithographic Scrapbooks” that were produced in the context of colonial India.
He reads these albums as materializations of the social relations between
British members of the Behar School of Athens and local Indian artists.
They tell the story of a social practice through which colonized and colonizing individuals engaged with one another, creating a conceptual space
where ideas about who should be enfranchised within colonial civil society
could be put into question. Isabella Krayer’s essay “Between the Visual
and the Aural: Elias Canetti’s The Voices of Marrakesh” concludes the series
of object essays with a rather unusual object for art historical research:
a book without illustrations. The novel is based on a trip Canetti took to
Marrakesh in the 1950s and describes a European traveler’s encounter
with a foreign culture within a colonial context. Throughout the book, however, the visual and the aural are continually foregrounded and placed in
tension with each other, displaying a keen awareness of the cultural pitfalls
of sight while simultaneously offering a countermodel.
Towards a Map of Terms and Concepts
Taken together, our case studies can bridge the theoretical space between
cross-cultural studies and visual culture phenomena and inspire critical
reassessments of established narratives, categories, and terms.
For this reason, the volume also includes a collectively prepared section
that contains key-terms for cross-cultural visual studies. They outline critical concepts that were applied, developed, and consolidated in relation to
the respective fellow’s projects and thus can function as a glossary to the
object essays. Each object essay contains cross-references to its relevant
key-terms. Most of these terms—for example, “hybridity” and “appropriation”—have been coined in related fields of research and theory. They
have been discussed as key concepts, for instance in postcolonial studies
or art history (Ashcroft et al. 2013; Nelson and Shiff 2003). What we aim for,
12
ON THE ‘OBJECTSCAPE’ OF TRANSCULTURALITY. AN INTRODUCTION
however, is to introduce these concepts even more pointedly into the field
of transcultural art history. Hence, they not only provide practical definitions but also outline the relevance and usefulness of the concepts as critical terms for writing art and visual history across cultures. In some cases,
this has led to shifts of terms or, indeed, to new coinages, such as “object
ethnographies.” Given the dynamic, transformative character of the overall
perspective, it is not a closed list of terms, but rather open-ended, inspiring
further elaboration, expansion, or new extensions in various directions. As
the key-terms have been developed in the context of concrete, case-based
transcultural research, they—together with the object essays—form an
interconnected conceptual field that gives contour to an academic practice
of a transcultural art history.
Apart from presenting the results of a six-year research project, we hope
this book will be especially valuable as a teaching instrument that goes
beyond the scope of common periodic or regional categories. As a whole,
the mosaic of object histories in this book provides an exemplary survey of
approaches for the practice of a transcultural art history in relation to neighboring disciplines, i.e. in a productive exchange with, for example, anthropology, area studies, literature, and historical studies. It is our hope that this
reader will encourage research discussions and further increase the visibility of innovative transcultural approaches and of the study of phenomena
and processes of cultural exchange within the academic community.
ORCID®
Kerstin Schankweiler https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8357-0492
Eva-Maria Troelenberg https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5536-9460
Anna Sophia Messner https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3629-7048
References
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1990. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy.” Theory
Culture & Society 7: 295–310.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. 2013. Post-Colonial Studies: The
Key Concepts, 3rd ed. London: Routledge.
Bachmann, Pauline, Melanie Klein, Tomoko Mamine and Georg Vasold, eds. 2017.
Art / Histories in Transcultural Dynamics: Narratives, Concepts, and Practices at
Work, 20th and 21st Centuries. Berlin: Fink.
Bal, Mieke, and Miguel A. Hernández-Navarro, eds. 2011. Art and Visibility in Migratory Culture: Conflict, Resistance, and Agency. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Bärnighausen, Julia, Costanza Caraffa, Stefanie Klamm, Franziska Schneider, and
Petra Wodke, eds. 2019. Photo Objects: On the Materiality of Photographs and
13
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG, KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER AND ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
Photo-Archives in the Humanities and Sciences. Max Planck Research Library
for the History and Development of Knowledge: Studies 12. Edition Open
Access: https://mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/de/node/6513.
Boast, Robin. 2011. “Neocolonial Collaboration: Museum as Contact Zone Revisited.” Museum Anthropology 34 (1): 56–70.
Casid, Jill H., and Aruna D’Souza, eds. 2014. Art History in the Wake of the Global Turn.
Williamstown: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.
Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Daston, Lorraine, ed. 2004. Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science.
New York: Zone Books.
Dornhof, Sarah, Nanne Buurman, Birgit Hopfener and Barbara Lutz, eds. 2018. Situating Global Art: Topologies – Temporalities – Trajectories. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 2000. “Multiple Modernities.” Daedalus 129 (1): 1–29.
Elkins, James, ed. 2007. Is Art History Global? New York: Routledge.
Flüchter, Antje and Jivanta Schöttli 2015. “Introduction.” In The Dynamics of Transculturality: Concepts and Institutions in Motion, edited by Antje Flüchter and
Jivana Schöttli, 1–23. Cham: Springer 2015.
Gänger, Stefanie and Jürgen Osterhammel. 2020. „Denkpause für die Globalgeschichte.“ Merkur 855 (2020). https://www.merkur-zeitschrift.
de/2020/07/24/denkpause-fuer-globalgeschichte/#more-14759.
Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon.
Gosden, Chris, and Yvonne Marshall. 1999. “The Cultural Biography of Objects.”
World Archaeology 31: 169–178.
Juneja, Monica. 2011. “Global Art History and the ‘Burden of Representation’.”
In Global Studies: Mapping Contemporary Art and Culture, edited by Hans
Belting and Andrea Buddensieg. 274–297. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz.
———. 2012. „Kunstgeschichte und kulturelle Differenz.“ In Die Universalität der
Kunstgeschichte, edited by Matthias Bruhn, Monica Juneja, and Elke Werner,
6–12, special issue of kritische berichte. Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften, 2.
———. 2018. “‘A very civil idea…’. Art History, Transculturation, and World-Making –
With and Beyond the Nation.” In Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 81: 461–485.
Juneja, Monica, and Christian Kravagna. 2013. “Understanding Transculturalism:
Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation.” In Transcultural
Modernisms, edited by Moira Hille, Christian Kravagna, and Marion von
Osten, 22–33. Berlin: Sternberg Press.
Juneja, Monica, and Anna Grasskamp, eds. 2018. EurAsian Matters: China, Europe,
and the Transcultural Object, 1600–1800. Cham: Springer.
Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” In The Social Life of Things, Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited
by Arjun Appadurai, 64–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-NetworkTheory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leeb, Susanne, Oona Lochner, Johannes Paul Raether and Kerstin Stakemeier, eds.
2013. “Globalism.” Special issue of Texte zur Kunst 23 (91).
14
ON THE ‘OBJECTSCAPE’ OF TRANSCULTURALITY. AN INTRODUCTION
Maihoub, Amani. 2015. “Thinking through the Sociality of Art Objects.” Journal of
Aesthetics & Culture 7: 1–10.
Mauss, Marcel. 1923 / 1924. “Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l’échange dans les
sociétés archaïques.” L’Année Sociologique 1: 30–186.
Mignolo, Walter D., and M. V. Tlostanova. 2006. “Theorizing from the Borders:
Shifting to Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge.” European Journal of Social
Theory 9 (2): 205–221.
Moxey, Keith. 2009. “Is Modernity Multiple?” Accessed November 15, 2017. http://
www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/courses/Multiple-Modernities/moxey-essay.
html.
Nelson, Robert S., and Richard Shiff, eds. 2003. Critical Terms for Art History, 2nd ed.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Osborne, Robin, and Jeremy Tanner, eds. 2007. Art’s Agency and Art History. Malden:
Blackwell Publishing.
Pasztory, Esther. 2005. Thinking with Things: Toward a New Vision of Art. Austin: The
University of Texas Press.
Pfisterer, Ulrich. 2008. “Origins and Principles of World Art History: 1900 (and
2000).” In World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches, edited by
Kitty Zijlmans and Wilfried van Damme, 69–89. Amsterdam: Valiz.
Pointon, Marcia. 2004. “The Lure of the Object.” In The Lure of the Object, edited by
Stephen Melville, 207–211. Clark Studies in the Visual Arts. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London:
Routledge.
Sarr, Felwine and Bénédicte Savoy. 2018. The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage:
Toward a New Relational Ethics (French original version: Rapport sur la restitution du patrimoine culturel africain. Vers une nouvelle éthique relationelle).
Accessed September 17, 2019. https://restitutionreport2018.com.
Saurma-Jeltsch, Lieselotte, and Anja Eisenbeiß, eds. 2010. The Power of Things and
the Flow of Cultural Transformations: Art and Culture between Europe and Asia.
Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag.
Saurma-Jeltsch, Lieselotte. 2010. “About the Agency of Things, Objects and Artefacts.” In The Power of Things and the Flow of Cultural Transformations: Art and
Culture between Europe and Asia, edited by Saurma-Jeltsch and Eisenbeiß,
10–22. Berlin, Munich: Deutscher Kunstverlag.
Schmidt-Linsenhoff, Viktoria. 2014. Ästhetik der Differenz. Postkoloniale Perspektiven
vom 16. zum 21. Jahrhundert. 15 Fallstudien, 2nd ed. Marburg: Jonas Verlag.
Thomas, Nicholas. 1991. Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Troelenberg, Eva-Maria, and Sria Chatterjee. 2018. “After the Global Turn: Ecopolitics, Migration, and the Futures of Art History.” Kunstlicht 1 (2018):
60–72.
Zijlmans, Kitty, and Wilfried Van Damme, eds. 2008. World Art Studies: Exploring Concepts and Approaches. Amsterdam: Valiz.
15
PART I
Economies of
Photo-Objects
Figure 1: Suitcase containing photographs by Alice Hausdorff.
Anna Sophia Messner
Migratory Memories:
A Suitcase as Photo Archive
Abstract The chapter examines a suitcase as photo archive whose physical map(ping) constructs an autobiographical memory that informs us
about its history as well as of the larger historical context. The unfolding
of the layers of photographs provides fragmentary insights into the life
and work of the forgotten photographer Alice Hausdorff who escaped
Nazi-Germany and went into exile in Palestine / Israel. Furthermore, they
construct an aesthetic, iconographic, social, and historic matrix, presenting a previously missing female perspective on the cultural sphere of the
Weimar Republic and the Zionist nation-building process in Palestine /
Israel which will be inscribed into the canon of photography studies.
Keywords Photography, Archive, Memory, Cultural Transfer, Gender
Messner, Anna Sophia. 2021. “Migratory Memories: A Suitcase as Photo Archive.” In
Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler,
and Anna Sophia Messner, 18–25. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg:
Heidelberg University Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10397
19
ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
About ten years ago, an old brown leather suitcase filled with photographs
and letters was found on a rubbish heap in Haifa, Israel, and brought to
a private photograph collector near Jerusalem. The collector does not provide much information in his account of the incident, instead emphasizing the almost mythical aura enveloping the suitcase, its contents, and its
recovery, presuming it was the original suitcase of a woman photographer
who escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930’s. After her death, the suitcase
was thrown in the garbage, according to the collector. When the suitcase
was opened, it was found to contain a trove of documents bearing witness
to the life and work of its forgotten owner, Alice Hausdorff: Photographs
taken in Berlin in the 1920s and in Israel from the 1930s to the 1960s, as
well as correspondence between the photographer in Israel and her artist
friend Franz Winninger in Berlin.
Adding to the shroud of mystery surrounding the suitcase and its putative former owner is the fact that the photographer is not mentioned in
the literature on photography in either Israel or Germany. This exclusion
from the canon of photography studies is characteristic of a generation of
German-Jewish women photographers who participated in and shaped the
artistic and emancipatory avant-garde movements of the Weimar Republic and who were then forced to escape the Nazi regime and immigrated
to Palestine in the 1930s. As a symbol of travel, migration, and storage,
the suitcase and its contents as well as its negligent handling and recovery reflect the status of those forgotten photographers in both collective
memory and scholarship.
Against this background, the suitcase and its contents may be analyzed
as a photographic micro archive (⏵Photo Archive ) regarding the macrohistorical context of the visual culture and socio-political history of the Weimar Republic and Palestine / Israel.
This essay aims to do just that on the basis of the theoretical and
methodological framework developed by Gabriella Giannacchi in “Archive
Everything,” where she suggests “that archives should be read as ‘material’ archeological sites” (Giannacchi 2016, 27). Thus, “both objects in the
archive and archives as objects […] can be thought of having social lives,
entailing biographies and associated narratives” (112). The archeological
approach allows us to construct timelines and establish relationships to
the remains of the past (31–32). In this sense, Giannacchi understands
“archives as laboratories for memory production” (57) where memories are
constructed based on traces of the past and their reinterpretation, thereby
creating future memories (58–59).
A close reading of the object will serve to uncover the various layers
of the previously unknown photo archive in both material and historical
terms, in order to create a narrative of a previously missing perspective.
In this micro-historical (⏵Microhistory ) case study, the object will come to
be seen as illustrative of the macro-historical context and, as such, it will
inscribe itself into the canon of photography studies and collective memory in both Germany and Israel.
20
MIGRATORY MEMORIES: A SUITCASE AS PHOTO ARCHIVE
The initials “AH” and the name “A. Hausdorff” written in white letters
on the front of the suitcase point to the presumable owner of the suitcase, Alice Hausdorff. The name was probably added to make it easier to
identify her luggage, which would have been necessary during its transport together with other people’s suitcases. Based on this assumption,
we can speculate that Hausdorff used the suitcase to carry her personal
belongings while fleeing Germany. Like most German-Jewish refugees
who escaped Nazi Germany, she probably boarded a ship to Palestine
which was a British Mandate at the time. In exile, the suitcase became
a place of storage. The photographs, documents, and letters preserved
in the suitcase provide fragmentary insights into the life and work of Alice
Hausdorff. Her birth certificate provides us with the date and place of her
birth: December 15th, 1899 in Gleiwitz (today Gliwice in Poland). In the
1920s, she worked as an independent photographer in Berlin, focusing primarily on commercial photography. In the early 1930s, she escaped Nazi
Germany and settled in Tel Aviv and later in Haifa, where she worked as
a photographer for newspapers, Zionist magazines, the Habimah Theatre,
and the Women’s International Zionist Organization.
The suitcase held a total of nineteen boxes containing photographs.
The inscriptions on the boxes indicate that Alice Hausdorff used 13 × 18 cm
Kodak film, while the trademark “Made in Great Britain” suggests that her
photography equipment was imported from Britain. The boxes also bear
handwritten inscriptions probably by the photographer herself, some of
which are in German, some in Hebrew, and some in a combination of both
languages. Using descriptors such as “Settlement and Architecture,” “Habimah,” or “Gertrud Kraus,” they refer to the contents of each box. They also
provide some insight into Alice Hausdorff’s use of language in everyday
life in exile. Like most German-Jewish immigrants, the so-called Yekkes, she
probably never gave up the German language and used it on a daily basis
in conversations with other immigrants from German-speaking countries
as well as in her correspondence and private documents, while Hebrew
was used in official or business contexts and only when necessary.
The photographs by Alice Hausdorff offer a wide variety of iconographic,
aesthetic, historical, and social perspectives. A yellow folder labeled “Kodak
A-G – Berlin SW 65” holds photographs from Berlin and is probably the
only folder she took with her to Palestine. In terms of subject matter and
aesthetic language, the photographs reflect her involvement in avantgarde cultural movements of the Weimar Republic such as “New Vision”
and “New Woman,” where the field of photography, in particular, offered
women independence and mobility (Kühn 2005). In Berlin, Alice Hausdorff
focused on commercial photography and aesthetic experiments, whereas
in Palestine / Israel her iconographies are related especially to the cultural, economic, and social nation-building process (⏵Nation ) and notions
of the “Orient.” Her interest in theater, on the other hand, is a common
thread running through her entire photographic production in Berlin and
Palestine / Israel.
21
ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
Figure 2: Alice Hausdorff: Untiteled (The Dancer Gertrud Kraus). Photograph.
Of special interest are the experimental dance photographs and photographic portraits of actors of the Habimah theatre, particularly of the
Viennese dancer Gertrud Kraus (see Fig. 2). Kraus escaped the Nazi regime
in 1935 and immigrated to Palestine where she became a pioneer of modern expressionist dance (Jewish Women’s Archive 2017). This dance style,
as well as the experimental dance photography associated with it, were
important artistic expressions of avant-garde cultural life in the Weimar
Republic. Brought to Palestine / Israel by German-Jewish immigrants,
expressionist dance and the aesthetic language of dance photography
were appropriated by Israeli dance and visual culture. The close friendship
between Hausdorff and Kraus, moreover, points to their involvement in the
socio-cultural network of German-Jewish immigrants in Palestine / Israel,
who cultivated German language and culture even in exile (Zimmermann
2005).
In other photographs, Hausdorff adopted stylistic elements of “New
Objectivity,” “New Vision,” and documentary photography, depicting subjects that were widespread in the visual culture of the period. In some photographs, for instance, she takes up the topos of the pioneer (see Fig. 3)
who embodied the notion of work as a sacred obligation for the Zionist
undertaking, or she addresses socio-political issues such as the immigration of various ethnic Jewish groups from the Diaspora to Palestine
(Le Vitte-Harten 2005). The images reveal an ethnographic interest in
22
MIGRATORY MEMORIES: A SUITCASE AS PHOTO ARCHIVE
Figure 3: Alice Hausdorff: Untiteled (Workers). Photograph.
the anthroposphere and everyday activities as well as in the ethnic and
cultural diversity of the population in Palestine / Israel, attesting to Alice
Hausdorff’s fascination for the “other.” Against this background, the suitcase and its content may be read not just as an archive but also as an
archival object whose physical map(ping) constructs an autobiographical
memory that informs us about its history (Giannacchi 2016, 182) as well as
of the larger historical context.
The suitcase as object is entangled with notions of movement and storage. In the context of this case study, the suitcase is both a material entity
and a symbolic object linked to notions of migration, escape, journey, and
exile and inscribed with personal as well as collective experiences of hope,
loss, and displacement. As a portable object, it was carried by the migrant,
the photographer Alice Hausdorff, and multiple vehicles on the escape
route from Germany to Palestine, crossing borders, time, and space. As
a container, it was filled with the migrant’s personal possessions that serve
as memories of the lost home, as exemplified by the paper folder holding
photographs from Berlin. In exile in Palestine, the suitcase was used as
a place of storage, thus becoming an archival space where past, present,
and future memories meet and materialize in photo objects (Dogramaci
2013, 235–236; Morley 2000, 44–46; Schlör 2014, 76–92).
As three-dimensional visual and tactile objects, the photographs may
thus be read as carriers of knowledge, experience, and affect relating to
23
ANNA SOPHIA MESSNER
the fate of a German-Jewish woman photographer, the socio-cultural life
of the Weimar Republic and Palestine / Israel, and Holocaust-induced flight
and exile (⏵Affect ). Those dimensions are inscribed into the bodies of the
photographs and shape their biographies and identities. As agents, the
photographs participated in the process of migration and actively circulated in social, political, and institutional spaces, such as the socio-cultural
network of the Yekkes, Zionist institutions, and newspapers, or archives. At
the same time, their aesthetics, performative qualities, and iconographies
exemplify notions of cultural transfer from Germany to Palestine / Israel
relating to the visual language as well as experimental and avant-garde
concepts of “New Vision” and “New Objectivity.” In the new environment
of Palestine / Israel, the novel aesthetic language was then absorbed into
the existing culture, creating a new hybrid visual language (⏵Hybridity ). In
terms of visual culture in Germany and Israel, the photographs discussed
here construct an aesthetic, iconographic, social, and historic matrix,
presenting a female perspective (⏵Gender ) on the cultural sphere of the
Weimar Republic, the ‘Orient,’ and the Zionist nation-building process in
Palestine / Israel. The archive materializes and generates those narratives.
The suitcase as photo archive may be understood as a diasporic archive
which, according to Gabriella Giannacchi,
has the potential to transform our reading of […] processes of
marginalization, making it possible for oppressed cultures to be
brought to light and their histories to be rewritten. […]. The diasporic archive in fact shows that […] it is also what it is not, what
was left out, what was destroyed or hybridized […] and, […] what
is still open to interpretation. In other words, the diasporic archive
entails essential absences: it is intrinsically unstable, but also unfinished, in progress, potentially able to initiate a knowledge revolution (Giannacchi 2016, 95).
Despite its inestimable value in terms of material and visual culture, the
suitcase and its content were neglected for decades. Reasons for this
may have been socio-political, based on gender and exclusion. While Alice
Hausdorff participated in and shaped avant-garde cultural life in the Weimar Republic and in Palestine / Israel, she was at the same time a minority, both as a Jewish woman in German society and as a German woman
in Israeli society. Thus, the photo archive discussed here may be read as
a symbol of loss and absence. It constitutes a “lieu de mémoire” of the
Holocaust that, while remaining invisible, is referred to in terms of a confrontation with its consequences and its aftermath. At the same time, the
photo archive delineates a “found object.” As W. J. T. Mitchell writes: “The
secret of the found object is […] the most intractable kind: it is hidden in
plain sight […]. Once found, however, the found object should […] become
foundational” (Mitchell 2005, 114). Therefore, the recovery of the suitcase
and its contents from the rubbish heap and their transfer to the archive
24
MIGRATORY MEMORIES: A SUITCASE AS PHOTO ARCHIVE
may be understood as an auratization of the profane, a process of ascription of meaning. As an archival object, it may be read as a sign, symbol, or
icon (Dogramaci 2013, 245) or “as a closely woven palimpsest of […] shifting meanings in material culture” (Edwards and Hart 2004, 60) with the
potential to reshape the canon of photography studies in both Germany
and Israel.
ORCID®
Anna Sophia Messner
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3629-7048
Figures
Fig. 1–3:
© Buki Boaz Collection of Israeli Photography, Israel.
References
Dogramaci, Burcu. 2013. “Migration als Forschungsfeld der Kunstgeschichte.“
In Migration und Künstlerische Produktion: Aktuelle Perspektiven, edited by
Burcu Dogramaci, 229–250. Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag.
Edwards, Elizabeth, and Janice Hart. 2004. “Mixed Box: The Cultural Biography of
a Box of ‘Ethnographic’ Photographs.” In Photographs, Objects, Histories:
On the Materiality of Images, edited by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart,
47–61. London: Routledge.
Giannacchi, Gabriella. 2016. Archive Everything: Mapping the Everyday. London:
Cambridge.
Jewish Women’s Archive. 2017. “Gertrud Kraus.” Accessed October 19, 2017. https://
jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/kraus-gertrud.
Kühn, Christine, ed. 2005. Neues Sehen in Berlin: Fotografie der Zwanziger Jahre.
Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Le Vitte-Harten, Doreet, ed. 2005. Die Neuen Hebräer: 100 Jahre Kunst in Israel.
Berlin: Nicolai.
Mitchell, W. J. Thomas. 2005. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Morley, David. 2000. Home Territories: Media, Mobility and Identity. London:
Routledge.
Schlör, Joachim. 2014. “Means of Transport and Storage: Suitcases and Other
Containers for the Memory of Migration and Displacement.” Jewish Culture
and History 15 (1–2): 76–92.
Zimmermann, Moshe, ed. 2005. Zweimal Heimat: Die Jeckes zwischen Mitteleuropa
und Nahost. Frankfurt a. M.: Beerenverlag.
25
Unlimited image rights were not available
for Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
www.leemiller.co.uk
Figure 1: Lee Miller: Portrait of Space, Al Bulwayeb, near Siwa, Egypt 1937 [E1905].
Katharina Upmeyer
Portrait of Space:
Lee Miller’s Photograph as
Surrealist Contact Zone
Abstract Katharina Upmeyer’s chapter focuses on the emergence and
reception of the famous photograph Portrait of Space taken by American
photographer Lee Miller in 1937. Due to its publication in the surrealist
magazine London Bulletin in June 1940, it became an emblem of exile. This
reduction contradicts, however, its origin as a surrealist photograph first
and foremost negating also other possible interpretations. It will be shown
how it functioned as a contact zone between the surrealist movement in
Europe and in Egypt highlighting also the artists’ network that spanned
globally. Moreover, it analyses the perception / appropriation of Egypt by
the surrealists.
Keywords Cultural Transfer, Orientalism, Appropriation, Expanded Contact Zone, Networks
Upmeyer, Katharina. 2021. “‘Portrait of Space:’ Lee Miller’s Photograph as
Surrealist Contact Zone.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by
Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 26–33.
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University
Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10398
27
KATHARINA UPMEYER
On 13 October 1937,1 American photographer Lee Miller took one of her
most renowned photographs titled Portrait of Space. The vast Egyptian
desert is seen through a torn mosquito tent to which an empty picture
frame is attached. Although it seems as if there is no sign of life in this area,
a sand road running from the bottom left to the horizon on the right offers
a trace of civilization. In the vast sky, which dominates the picture, clouds
take on the shape of a bird. The image exudes an intense sense of isolation
and forlornness, throwing its inherent creativity and freedom into sharp
relief. This may be one of the reasons why E. L. T. Mesens decided to publish the photograph in the surrealist magazine London Bulletin in June 1940,
opposite to the Paul Delvaux painting Les Phases de la Lune (1939) and Paul
Éluard’s poem “Exile,” (Haworth-Booth 2007, 141). As a result, the image
became not just an emblem of the displacement and fundamental loss
experienced in exile but, more importantly, a symbol of creative freedom.
Numerous scholars have analyzed Portrait of Space in terms of Miller’s
psychological state during her stay in Egypt. Patricia Allmer, moreover,
sees in Miller’s photograph a deliberate deconstruction of the patriarchal
colonial gaze which had dominated the Orientalist (⏵Orientalism) view of
Egypt since the eighteenth century. Against this background and based on
a close reading of the photograph, this essay focuses on the reception of
the image during the Second World War. In the process, it aims to identify
the ways in which the image functioned as a surrealist contact zone with
regard to Surrealism in the West as well as in Egypt itself.
The composition of Portrait of Space with the torn mosquito tent specifically points to a (positive) effect of exile described by Edward Said in his
famous essay Reflections on Exile:
The exile knows that in a secular and contingent world, homes are
always provisional. Borders and barriers, which enclose us within
the safety of familiar territory, can also become prisons, and are
often defended beyond reason or necessity. Exiles cross borders,
break barriers of thought and experience (Said 2013 [2000], n.p.).
Unlike many other artists of the period, Miller was not forced to emigrate
due to the political situation in her country, but deliberately chose Egypt
as her new home because of her marriage with the Egyptian businessman
and engineer Aziz Eloui Bey in 1931. The frequent reading of Portrait of
Space as an image of exile and displacement is based mainly on Miller’s
statements in her correspondence. The term “exile” which appears in a letter to Roland Penrose, the British surrealist and Miller’s future second
husband, describes her rather negative perception of Egypt in terms of
being displaced from the surrealist network (Burke 2007) in Europe and
1
28
Mark Haworth-Booth convincingly proposes this date based on a postcard Lee
Miller sent from Siwa to Roland Penrose on October 13, 1937. See HaworthBooth 2007, 133.
PORTRAIT OF SPACE: LEE MILLER’S PHOTOGRAPH AS SURREALIST CONTACT ZONE
the fashion world in the United States (Conekin 2013) where, as a model
and photographer, Miller had been a fixture of both the American and the
French Vogue in the late 1920s and early 1930s. These circumstances also
suggest a date for Portrait of Space after her trip to Europe in 1937. She
spent most of the summer of that year in France and England with, among
others, Roland Penrose, Picasso, and Man Ray, meeting Magritte and Paul
Delvaux, and reconnecting with the surrealist network (Haworth-Booth
2007, 132).
But can Miller’s photograph really be reduced to an emblem of exile,
as it was perceived following its publication in the London Bulletin in 1940?
A close analysis of its composition and subject demonstrates that it is first
and foremost a surrealist photograph. Clearly, Miller was particularly interested in the boundary between interior and exterior space marked by the
torn fly screen. This is indicated by four variations of the photograph preserved at the Lee Miller Archives in England. The particular focus of the
final composition causes that boundary to be blurred, creating a sense of
“in-betweenness”—a device frequently used by surrealist artists to achieve
“transcendence” and “sur-reality.” The Egyptian desert is presented in
a romantic, “primitive” (⏵Primitivism) light suggesting natural nativeness,
a state advocated by the surrealist avant-garde as an antidote to modern, industrial society. The tent itself, moreover, refers to a nomadic life
or “nomadic space,” as Patricia Allmer terms it (Allmer 2013, 2). Against
this background, it becomes evident that Miller’s composition incorporates
surrealist elements and, in some ways, even explicitly references works by
other surrealists. Especially her acquaintance with Magritte in 1937 is of
significance for Portrait of Space, as Miller’s photograph shows similarities
in composition and form to Magritte’s 1936 painting La Clef des Champs
(see Fig. 2). To date, this influence has not received any attention. We do
know that Magritte saw Portrait of Space at Roland Penrose’s house in
Hampstead in April 1938 and took inspiration from it for his 1938 painting
Le Baiser (Haworth-Booth 2007, 141).
Magritte’s painting La Clef des Champs similarly offers a view of a landscape through a broken window. According to André Breton, windows and
mirrors signify freedom, and Magritte’s title, La Clef des Champs, alludes
to a figure of speech which in French means “liberation” (Museo Nacional
Thyssen-Bornemisza. n.d.). It seems possible that Miller saw Magritte’s
painting in Belgium or discussed it with him. The appropriation of Magritte’s composition plays an important role in the reception of Portrait of
Space as an emblem of exile and creativity during the Second World War.
The way in which the photograph was then contextualized in the London
Bulletin in 1940 further underscored the state of “in-betweenness” of the
exile. Furthermore, because the exile crosses borders of experience and
thoughts, as Edward Said writes, the experience of “borders” played an
important role for expatriate surrealists. This is prominently illustrated by
Marcel Duchamp’s so-called Mile of String, a work he created for the exhibition First Papers of Surrealism organized by André Breton in the United
29
KATHARINA UPMEYER
Figure 2: René Magritte: La Clef des champs, 1936, oil on canvas, 80 × 60 cm, Museo
Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.
States in 1942 (see also Eckmann 2013, 35). Duchamp’s installation consists of a dense web of twine crisscrossing the exhibition space and creating a palpable sense disorientation and displacement for visitors to the
exhibition (see Eckmann 2013, 35). Miller’s photograph also challenges
the boundaries of the medium by depicting a motif that appears to hover
between life and death, reality and dream, perception and imagination,
past and present. She thus appropriates (⏵Appropriation) an aesthetic and
symbolic language, which references the ideas of Surrealism. The desert is
depicted as a timeless and monotonous place, devoid of any modernity and
untouched by the development that changed Egypt in the 1930s. Miller’s
visualization of the Egyptian desert is thus consistent with the surrealist
view of Egypt and of the “Orient” in general: “Ancient Egypt thus becomes
one of the various pre-Modern cultures, along with those of the Americas,
Oceanic, and the British Columbian cultures for example, that are seen to
appreciate more fully the aspects of the human experience neglected in
the modern Occident, including the integration of the mythical, the oneiric,
and the magical into the very economics of the everyday” (Roberts and
Allmer 2013, 3). André Breton celebrated the “Orient” as an antipode to the
rationalism and capitalism of the “Occident”: “Orient, victorious Orient, you
30
PORTRAIT OF SPACE: LEE MILLER’S PHOTOGRAPH AS SURREALIST CONTACT ZONE
who have only symbolic value, do with me as you please. Orient of anger
and pearls! Orient, lovely bird of prey and of innocence, I implore you from
the depths of the kingdom of shadows! Inspire me!” (Antle 2006, 5).
Yet Miller’s image specifically contradicts the Orientalist (⏵Orientalism) notion of Egypt as a mere agglomeration of archaeological sites and
famous monuments, a view notably conveyed, for instance, by the frontispiece of Description de l’Égypte (1809–1829).2 This encyclopedic work had
been commissioned after Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt in 1798 and came
to be a symbol not just of the territorial, but also of the scientific penetration of this country. In Portrait of Space, all the famous Egyptian monuments so often featured in Orientalist photographs and paintings 3 have
disappeared, leaving nothing but the void of the desert.
Against this background, it is important to note that Miller’s photograph(s) functioned as ‘contact zone’ (⏵Expanded Contact Zone) not
only for the surrealist avant-garde in Europe, but also for the early surrealist movement in Egypt. In recent years, scholarly interest in surrealism in Egypt has increased, yet research mainly focuses on the Art and
Liberty Group. In the late 1930s, several artists met in Cairo to discuss
recent developments in art and signed a manifesto, espousing surrealist-influenced ideas; in 1938, the poet Georges Henein and other Egyptian
surrealists then officially founded the group Art et Liberté in Cairo.4 Miller
had regular contact with these “rebels,” as her letters to Roland Penrose
indicate (Miller January 23 / 27, 1939). In those letters, she also mentions
a collaboration with Georges Henein for a planned “semi-surrealist magazine” (Miller January 30, 1939), but the increasingly dangerous political
situation prompted Miller to abandon the idea again in 1939. Still, her
important role as an intermediary between the Egyptian surrealists and
the surrealist avant-garde in Europe should not be overlooked (see also
Bardaouil 2017, 11). Roland Penrose would send her the latest surrealist
magazines and books that, in turn, brought the surrealists in Egypt into
contact with, and allowed them to participate in, contemporary surrealist trends in Europe. At the same time, those artists could study surrealist artworks by Picasso and Man Ray in the original in Miller’s house in
Cairo. In this way, the ideas and concepts of the surrealist avant-garde in
2
3
4
In this context, Allmer argues that Miller deconstructs the colonizing gaze onto
Egypt. See Allmer 2016, 4; see also her important publication, Patricia Allmer, Lee
Miller: Photography, Surrealism, and Beyond (2016). However, it should be emphasized that this deconstruction can be regarded only as a side effect; Miller’s
focus was clearly on artistic production and playing with aesthetic norms.
For a (critical) overview on this topic, see Maria Golia, Photography and Egypt
(2010); Derek Gregory, “Emperors of the Gaze: Photographic Practices and Production of Space in Egypt, 1839–1914” (2003).
Art and Liberty’s manifesto of December 22, 1938 was also published in the
London Bulletin in April 1939 with a preface titled From Egypt written by Roland
Penrose. See Sam Bardaouil, Surrealism in Egypt: Modernism and the Art and Liberty Group (2017, 10). For further information on the Art and Liberty Group, see
also Bardaouil, Sam, and Till Fellrath, Art et Liberté: Rupture, War and Surrealism in
Egypt (1938–1948) (2016).
31
KATHARINA UPMEYER
Europe—with Paris at its “center”—spread and migrated to its perceived
“peripheries” such as Egypt (⏵Cultural Transfer). In fact, a photograph by
the Egyptian artist Mamduh Muhamad Fathallah titled Peak (1944–1945)
shows similarities in composition to Miller’s photograph Portrait of Space,5
but while appropriating (⏵Appropriation) Miller’s composition, Fathallah
decontextualizes the scene. Miller’s impact on Egyptian art still requires
further analysis. However, Miller’s picture perfectly fits to the issues generated by the Art and Liberty Group artists. In order to criticize the nationalist
exploitation of Pharaonic Egypt, they challenged the beholder’s common
perception of ancient monuments and artifacts via playful compositions
and absurd juxtapositions.
In 1939, Miller left her husband and moved to London to be with Roland
Penrose. She never returned to Egypt but continued to portray space and
countries in her photographs documenting the destruction caused by
the Second World War. As inherent in Portrait of Space, all these pictures
demonstrate a state of “in-betweenness”. In this regard, Miller’s photograph can be considered as a key to her entire oeuvre.
Figures
Fig. 1: www.leemiller.co.uk.
Fig. 2: VEGAP, Madrid © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2020.
References
Allmer, Patricia. 2016. Lee Miller: Photography, Surrealism, and Beyond. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
———. 2013. “Apertures onto Egypt: Lee Miller’s Nomadic Surrealism.” Dada / Surrealism 19, w.p. (Article 6).
Antle, Marine. 2006. “Surrealism and the Orient.” Yale French Studies 109: 4–16.
Bardaouil, Sam. 2017. Surrealism in Egypt: Modernism and the Art and Liberty Group.
London: I.B. Tauris.
Bardaouil, Sam, and Till Fellrath, eds. 2016. Art et Liberté: Rupture, War and Surrealism in Egypt (1938–1948). Milano: Skira.
———, eds. 2014. Nofretete – tete-a-tete: Wie Kunst gemacht wird: Künstler, Museum
und Publikum. Milano: Skira.
Burke, Carolyn. 2007. Lee Miller: A life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Conekin, Becky. 2013. Lee Miller in Fashion. London: Thames & Hudson.
Golia, Maria. 2010. Photography and Egypt. Cairo: American University in Cairo
Press.
5
32
Both works are analyzed and printed in the exhibition catalogue. See Sam
Bardaouil and Till Fellrath 2014.
PORTRAIT OF SPACE: LEE MILLER’S PHOTOGRAPH AS SURREALIST CONTACT ZONE
Gregory, Derek. 2003. “Emperors of the Gaze: Photographic Practices and Production of Space in Egypt, 1839–1914.” In Picturing Place: Photography and
the Geographical Imagination, edited by Joan Schwartz and James Ryan,
195–225. London: I.B. Tauris.
Haworth-Booth, Mark. 2007. The Art of Lee Miller, London: V&A.
Miller, Lee. January 23 / 27, 1939. “Letter to Roland Penrose.” East Sussex: Lee Miller
Archives.
———. January 30, 1939. “Letter to Roland Penrose in Cairo.” East Sussex: Lee
Miller Archives.
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza. n.d. “René Magritte, La Clef des champs.”
Accessed August 19, 2016. http://www.museothyssen.org/en/thyssen/
ficha_obra/3.
Roberts, Donna, and Patricia Allmer. 2013. “Editor’s Preface.” Dada / Surrealism 19,
w.p.
Edward Said, Edward. (2000) 2013. Reflections on Exile: And Other Literary and Cultural Essays. London: Granta.
33
Erin Hyde Nolan
Two-Faced:
Translations of a Portrait
of Abdülhamid II
Abstract In 1869, the Abdullah Frères studio in Istanbul made a portrait
of the Ottoman Prince Abdülhamid Effendi. When Abdülhamid II ascended
the throne in 1876, this photograph was copied, appropriated, and disseminated in various formats. One such carte-de-visite depicts the sultan
with a full beard when he sports only a mustache in the original image.
The manipulation of this image provides a lens for understanding portraiture as a medium that embodies multiple and subjective identities (even
of the same person) that also move across material platforms and cultural borders. By tracing the translation and cross-cultural circulation of the
Abdullah Frères image, this chapter reveals networks of exchange as formative to the imperial portrait photograph.
Keywords Portrait, Photograph, Translation, Cross-cultural, Imperial
Nolan, Erin Hyde. 2021. “Two-Faced: Translations of a Portrait of Abdülhamid II.”
In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin
Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 35–41. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9.
Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.
c10399
35
ERIN HYDE NOLAN
In 1869, the Abdullah Frères studio in Istanbul made a photographic portrait of the Ottoman Prince Abdülhamid Effendi. This image shows him
wearing a frockcoat and fez. His hand rests on a marble table and a gold
pocket watch laces through his vest. When Abdülhamid II ascended the
throne in 1876, this photograph was copied, appropriated, and disseminated in various formats. One cropped carte-de-visite version depicts
the thirty-fourth Ottoman sultan with a full beard, when he sports only
a mustache in the original photograph. Like a studio prop or theatrical
costume, this additional facial hair reshapes Abdülhamid II’s likeness,
anointing his role as a sage and pious leader. The 1869 photograph presents Abdülhamid as an Ottoman prince, but the manipulation and publication of this same image seven years later transforms his presentation
into that of a sultan. The reuse of the Abdullah Frères photograph thus
activates an idealized and abstract notion of a modern dynastic identity.
Abdülhamid II emerges from this material adaptation not as an individual
transformed by his position, but as an immortal icon. Because portraiture
is governed by referential norms, this photograph functions as an index
not only for Abdülhamid II, but also for an Ottoman imperial heritage.
It therefore provides an important lens for understanding portraiture
as a medium capable of embodying multiple and subjective identities
(even of the same person) (à⏵Hybridity) when translated across material
platforms and cultural borders (à⏵Circulation). By tracing the translation
(⏵Translation) and cross-cultural circulation of the Abdullah Frères image,
this essay reveals networks of exchange as formative to imperial portrait
photography.
As a ruler, Abdülhamid II was passionate about photography, applying
it to nearly all manner of courtly affairs. He relied equally on the medium’s documentary and reproductive faculties. The sheer number of photographs collected during his reign (36,535) testifies to the Hamidian court’s
fervent interest in photographic image making. The unique and highly
crafted albums sent to the United States and Britain in the wake of the
1893 Chicago World’s Columbia Exposition further demonstrate this fascination. Ali Riza Bey, a military photographer who authored sections of
these volumes, was hired to run a studio and laboratory installed at Yıldız
Palace in 1894. Photographs thus became both indispensable and ubiquitous tools in a constellation of devices through which Abdülhamid II managed the empire.
While the Hamidian court invested so purposefully in photography,
the sultan averted his own face from the camera’s lens.1 Only three photographic portraits of Abdülhamid are known—all made before his coronation in 1876.2 These include the aforementioned 1869 Abdullah Frères
1
2
36
Few painted portraits of Abdülhamid II were made during his lifetime. The two
to which I refer are oil paintings in the Topkapı Palace Museum Collection 17/126
and 17 397. Renda 2000, 530–531.
As far as I am aware, no official photographic portraits were made during his
reign. Bahattin öztuncay suggests that a “glass dispositive” of Abdülhamid II
TWO-FACED: TRANSLATIONS OF A PORTRAIT OF ABDüLHAMID II
Figure 1 (left): Modified carte-de-visite of Abdülhamid II, original photograph by
Abdullah Frères, 1869.
Figure 2 (right): Sultan Abdülhamid II, photographer(s) unknown, 1876.
37
ERIN HYDE NOLAN
image as well as two earlier portraits made in Buckingham Palace by the
British firm W. & D. Downey while Abdülhamid was touring Europe with
his uncle, Sultan Abdülaziz, in 1867 (Davison 1963; Şehsuvaroğlu 1949).
Nonetheless, this small corpus of photographs participated in professional
networks that engaged with an international language of portraiture,
photography, and imperial power (Micklewright 2013, 7). This contradiction—a leader obsessed by photography who refused to have his photograph taken—complicates the many forms, iterations, and translations of
Abdülhamid’s portraits.
All three of these portraits were circulated as carte-de-visites. Invented
in 1854 by the French photographer André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri,
mass-produced carte photographs came from a camera with multiple
lenses, which facilitated the making of several portraits in one sitting. Inexpensive commodities, carte-de-visites were wildly popular and required
a short production time (McCauley 1985; Darrah 1981, 24; The Year-book of
Photography and Photographic News Almanac, 1864). They overwhelmed the
nineteenth-century visual economy, penetrating the private lives of Europeans and Ottomans alike. As modern ‘calling cards,’ these commercially
produced photographs migrated between cosmopolitan centers, initiating
a phenomenon known as ‘cartomania.’
While they are often dismissed as formulaic, the carte’s prescribed
composition and repetitive ordinariness systematized a global network of
portraiture. Their standardized format allowed for readability in diverse
contexts. The normalization of poses and studio props afforded the sitter agency through their own self-presentation, and in turn, the viewing audience familiarity with such forms of presentation. The use and
reuse of Abdülhamid II’s 1869 portrait exemplifies these visual patterns
that are integral to photographic portraits, especially to carte-de-visites.
Few as they may be, his portraits demonstrate the particular flexibility of
Ottoman identity in the late nineteenth century. Even when portraying
the same print or person, these different images register multiple levels
of meaning by containing “the Self of repetition, the singularity within that
which repeats” (Deleuze 1994, 23). In other words, the photographs of
Abdülhamid II were imprints of personal likeness, presenting a culturally
and temporally specific yet universally legible tradition of photographic
portraiture.
The repetition and reproduction of the sultan’s portrait exploits the
rareness of his photographic image. Like the ‘bearded’ carte, these interpretations and their process of translation reveal the portrait’s use value
and capacity to formulate knowledge. This is especially true when photographs of Abdülhamid II were inaccurately labeled. A color chromolithograph from ca. 1876 portrays Murad V, Abdülhamid II’s brother, but
is erroneously titled “Abdu-l-hamid, II. Sultan of Turkey.” This engraved
exists and is based on a photograph by Abdullah Frères in 1875–1876. See
öztuncay 2011, 59.
38
TWO-FACED: TRANSLATIONS OF A PORTRAIT OF ABDüLHAMID II
portrait by the British G. J. Stodart is based on an 1869 photograph by
Abdullah Frères where Murad dons a plain uniform adorned with one
medallion.3 This example of mistaken identity reveals the extent to
which Ottoman selfhood was derived from the costume and not the
face. Here Murad’s fez, frockcoat, and medal mirror the ensemble worn
by Abdülhamid in his own 1869 Abdullah Frères portrait. Unlike in Japan
where imperial portraits were believed to be the emperor, Ottoman examples emerge as “relational object(s)” intimately tied to their performative
qualities (Edwards 2010).
Abdülhamid II took the notion of relational photography quite literally. He used portraits of his children—who were photographed numerous times throughout his reign—as surrogates for himself. On September
13, 1878, he sent an album of royal family portraits to Queen Victoria that
included several photographs of his own children.4 With the album he
included a letter, stating: “This intimate souvenir of my family is intended
to remind you of the fidelity and profound attachment that I have to the
grand and glorious British Empire” 5 (Abdülhamid II n.d.). Like the student portraits in the albums that he gifted to Britain seven years later,
Abdülhamid II’s own children perform as proxy for him. However, the
reflection of the sultan’s own facial features and familial resemblance
seen in images of his offspring complicate this form of photographic
surrogacy.
Celebrity albums filled with card-mounted portraits were wildly popular
with royal families (and equally fashionable with the general public). Photographs of Abdülhamid II would have been collected by both European and
Ottoman audiences and added to portfolios like the Album Contemporaine
Européen. A copy from 1865 by Justin Lallier reveals the collection process:
Pages reserved for sovereigns have four ovals printed with country names
and royal crests, indicating where to glue a portrait of a Turkish ruler, for
example. The last pages are dedicated to noblemen and administrators.
These contain ten empty rectangles, each stamped with a corresponding
number, arranged to simulate a wall of portraits hung salon-style, one
on top of the other. Abdülhamid II’s personal collection contains similar
albums, including one with portraits of celebrated foreigners such as President Lincoln, Nasir al-Din Shah, Queen Victoria, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and
the Guangxu Emperor of China (İüK, Album 90899). This and other volumes like the Album Contemporaine Européen codified diplomatic networks,
operating as nineteenth-century “face books.” They reflected the capacity
of the photographic album to manufacture social connections and forge
relationships across geographic, political, and spatial borders (Bann 2011,
3
4
5
The text around the portrait reads: “Engraved by G.J. Stodart from a Photograph,
William Mackenzie, London, Edinburgh & Glasgow.” NPG, D47408.
Similar albums exist in the İstanbul üniversitesi Nadir Eserler Kütüphanesi:
90894, 90898, 90902.
RA VIC/MAIN/H/47. The exact date of this letter is uncertain. It is hand-written in
French on stationary with the sultan’s initials “AH.”
39
ERIN HYDE NOLAN
7–29).6 Thus, we see imperial portrait circulation as a shared and global
activity (à⏵Cultural Mobility).
Heightened by the unbridled circulation of these photographs, the flexibility of image production and reproduction dissolved pre-existing technical boundaries, blending the visual practices of drawing, wood engraving,
and photography (Beegan 2008, 8). On Abdülhamid II’s 1869 Abdullah
Frères portrait, the in-painting of his beard and subsequent re-photographing of the original print shifts the authoritarian gaze away from the
artist / subject relationship toward the communal performance of making,
taking, and disseminating photographs. It is this shift that implicates the
multiple hands involved in shaping the sultan’s likeness, including the
hand that drew the beard or clicked the shutter whose names and studios we do not know. Nonetheless, the photographic portrait is subject to
multiple chains of translation from the creation of the first print to its last
reproduction (Belknap 2016, 9). It is precisely through these translations
that Abdülhamid II’s photographic likeness develops a haptic dimension.
With touch, these cartes traversed technological, geographic, and cultural
boundaries. They were not made only to be seen, but also to be held,
painted, pocketed, smelled and sung to. The migration of Abdülhamid II’s
portrait—from one hand to another, from the studio to the parlor, from the
counter to the album page—reveals the power of photography to shape
not only an emperor’s likeness, but also the social and historical imaginary.
Figures
Fig. 1–2:
© Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (96.R.14).
References
Abdülhamid II. n.d. “Letter to Queen Victoria.” Royal Collection Trust, Windsor
Castle, England. RA VIC/MAIN/H/47. Queen Victoria Letters and
Correspondence.
———. n.d. [Photo album] 90894, 90898, 90902, Istanbul: İstanbul üniversitesi
Nadir Eserler Kütüphanesi.
Anonymous. 1864. The Year-book of Photography and Photographic News Almanac.
London: T. Piper.
6
40
They mimic the early modern practice of portrait prints portraying great men,
such as popes, sultans, and emperors. The Mughal Akbar (r. 1556–1605) commissioned portraits of his courtiers, for example, who were multicultural in
makeup, including Persians, Uzbeks, Afghans, Rajputs, Jesuits who belonged to
Shia, Sunni, Hindu, and Christian faiths. See Beach 2012; Brand and Lowry 1985;
Roy and Losty 2013.
TWO-FACED: TRANSLATIONS OF A PORTRAIT OF ABDüLHAMID II
Bann, Stephen. 2011. “The photographic Album as a Cultural Accumulator.” In Art
and the Early Photographic Album, ed. Stephen Bann, 7–29. Washington,
D.C.: Yale University Press.
Beach, Milo Cleveland. 2012. The Imperial Image: Paintings for the Mughal Court.
Washington, D.C.: Freer Gallery of Art.
Beegan, Gerry. 2008. The Mass Image: A Cultural History of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Belknap, Geoffrey. 2016. From a Photograph: Authenticity, Science and the Periodical
Press, 1870–1890. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Brand, Michael, and Glenn D. Lowry. 1985. Akbar’s India: Art from the Mughal City of
Victory. New York: Asia Society Galleries.
Darrah, William C. 1981. Cartes de Visite: In Nineteenth Century Photography.
Gettysburg: W.C. Darrah.
Davison, Roderic H. 1963. Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856–1876. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1994. Difference and Repetition. (Transl. Paul Patton). New York:
Columbia University Press.
Edwards, Elizabeth. 2010. Raw Histories: Photographs, Anthropology and Museums.
Oxford: Berg.
McCauley, Elizabeth Anne. 1985. A.A.E. Disderi and the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph. Washington, D.C.: Yale University Press.
Micklewright, Nancy. 2013. “Preface.” Ars Orientalis: The Arts of Asia, Southeast Asia
and Islam, 43. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution: 7–10.
öztuncay, Bahattin. 2011. Hanedan ve kamera: Osmanlı sarayından portreler, Ömer
M. Koç Koleksiyonu = Dynasty and Camera: Portraits from the Ottoman Court.
Ömer M. Koç Collection. İstanbul: AYGAZ.
Renda, Günsel. 2000. “Portraits: The Last Century.” In The Sultan’s Portrait:
Picturing the House of Osman, edited by Selmin Kangal, 442–533. İstanbul:
İşbank.
Roy, Malini, and Jeremiah P. Losty. 2013. Mughal India: Art, Culture and Empire.
London: British Library.
Şehsuvaroğlu, Haluk Y. 1949. Sultan Aziz: Hususı̂ , Siyası̂ Hayatı, Devri Ve O’lu’mu’.
İstanbul: Hilmi Kitabevi.
41
Figure 1: Luigi Montabone: Principe ereditario di Persia Vicere, Tebriz. Albumen print
from a collodion negative, June 22nd, 1862 / printed October 29, 1865, 25.8 × 22 cm.
Elahe Helbig
Transnational Encounters:
A Photograph of Mozaffar
al-Din Mirza from an Italian
Mission to Persia
Abstract The photograph of the Persian hereditary prince Mozaffar
al-Din Mirza embodies a synthesis of distinct visual spheres interacting
with one another in a transnational space of artistic creation. The politically defined objective of Luigi Montabone commissioned to photograph
the Italian diplomatic mission to Persia in 1862, the visual politics of the
Persian sovereign and their encounter in the social space of the freshly
proclaimed crown prince gives rise to a political iconography of power consolidation and dynastic national identity. Yet, the subsequent reception of
the photograph epitomizes the process of meaning construction in heterogeneous social spaces.
Keywords Luigi Montabone, Qajar Iran, Temporal Semantic, Political
Iconography, Transnational Encounter
Helbig, Elahe. 2021. “Transnational Encounters: A Photograph of Mozaffar al-Din Mirza
from an Italian Mission to Persia.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by
Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 42–48.
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10400
43
ELAHE HELBIG
The photograph of the Persian hereditary prince Mozaffar al-Din Mirza
(1853–1907) is from a photographic album with the descriptive title
“Ricordi del viaggio in Persia della Missione Italiana 1862” (The Photograph
Album of the Italian Diplomatic Mission to Persia 1862). This photograph
is a synthesis of distinct visual spheres interacting with one another in the
transnational space of artistic creation. In question are, first, the politically
defined objective of the photographer, Luigi Montabone (?–1877), who
was commissioned to record the diplomatic mission; second, the visual
politics of the Qajar ruler Naser al-Din Shah (r. 1848–1896) intending to
construct a dynastic identity both domestically and transnationally by uniting modernity with conservatism; and, third, their encounter in the social
space of the Crown Prince Mozaffar al-Din Mirza, freshly proclaimed and
yet frail for the years of uncertainty about the royal line of succession.
The interplay of those previously parallel spheres and spaces gives rise
to a political iconography that, in the photograph, defines a power constellation and sense of dynastic-national identity: the sovereignty of Naser
al-Din Shah emanating from the portrait is transferred to and transforms
the perception of Mozaffar al-Din Mirza. Yet, the photograph is of interest
not just for the time-transcending interaction of visual spheres but also for
the dynamic transformation of the image in its subsequent reception in
heterogeneous social spaces. Its reception reveals the variety of demystifying contexts and processes of generating meanings in spaces of cultural
encounter or “contact zones.”
On April 21st, 1862, a diplomatic mission of the newly founded Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946) headed for Persia. Its objective was to attain
strategic alliances on a geopolitical scale and tap untouched economic
trade potentials. In addition to diplomatic, military, and trade sections, the
mission also included a group of interdisciplinary scientists as well as two
photographers, the Piemontese Luigi Montabone and his Venetian assistant Alberto Pietrobon (active 1862–1887), lending additional weight to the
mission’s political pursuits. Provided with the latest equipment, the photographers were specifically commissioned to illustrate the final mission
report with images of political and diplomatic encounters and, secondarily,
archaeological monuments, inscriptions, and portraits of important personalities. In addition, they were instructed to produce visual documents
“meet[ing] the needs of the various professors, the naturalists in particular” (Piemontese 1972, 260–261).
The itinerary of the Italian mission to Tehran, the capital of Qajar
Iran, retraced an ancient trade route that has been central for centuries
not only for trade purposes but also for the cross-cultural exchange of
ideas, innovations, and artistic productions (⏵Cultural Transfer). Treading
such historical paths, the mission headed from Genoa via the still heavily
Persian-influenced city of Yerevan and across the Araxes River, the PersoRussian border politically enforced by Russia, to Tabriz, their first destination in Persian territory, which they reached on June 20st, 1862. There, in
the capital of the north-western province of Azerbaijan, they encountered
44
TRANSNATIONAL ENCOUNTERS: A PHOTOGRAPH OF MOZAFFAR AL-DIN MIRZA
a rather special political environment: Following a long established tradition, public celebrations had been held just a few days prior to mark the
proclamation of the eight-year-old Prince Mozaffar al-Din Mirza as heir to
throne of Persia and Governor-General of Azerbaijan (Piemontese 1972,
258, 294; Amanat 1997, 400–402). During an official audience granted to
the delegation on June 22nd, Montabone produced a number of photographs of Mozaffar al-Din Mirza, his advisers, ministers, and dignitaries,
including the portrait discussed here.
The photograph of Mozaffar al-Din Mirza was taken in the courtyard
of the royal palace Bag-e Shomal (North Garden), as indicated by the brick
pillar at the far left. Yet the intentionally furnished space with the tableau
next to Mozaffar al-Din Mirza and carpets covering the ground evoke the
impression of an interior. The parallel patterns of the larger carpet, though
partly interrupted by the smaller one, add a sense of spatial depth. The
lines fanning out across the lower area of the photograph direct the gaze
towards the sickly, lifeless prince, who is placed along a horizontal line
running across the center of the image. Dressed in a velvet tunic elaborately embroidered with floral designs and patterns and wearing a tall
black astrakhan hat, Mozaffar al-Din Mirza is shown frontally, the chair to
his right, the painting to his left. While the prince’s right hand rests on the
chair, his left grabs the hilt of his sword in a gesture of authority. The angled
arrangement of the tableau suggests a break with the traditionally frontal
presentation of a subject and inevitably shifts the attention to the painting
and its subject: Naser al-Din Shah as he is towering on his horse, his gaze
intently fixed on the viewer. The equestrian portrait makes the King tower
protectively and authoritatively over his heir. This intra-pictorial composition entails a change in perception: as the gaze follows the directionality of
the trotting horse, it returns to Mozaffar al-Din Mirza whose image is now
endowed with a sense of power and authority emanating from the portrait
of Naser al-Din Shah. By means of this special setting, Montabone created
an image of transnational significance that simultaneously asserts Naser
al-Din Shah’s sovereignty and consolidates Mozaffar al-Din Mirza’s position
as heir to the throne and as Viceroy of Persia.
The portrait of Naser al-Din Shah is paradigmatic for the correlation
between socio-political changes and dynastic visual traditions. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century, a profound cultural revival unfolded
as Qajar rulers sought to legitimize their claim to power by invoking the glorious Persian past. This revival manifested itself in myriad life-size murals
and oil paintings of a glorified ruler, often surrounded by his sons, chiefs
of the Qajar tribes, domestic officials, or foreign envoys (Diba 1998, 32–35).
From the mid-century on, however, the dynastic iconography moved away
from monumental imagery in lineage of traditional kingships. Instead, it
turned towards promoting an image of a sovereign who unites modernity
with conservatism to renegotiate Persia’s standing on the geopolitical landscape. As a result of this shift in image politics, a local school of small-scale
portraiture emerged during the 1850s and 1860s, whose visual language,
45
ELAHE HELBIG
whilst rooted in traditional Persian imagery, incorporated a European-style
academic painting (Diba and Ekhtiar 1998, 239–241).
Wearing a semi-European-style uniform with a tall hat and an imperial aigrette, Naser al-Din Shah towers on his horse, drawing all attention
from the rugged landscape and the city portal in the background to himself. Contrary to the traditional iconography of rulers engaged in heroic
battle or hunting, which had been prevalent from pre-Islamic to early
Qajar equestrian portraits, paintings such as this tended to depict the
King in a more moderate, personal manner. During Naser al-Din Shah’s
rule, equestrian portraits thus functioned as individual affirmations of
the sovereign’s power. Even though it has not been possible to identify
with certainty the painter of the equestrian portrait in Montabone’s photograph, it bears close affinity to the local school of portraiture founded
by the Georgian Akop Ovnatanian (1806–1881 / 1884), who enjoyed the
patronage of the Persian court for many years and later moved to Tabriz.
(⏵Cultural mobility). This school distinguished itself by blending the canons of Georgian, Russian, and Persian court painting (Diba and Ekhtiar
1998, 245).
At the prince’s court, the visual sphere embedded in the equestrian
portrait of Naser al-Din Shah meets a very different one, that of Luigi
Montabone, the photographer. Montabone’s photographic perspective is
informed not just by aesthetic considerations but also by the geo-political agendas of both the Qajar court and the Italian Kingdom. Conflating
cultural and political codes, Montabone places the equestrian portrait of
Naser al-Din Shah next to the Crown Prince in a metaphorical allusion to
dynastic continuity and national identity. In doing so, he draws on a visual
language of power to construct a transnational image of a sovereign Iran
that is qualified as a suitable ally of the Kingdom of Italy. Montabone’s
photograph of Mozaffar al-Din Mirza is thus the point of intersection of
a threefold interaction between various visual spheres meeting in a space
of cultural encounter that, in terms of image making, transcends national
boundaries.
The contact inherent in the photograph is echoed across heterogenous
social spaces of reception. Multipliable ad infinitum, the dynamic reception of this and other photographs from the diplomatic mission in Italy
deserves further mention. Upon its return from Persia, the diplomatic
mission was ridiculed for having failed to meet its political and economic
objectives. Similarly, the scientific achievements and knowledge transfer,
considerable though they were, were not noticed, let alone appreciated
(Piemontese 1972, 301–302). While the politico-economic context of the
mission gradually sunk into oblivion, Montabone’s photographs were
widely published, exhibited, and marketed (⏵Circulation). Their popularity
in Italy was driven by the contemporary public demand for views of historic
sites and ancient cultures (⏵East / West) that had prompted photographic
firms such as Borgi and Alinari to undertake their own photographic expeditions to Egypt, Syria, and the Holy Land (Tomassini 1996, 57–59).
46
TRANSNATIONAL ENCOUNTERS: A PHOTOGRAPH OF MOZAFFAR AL-DIN MIRZA
A series of short articles about the mission published in La Gazzetta del
Popolo between April and November 1863 set in motion the circulation of
Montabone’s photographs. Interestingly, these articles preceded the official albums presented to the Persian King in 1864, the King of Italy, and
other personalities (Bonetti and Prandi 2013, 29). The presentation of the
photographs at the 1867 world’s fair in Paris and at the 1868 National Exhibition in Turin greatly contributed to their dissemination. Further fueled
by the increased publication of European travelogues about Persia from
the mid-nineteenth century, the demand for Montabone’s photographs
grew steadily, culminating in orders of complete copies of his albums, for
instance by Queen Sophie of the Netherlands (1816–1877) (see Jansen 2004,
9). Remarkably, Montabone’s photographs were also translated (à⏵Translation) into other media, with the images being placed in new semantic relations: The photograph of Mozaffar al-Din Mirza, for example, served as the
model for a woodcut of the Persian king and his heir, which was published
in L’Illustration in 1869 (Bonetti and Prandi 2013, 30–31). As a matter of fact,
even Montabone himself evoked new semantic relations for his photographs, particularly through his use of the Persian lion-and-sun emblem as
a paradigmatic analogy. Issuing from a complex genealogy of Zoroastrian,
Jewish, Shi’ite, Turkish, and Persian symbols and domains of signification,
the centuries-long use of the Lion-and-Sun culminated in its adoption as the
official emblem of Qajar Iran in 1836 (Najmabadi 2005, 63–79). While traveling Persia, the delegation must have encountered the emblem as it was
widespread across various media, ranging from Qajar insignias to visual
decorations. By using the lion-and-sun emblem in his photographic imprints
and as hallmarks on his cabinet cards, Montabone caused the emblem to
be perceived in a new light independent of its cultural-political significance
as an iconic symbol of Iranian national identity (⏵Nation) (for examples see
Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn 2004, 23, 27; Cavanna 2013, 21).
Despite the widely accepted authenticity and objectivity of Montabone’s
photographs—and the fact that they therefore transcended the common
tropes of ‘Orientalist’ photography—the social space of their reception
in Italy and the West was largely shaped by a constellation of graduated
power and a European vision of the ‘Orient’ (à⏵Orientalism). In this additional dimension of cultural encounter, the semantics of Montabone’s photographs was defined independent of the mission’s political agency. While
Montabone integrated visual spheres to create transnational images of
power that appealed to both Qajar Iran and the Kingdom of Italy, their
political meaning became obsolete in the social space of reception. This
illustrates how a process of constructing meaning multiplies across cultural encounters or “contact zones” through the interaction of visual
spheres and social spaces.
Figure
Fig. 1: © Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice.
47
ELAHE HELBIG
References
Amanat, Abbas. 1997. Pivot of the Universe: Nasir al-Din Shah and the Iranian Monarchy, 1831–1896. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Barjesteh van Waalwijk van Doorn, L. A. Ferydoun, Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar,
and Nathalie Farman Farma, eds. 2004. The Montabone Album. Rotterdam:
International Qajar Studies Association.
Bonetti, Maria Francesca, and Alberto Prandi. 2013. “Italian Photographers in Iran,
1848–64.” History of Photography, 37: 14–31.
Cavanna, Pierangelo. 2013. “‘Slightly Out of Focus’. Turin 1884–1898: From Art to
Artistic Photography.” PhotoResearcher, 20: 21–29.
Diba, Layla S. 1998. “Images of Power and the Power of Images: Intention and
Response in Early Qajar Painting (1785–1834).” In Royal Persian Paintings.
The Qajar Epoch 1785–1925, edited by Layla S. Diba and Maryam Ekhtiar,
30–49. London: I.B. Tauris and Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Diba, Layla S., and Maryam Ekhtiar, eds. 1998. Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar
Epoch 1785–1925. London: I.B. Tauris and Brooklyn Museum of Art.
Jansen, Mieke. 2004. “Persia and Iran in the Royal House Archives in the Hague.” In
The Montabone Album, edited by L. A. Ferydoun Barjesteh van Waalwijk van
Doorn, Manouvhehr Eskandari-Qajar, and Natahalie Farman Farma, 8–16.
Rotterdam: International Qajar Studies Association.
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2005. Women with Moustaches and Men without Beards.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Piemontese, Angelo M. 1972. “The Photograph Album of Italian Diplomatic Mission
to Persia. (Summer 1962).” East and West, New Series, 22 (3–4): 255–272.
Tomassini, Luigi. 1996. “The Birth of the Italian Photographic Society.” History of
Photography 20 (1): 57–64.
48
PART II
Utility and
Representation
Theodore Van Loan
Multiple Temporalities and
the Scene of Time: A Pair of
Wooden Doors at the Museum
of Islamic Art in Cairo
Abstract Art objects are staged and stage themselves in ways that express various types of time and duration. The pair of wooden doors from
the Fatimid period discussed in this chapter are staged in a way that make
the layered and fragmented condition of temporality central to the experience of seeing them. This chapter unpacks these layers. It includes discussion of epigraphic and stylistic dating, practices of conservation and
display, and the visual impact of physical fatigue. All together these layers
constitute a dynamic and fluid scene with the object as both an active participant and passive recipient in their constitution.
Keywords Temporality; Materiality; Islamic Art; Ornament; Museum
Display
Van Loan, Theodore. 2021. “Multiple Temporalities and the Scene of Time: A Pair of
Wooden Doors at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo.” In Reading Objects in the Contact
Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner,
51–57. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University
Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10402
51
THEODORE VAN LOAN
Doors inhabit an unstable mode of existence. They are static fixtures within
built space, but lack the permanence possessed by structural form. They
are liable to be dismantled, fragmented, or otherwise modified (⏵Detail).
The doors ordered between 996–1021 A.D. by the Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim
for al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo are no exception. The set was removed from
al-Azhar circa 1903 to become one of the first holdings of the new “House
of Arab Antiquities,” later known as the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo
(Mostafa 1961, 1–3; O’Kane 2012, 8–11; Sayour 2017). Like some of the
many examples of Fatimid woodwork that have survived in modern collections, and in situ, the doors overtly show their wear. These fatigued
surfaces open up a scene of time, one that is arrested, but never entirely
stilled, by museum display. Despite the stasis conferred by methods
and technologies of conservation, photographic documentation, among
other means, these two doors flit between multiple temporal modes and
chronologies.
This short study will examine the roles of time, duration, and visual perception (⏵Visuality) as they pertain to the doors both within their current
setting in the Museum of Islamic Art, and in the cultural milieu at the time
of their commissioning. In so doing, it will engage questions of epistemological limitations of museum display, the conceptual variable of time, and
how it relates to (re)constructing the past lives of objects.
Each of these doors, made of Turkish pine and measuring 3.25 meters
high and 1 meter wide, are composed of essentially two parts: an undergirding body and seven carved inset panels (Bloom 2007, 63–65; O’Kane
2012, 78; Sayour 2017). Each panel is inserted into the door frame either
horizontally on its own or is vertically paired with another. Each also has
a corresponding counterpart symmetrically placed on the other door.
The top horizontally placed panels on each door contain an inscription
rendered in floriated Kufic script, a style common to the Fatimid period
where the designs of certain letters carry vegetal embellishments. The
translation, responsible for the date attribution, is as follows: “Our master,
commander of the faithful, the Imām al-Ḥākim bi-amr Allāh, blessings of
God be upon him, and upon his pure ancestors and his descendants” (Van
Berchem 1903, 630).
The panels below the inscription carry a variety of different types of
vegetal and geometric ornament all characteristic of the Fatimid period,
with a decorative repertoire developed from Coptic and Tulunid visual
traditions (Contadini 1998, 111–113). The two sets of vertical panels that
straddle the horizontal midpoints of the doors are carved in what is called
the “Beveled Style.” This term, used most conventionally to describe
Abbasid era stuccowork in Iraq, refers to the smooth and contoured carving employed in the rendering of the tendrils in these panels (Bloom and
Blair 2009, 280).
It is impossible to know where exactly these doors would have been
situated in al-Azhar. The mosque complex has undergone much modification since the Fatimid period, and none of the original entrances have
52
MULTIPLE TEMPORALITIES AND THE SCENE OF TIME
Figure 1: Pair of carved wooden doors. 996–1021 A.D. Turkish Pine, height 325 cm,
width 200 cm. Cairo, Museum of Islamic Art, inv. 551.
53
THEODORE VAN LOAN
been preserved (Bloom 2007, 65). However, the size of the doors and the
dedicatory inscription to the Fatimid Caliph would perhaps indicate that
they were intended for the main entrance or another similar and visually
prominent place. Today, they are installed in Gallery 4 of the Museum of
Islamic Art in Cairo (O’Kane 2012, 78).1 As seen in an image of the gallery,
the leaves are mounted straddling a doorway between exhibition halls,
presumably in an effort to mimic their original context. According to the
1961 Short Guide to the museum, the doors were situated in a comparably
transitional space; as framing the entrance to “Hall 6,” then reserved exclusively for woodwork (Mostafa 1961, 36).
Probably the most noticeable feature of the doors is their advanced
state of wear and fatigue. This fatigue is by no means consistent; there
appears to be a great deal of variation between the panels. The two at the
very top, which carry the inscription, are the best preserved of the entire
set. Below these are four iterations of ‘beveled-style’ compositions, and
each has been worn down to a different degree. The panel on the far left
appears to be almost flat, while that on the far right retains deep contours.
Something similar occurs in the lower set of vertical panels across the two
doors. In between these two sets, the horizontal panels with inscribed
rotated squares are missing pieces: a small corner piece in the lower right
of the left-side panel, and both corners of the right-side panel. The bottom
horizontal panels on both sides are also very worn down, however, the
panel on the right to a much greater extent.
These marks of fatigue, by and large, define the contemporary viewing experience of these doors. The missing pieces in the two centrally
located horizontal panels show us the method by which they are put
together and, in turn, give us a new perception of each panel’s relationship to the door frame; that they are, in a sense, impermanent fixtures
upon it. In fact, when we look at some comparative examples of Fatimid
woodwork, we see that one cannot necessarily assume that the doors and
the carved panels are contemporaneous, as in the case of the doors of the
Fakahani Mosque in Cairo, where the panels were dated to the Fatimid
period and the doors to the eighteenth century (Bloom 2008, 240). With
respect to these doors, there is no evidence that they are not contemporaneous with the panels. However, at the experiential level, a disjuncture
is created; a visual suggestion is made by the variable wear of the panels
that they might not be of the same time and / or place. While this disjuncture occurs as a result of the formal characteristics of the doors, their
placement within a museum context only supplements this element of
temporal instability.
Within the Museum of Islamic Art, this instability is reinforced by the
presence of other pieces of woodwork that have become detached from
1
54
It is important to note that the museum has undergone further restoration and
has reopened since suffering damage from a nearby car-bomb attack in January
2014.
MULTIPLE TEMPORALITIES AND THE SCENE OF TIME
their respective doors—their original settings. Several such examples
exist in the collection that would have originally been mounted in doors
(O’Kane 2012, 48). Moreover, these pieces are currently displayed in galleries nearby where the doors are installed. For the museum viewer, a kind of
cognitive operation takes place whereby the visual harmony of the doors
disintegrates, as each panel is also thought of as a discrete object, as well
as part of a whole.
Most obviously the variable fatigue distributed across the panels of the
doors serves as an index of use. It tells the viewer that these doors were
at one level, simply furniture, vulnerable to the elements and the whims
of their viewership. When taken into the confines of a museum collection,
they are brought into a world of, perhaps, more disinterested viewing, one
where their past status as objects of use becomes secondary to their placement within stylistic chronologies, as was articulated above with terms
such as ‘beveled style’ and ‘floriated Kufic,’ and their dating attribution
based upon the foundation inscription.
Thus, there are three different conceptions of time operating upon the
doors: the absolute attribution to the reign of Caliph al-Hakim from the
inscription, the stylistic markers that point to the doors’ inclusion into the
chronologically broader category of ‘Fatimid woodwork,’ and finally their
worn-down and eroded panels as markers of sustained use over time. It
is only within the museum space that the trans-temporal condition of the
doors becomes readily perceivable. Each mode of temporality is layered
upon the doors by different means, and all project their temporality in different ways.
The inscription, a dedication to the Caliph al-Hakim, is of a type commonly found on Fatimid monuments. It was composed at a time when
public text was one of the primary ways in which rulership was visually
articulated (Bierman 1998). Not only did the inscription serve to praise the
ruler, but it also cemented his authority as a religious figure. The inscription
serves as an explicit temporal marker, inextricably linking the production
of the doors to the time of the reign of al-Hakim. This was an attribution
that would later gain additional charge for modern art historians, as it
could serve as a benchmark, whereby other objects lacking inscriptions
could be dated on the basis of formal comparison. It is in this way that
objects with foundation inscriptions attained an authoritative status within
the museum context.
‘Stylistic time’ is not, of course, inherent to the object but generated
through the correspondence between the door panel’s formal traits and
those traits that are thought to exemplify a given period of artistic production. In the case of Islamic art, these time periods are most often defined by
political dynasties. In this case, these include the aforementioned ‘beveled
style’ and ‘floriated Kufic’ script, both of which are associated with Fatimid
period woodwork. It is important to note that the function of form here is
a diagnostic one that enables the placement of the doors in their proper
chronological position. Indeed, we can think of form in a linguistic sense,
55
THEODORE VAN LOAN
just as Gülru Necipoğlu does, speaking of the “semiotics of ornament” in
her study of a Timurid-period scroll used by architects for pattern-making,
where given designs and patterns on buildings came to signify the dynastic powers that patronized them (Necipoğlu 1995, 217–223).
The physical fatigue upon the doors, as mentioned above, is an indexical marker of use and the passage of time. The visual impact of this fatigue
is central to understanding the experiential dimension of the doors but is
next to irrelevant in the establishment of temporal attribution and, thus, its
meaning within the museum collection. It is this ambivalence toward the
physical nature of the object, and the tension created by this ambivalence
that defines its ontological existence within the museum (⏵Resilience). The
source of this tension is the lack of relevance that one’s visual experience
of the doors has for its museological classification. Its wall label places it
within the Fatimid period, while its appearance implies a sustained history
of use over time that subverts its attribution to being of one time. Yet, these
signs of wear legitimate the doors as being of an authentic past, though
one that requires a label to name (⏵Heritage).
Within museum studies, art objects tend to be interpreted along semiotic lines. In defining the art object in the museum as “simultaneously referential and differential,” Donald Preziosi refers to the museum object as it
is staged both in relation to other objects within a given collection, and in
relation to its maker and cultural sources (Preziosi 2006, 53). Both of these
relations, oscillating in the mind of the viewer, are connected to multiple
temporalities; chronological, stylistic, and indexical traces of cultural pasts.
This case demonstrates the necessity of taking into account the experiential dimension as one considers how time is layered and coalesced around
the museum object.
Figure
Fig. 1: Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo © Museum With No Frontiers / Discover
Islamic Art.
References
Bierman, Irene A. 1998. Writing signs: The Fatimid Public Text. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Bloom, Jonathan M. 2007. Arts of the City Victorious: Islamic Art and Architecture in
Fatimid North Africa and Egypt. New Haven: Yale University Press.
———. 2008. “The ‘Fatimid’ Doors of the Fakahani Mosque in Cairo.” Muqarnas, 25:
231–242.
Bloom, Jonathan M. and Sheila S. Blair. 2009. The Grove Encyclopedia of Islamic Art
and Architecture Volume I: Abarquh – Dawlat Qatar. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
56
MULTIPLE TEMPORALITIES AND THE SCENE OF TIME
Contadini, Anna. 1998. Fatimid Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum. London: V&A
Publications.
Mostafa, Mohamed. 1961. The Museum of Islamic Art: A Short Guide. Cairo: General
Organization for Government Printing Offices.
Necipoğlu, Gülru. 1995. The Topkapı Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture. Santa Monica: Getty Center for the Arts and Humanities.
O’Kane, Bernard. 2012. The Illustrated Guide to the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo.
Cairo: The American University of Cairo Press.
Preziosi, Donald. 2006. “Art History and Museology: Rendering the Visible Legible.”
In A Companion to Museum Studies, edited by Sharon Macdonald, 50–63.
Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Sayour, Salah. 2017. “Door Wings of al-Hakim bi-Amrillah.” Accessed
June 19, 2017. http://www.discoverislamicart.org/database_item.
php?id=object;isl;eng;mus01;27;en.
Van Berchem, Max. 1903. Matériaux pour un corpus inscriptionum arabicarum
première partie Égypte. Paris: Libraire de la Société Asiatique.
57
Figure 1: The Dragon Phoenix Basin (second half 13th century, Mosul [Iraq]: hammered brass; Museum für Islamische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preußischer
Kulturbesitz [SMBPK]).
Maria Sobotka
Displaying Cross-Culturality:
A Water Basin from Mosul in Berlin
Abstract A water basin from Mosul in the Museum für Islamische Kunst
Berlin functions as an example for the representation, display, and reading
of cross-cultural objects in the museum. By reflecting on the presentation
of the basin over time, former and current trends of exhibiting objects with
cross-cultural historical backgrounds in the museum become obvious. Still
being appreciated mainly for their beauty and craftsmanship, such objects
oscillate between their perception as so-called masterpieces as well as
their perception of being testimonies of mutuality in exchange in a broader context.
Keywords Cross-Culturality, Display, Masterpiece, Hybridity, Othering
Sobotka, Maria. 2021. “Displaying Cross-Culturality: A Water Basin from Mosul in Berlin.”
In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin
Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 58–65. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9.
Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.
c10403
59
MARIA SOBOTKA
The first object visitors to the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin
encounter is a late thirteenth-century water basin from Mosul. The basin is
richly decorated 1 and exceptional in size—83 cm in diameter at a height of
21.5 cm—making it a real showpiece. Most likely produced during the reign
of the Ilkhanids (1256–1353) for the purpose of ablution at dining tables,
the brass basin has a flat bottom and a distinctive scallop-shaped edge,
gently flaring outwards into twenty-four segments, each of which features
a different pictorial subject. The interior is lavishly ornamented, while the
exterior walls are plain. Hence, the decoration was enjoyed above all when
the basin was in use. The main motif is the impressive image of a paired
dragon and phoenix in the round medallion in the center. Four friezes
showing various aspects of courtly life encircle this medallion and are followed by a poetic inscription on the outer rim that glorifies the unknown
former owner, clearly a ruler. Trapezoidal, circular, and square-shaped illustrations alternate, with their arrangement relating to the shape of the bowl
as a whole. One of the friezes is surrounded by a decorative ornamental
interlace with Arabic characters. The spaces between the images are filled
with all kinds of decorative patterns. These become increasingly smaller
and detailed towards the edges (à⏵Detail), while at the same time being less
accurately outlined. Due to wear and tear, the basin is missing its former
inlays in silver and gold. As a result, the individual illustrations cannot easily be differentiated, resulting in a slightly confusing and obscure overall
picture. Besides fighting, hunting, or amusement scenes accompanied by
geometric or fantastic motifs, one focus is the depiction of animals and
animal combat. The choice of animals and their manner of representation
clearly draw on East Asian models (Enderlein, 1973, 8–9), as evidenced also
by the image of the paired dragon and phoenix symbolizing the Chinese
imperial couple.
Today, the basin is prominently placed at the start of the visitor circuit of the Museum für Islamische Kunst. It is presented in a glass case,
its interior surface facing the beholder. Strikingly, the most recent display
also features a Chinese porcelain lidded box (Fig. 2) dating from the Ming
dynasty (1368–1644). The small box with underglaze blue and overglaze
enamel decor in the five-colour palette (wucai) is on loan from the Museum
für Asiatische Kunst in Berlin and shows similar images of paired dragons
and phoenixes. The display thus emphasizes the cross-cultural nature of
the large brass piece and, as such, appears to be a prelude to the museum’s vast array of exhibits that may be categorized as ‘Islamic,’ but in fact
correspond with other cultural-geographical realms (and museum departments). The basin is presented not only for its aesthetic qualities, but
also put into a wider cultural context. This reflects recent developments
in the display and study of material culture (Bruhn, Juneja, and Werner
2012)—and might open interesting perspectives for display strategies in
museums. Aiming to exemplarily elaborate this, this essay looks at the
1
60
For a detailed description, see Sarre 1904; and Enderlein 1973.
DISPLAYING CROSS-CULTURALITY: A WATER BASIN FROM MOSUL IN BERLIN
Figure 2: A lidded box from China (Ming Dynasty, Wanli Era [1573–1619];
Jingdezhen: porcelain, painted with underglaze blue and overglaze enamel decor
in the five-colour palette (wucai); on loan from the Museum für Asiatische Kunst,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz [SMBPK]).
object’s history,2 including its various exhibition presentations and its role
in publications.
The Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin acquired the basin in 1845 from
an unknown art dealer. In 1906, it entered the collection of the newly
founded Museum für Islamische Kunst. For the period from 1845 until
1906, we lack any information whether—and if, in what form—the basin
was exhibited. Undoubtedly, Friedrich Sarre, the first director of the new
museum, was responsible for the acquisition. The information we have
for the period from 1906 / 1910 until 1992 is vague. Most likely, the focus
during this entire period was on the object’s aesthetic qualities, largely
leaving aside its context. An article on the basin written by Sarre (1904)
is a good example: The author’s focus on the craftwork and emphasis on
the size of the object and its most delicate inlays is reflective of the art historical zeitgeist. Not surprisingly, Sarre included the basin in his list of just
eight objects for the major exhibition “Masterpieces of Muhammadan Art”
he curated in Munich in 1910. This exhibition with its focus on a ‘masterpiece’ paradigm (à⏵Masterpiece) was instrumental in elevating the piece
from the level of applied art to that of “fine art” (Troelenberg 2010, 60).
This approach remained valid for many decades and was still reflected in
2
Many thanks to the Museum für Islamische Kunst, especially to Ute Franke,
Gisela Helmecke, Yelka Kant, and Miriam Kühn, for their help in gathering all the
relevant information on the object’s history and reception.
61
MARIA SOBOTKA
a 1973 article by Volkmar Enderlein, the head of the collection at the time,
who finally provided provisional sketches of the basin’s imagery, which
were added to the information panel. After the collections and displays
were reorganized in the winter of 1992, following Berlin’s reunification,
the basin was displayed in one of the exhibition halls of the museum, presented directly on the wall in an upright position facing the beholder. This
was possible only because the object was mounted between two glass
display cases that flanked it on either side, thereby protecting it. This
mode of presentation offered an unobstructed view of the inner surface
of the basin with its worn inlays. In 2001, it moved to the very center of
the museum’s entrance area and the mode of presentation changed once
again. For safety and conservatory reasons, it was exhibited horizontally
and placed inside a glass case, making it almost impossible to decipher
the rich decoration. In 2009, brief labels and professionally drawn image
outlines were added, though apparently not very well received by visitors
as they felt overstrained, the museum acknowledges. During renovation
work in the museum’s entrance area in May 2017, the basin moved to
the right wall and changed its position back to upright. Besides the usual
museum labels in German and English, graphic renderings of some of the
imagery, and the inscription with its translation, the current display features, for the first time, a text touching on the object’s transcultural character. In combination with the related Chinese piece, this presentation
improves visibility and emphasizes a more contextualized cross-cultural
reading.
The current display draws attention to the basin’s role as a document
of an important and interesting period in Islamic history: the Mongol invasions. The Mongols, whose actual ethnogenesis remains open until today,
were a Central Asian nomadic tribe with the largest cohesive land empire
in history in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Kollmar-Paulenz
2011, 13). Not only did they conquer and unify China where they reigned
as the Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), they also occupied most of West Asia
where they established themselves as the so-called Ilkhanids. Il-khan
means ‘smaller Khan’ and refers to the subordination to the Great Khan
in China (Yalman 2001). The reign of the Ilkhanids was characterized by
the opportunity of secure trade. A boom in maritime goods exchange provided a tremendously fertile ground for cultural production and economic
expansion. Along with the trade in mercantile goods, religious ideas, folk
tales, and customs as well as imagery were transmitted orally, via manuscripts, or as illustrations on ceramics and metalwork (Yalman 2001). In
their new role as rulers of a vast empire, the Mongols searched for a way
to legitimize their power. They pursued a tentative policy of adaptation
and acculturation (Johnson n.d.), notably resorting to Chinese motifs and
imagery to shape their Imperial image, as Kadoi has pointed out (2009,
15). Initially, craftsmen and their customers were interested mostly in the
imitation of Chinese technologies and materials, Kadoi adds, but over time
a shift of interest to visual imagery can be observed (2009, 15). In the case
62
DISPLAYING CROSS-CULTURALITY: A WATER BASIN FROM MOSUL IN BERLIN
of our water basin, we see an object whose shape and design reflect standards that had been developed in the region before the Mongol invasions,
but whose ornamentation obviously incorporates iconographic motifs and
formulas typical of Chinese art (von Gladiß 2012, 95).
The study of Chinese motifs and visual imagery in the art of the
Ilkhanids reveals that most objects took on truly hybrid forms (à⏵Hybridity),
showing the profound effects on local artistic production. In this sense,
our basin demonstrates the high technical bronze art skills of workshops
in and around Mosul, which were especially famous for a metal inlay
technique called tauschieren. Using this very technique, they created an
entirely new artistic vocabulary by including popular East Asian fortune
symbols alongside Islamic courtly symbols in a magnificent basin such
as this. Rather than serving to exoticize the objects, the introduction of
such new imagery was proof of productive mutual interaction. Motifs were
incorporated individually and carefully readapted to their new context in
a way that still bore witness to their origins. As a result, the basin reveals
a tremendous richness of imagination and establishes a fascinating visual
interplay between traditional Mosul bronze art and Chinese iconography,
reflecting the Ilkhanids’ highly cross-cultural lifestyle. The seemingly natural way in which the imagery was integrated additionally emphasizes the
fruitful intermingling—a sound and smart combination making for a productive hybridity. In this regard, the basin may be seen as evidence of the
establishment of a new Imperial iconography derived from China, which
helped Mongol rulers legitimize their political power in the territories they
controlled.
The presentation of the basin over time in Berlin reflects former and
current trends of exhibiting objects with cross-cultural historical backgrounds in the museum. For a long time, such objects were—and still
are—appreciated mainly for their beauty and craftsmanship, that is as
masterpieces (à⏵Canon). This notion obviously has not become obsolete, as
the museum label explains: “Technically, the basin, ascribed to workshops
in Mosul, is also a masterpiece. The ornaments engraved in the brass and
inlaid with silver and gold wire once shimmered brightly on the darker
body.” However, this view is blended with the more recent tendency toward
increased contextualization. Yet while the Chinese influence on Islamic art
is mentioned, the cross-cultural context is not explained in greater detail:
“Islamic art has adapted a variety of cultural influences since its formation.
[…] Paper, porcelain and silk came from China, while the Islamic world was
known for metalwork and glassware. Chinese motifs, among them dragon
and phoenix, found their way into the figurative canon of Islamic art in
the wake of Mongol conquests in the thirteenth century.” Here, the aim
of focusing on a cross-cultural reading of the object would have gained
from putting greater emphasis on reciprocity and pointing more explicitly
to mutuality in the exchange. This is also in line with the current call for
a greater focus on embedding ‘non-European’ art objects—a widely used,
but quite questionable term—in so-called contact zones and networks of
63
MARIA SOBOTKA
connectivity, in order to avoid othering (à⏵Othering) and thus move towards
a truly global art history (Bruhn, Juneja, and Werner 2012).
The information panel further reads: “Models for the transfer of motifs
into Islamic art possibly were objects such as this box with the ‘five color’
design from a later period. In Chinese culture the dragon and phoenix
symbolize the royal couple and were seen as a fortunate omen—did they
convey the same message in Islamic art?” The last sentence leaves room
for varying interpretations. It could be understood as one of the rare
examples where a museum encourages its visitors to think for themselves.
But the statement may also make visitors feel left to their own devices. And
other factors may add to their possible confusion. Firstly, the porcelain box
is dated later than the basin, which seems rather odd, considering that
the box is used to demonstrate the model function of Chinese imagery
for Islamic art. Secondly, the issue is not really taken up in the subsequent
visitor circuit, thus withholding opportunities for visitors to come up with
an answer. If it is, in fact, the museum’s intention to encourage visitors to
think for themselves, it needs to provide further information. Otherwise,
the museum should not be surprised if asked what it intends to achieve
with this comparison, if not a better understanding of the objects shown.
Current developments represent a good start in approaching crosscultural objects in the museum by widening the focus from a mere
presentation as masterpieces to a broader context. In this sense, the interdepartmental cooperation between the Museum für Islamische Kunst and
the Museum für Asiatische Kunst points to a welcome trend in reinforcing
the cross-cultural reading of museum objects. A meaningful comparison
should lead to greater insight, as dictated by the very mission of museums,
which is an educational, if not an epistemological one.
Figures
Fig. 1: © Museum für Islamische Kunst – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Photo:
Johannes Kramer.
Fig. 2: © Museum für Asiatische Kunst – Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Photo: Maja
Bolle.
References
Bruhn, Matthias, Monika Juneja, and Elke Anna Werner, eds. 2012. Universalität
der Kunstgeschichte? kritische berichte. Zeitschrift für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften, 40 (2).
Enderlein, Volkmar. 1973. “Das Bildprogramm des Berliner Mosul-Beckens.” Forschungen und Berichte: Kunsthistorische und volkskundliche Beiträge 15: 7–40.
Gladiß, Almut von. 2012. Glanz und Substanz: Metallarbeiten in der Sammlung des
Museums für Islamische Kunst (8. bis 17. Jahrhundert). Berlin: Edition Minerva.
64
DISPLAYING CROSS-CULTURALITY: A WATER BASIN FROM MOSUL IN BERLIN
Johnson, Jean. n.d. “The Mongol Dynasty: When Kublai Khan Ruled China.”
Accessed December 19, 2017. https://asiasociety.org/education/
mongol-dynasty.
Kadoi, Yuka. 2009. Islamic Chinoiserie: The Art of Mongol Iran. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Kollmar-Paulenz, Karénina. 2011. Die Mongolen: Von Dschingis Khan bis heute.
Munich: C.H. Beck.
Sarre, Friedrich. 1904. “Ein orientalisches Metallbecken des XIII: Jahrhunderts im
Königlichen Museum für Völkerkunde zu Berlin.” Studien und Forschungen:
Jahrbuch der Königlich Preußischen Kunstsammlungen: 49–71.
Troelenberg, Eva-Maria. 2010. “Framing the Artwork: Munich 1910 and the Image
of Islamic Art.” In After One Hundred Years: The 1910 Exhibition “Meisterwerke
muhammedanischer Kunst” Reconsidered, edited by Andrea Lermer, and
Avinoam Shalem, 37–64. Leiden: Brill.
Yalman, Suzan. 2001. “The Art of the Ilkhanid Period (1256–1353).” (Based on original work by Linda Komaroff.) Accessed December 19, 2017. https://www.
metmuseum.org/TOAH/hd/ilkh/hd_ilkh.htm.
65
Figure 1: Plate showing Pilgrims to Cythera, China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911),
Yongzheng period (1723–1735), ca. 1730 / 1735. Porcelain, onglaze colors, h. 2.8 cm,
d. 22.6 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kunstgewerbemuseum, 1902,252.
Matthias Weiß
Cytherian China
Abstract Though, or since, this plate is a piece of export porcelain made
in China, the model for its main motif is a widely distributed engraving
by Paris-based artist Bernard Picart showing a pilgrimage to Cythera—the
utopian island of love. Analyzing the object as a whole, the notions of travelling and seduction are not limited to this depiction. Still a proof of the
European china craze and the efforts of Chinese manufacturers to fulfill
that need, it rather evidences the complex interactions of economic interests, scientific inquiry, and artistic rivalry as well as the limitations of such
mutual exchange processes.
Keywords Encre de Chine (schwarzlotmalerei), Europerie, Export porcelain (chine de commande), Famille rose (yangcai), Isle of Cythera
Weiß, Matthias. 2021. “Cytherian China.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone,
edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 66–72.
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10404
67
MATTHIAS WEISS
A visitor to the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Berlin who is familiar with rococo
styles and iconographies might easily identify this plate as a piece from
the mid-eighteenth century, even though the depiction of some of the
details may seem a bit odd. Framed by various round ornamental borders, the group in the center is reminiscent of the galanteries invented
by Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721). Well known from paintings and
their graphic reproductions, similar scenes appear on porcelain from the
manufactures in Frankenthal and Meissen (Lübke 2013). The plate from
Berlin, however, does not draw on Watteau. Its model is a drawing kept
at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (see http://collections.vam.
ac.uk/item/O892090/a-courtier-pouring-wine-for-drawing/), or, more likely,
a copperplate engraving in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
(Rijksmuseum 2017; Weiß 2017, no. 48; Fig. 2). Conceived and executed by
Bernard Picart (1673–1733) and first distributed in 1708 by the Paris-based
publisher Gaspard Duchange (1662–1757), the motif became so popular
that its transfer to porcelain was quite common, as examples from Germany
illustrate (Ducret 1972, 96).
Following Picart’s invention quite closely, three figures dominate the
scene on the plate: a winged Amor holding up a torch and a male-female
couple whom the boyish god guides to the island called Cythera—the mythical birthplace of Amor’s mother, Venus, and presumably the isle seen in the
background of this depiction. In the early eighteenth century, the departure to Cythera was understood as a search for a utopian place of love and
requited love (Cowart 2001; Dickhaut 2014), here visualized mainly by the
intense exchange of gazes, but also by the cavalier offering a drink from
a bottle gourd and the lady accepting it. Other elements remind us of the
fact that the concept of Cytherian love originally meant prudent love, that
is, a love balancing carnal and spiritual desires. The coats and the walking
sticks indicate that the three travelers are pilgrims, while the torch raised
by Amor and the church-like building on the island make it clear that their
undertaking can only be accomplished in matrimony (Held 1985, 7–8, 61;
Dickhaut 2014, 321). At the same time, while travelling from one medium
to the other, the motif underwent minor but important changes: In Picart’s
drawing, the woman uses a scallop shell (like the ones on the hat and coats)
as a drinking vessel, which confirms that she is taking part in a pilgrimage.
In the engraving, the scallop shell is replaced with a vulva-shaped snail shell,
which underscores the phallic appearance of the approaching bottle gourd
and thus foregrounds the sexual aspects of the journey—anticipating the
trivialization of the concept of Cytherian love as libertine seduction in the late
eighteenth century and beyond (Dickhaut 2014, 325–326). On the plate, however, the cup is neither a snail nor a scallop shell, but an unidentifiable and
therefore neutral container, which significantly reduces the sexual allusion.
When considering the object as a whole, we find that the notion of travelling—and seduction—is not limited to the depicted subject of two pilgrims
about to embark to the utopian island of love. The familiar composition
clearly originated in Europe, but the plate itself was molded and decorated
68
CYTHERIAN CHINA
Figure 2: Bernard Picart: Pelerins de l’Isle de Cithere, 1708. Etching, h. 9.6 cm,
b. 12.9 cm. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, RP-P-1921-273.
in China. Being one of an uncountable number of export pieces, it is evidence of the porcelain craze that first took hold in Europe in the seventeenth
century. While desperately attempting to get behind the secrets of porcelain production, shiploads of the so-called ‘white gold’ were imported from
China (and, to a certain extent, from Japan), making Chinese sellers and
Dutch traders wealthy. In order to fulfil the wishes of their clients at home,
European merchants provided the artists at Jingdezhen and other centers of
porcelain production with books and prints (Howard and Ayers 1978, vol. I).
These obviously included Duchange’s reproduction of Picart’s pilgrimage.
As it happened, the situation began to change the same year Picart’s
print was published. In 1708, Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682–1719) and
Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708) finally succeeded in
producing hard porcelain in a European laboratory. Just two years later,
Augustus II the Strong (1670–1733), the Saxon Elector and King of Poland,
founded the first European manufacture in Meissen that, starting around
1720, was followed by numerous other production sites, including in
Vienna (1718), Stockholm (1726), and Doccia near Florence (1735). In other
words, when the plate with the image of pilgrims to Cythera left a Chinese
kiln between 1730 and 1735 (or possibly about ten years later), the production of porcelain was no longer an Asian arcanum. Nevertheless, the
import of porcelain from China continued to play a vital role, as the output
of the European workshops was not sufficient to satisfy market demands
and artists in Europe looked for models to copy or, indeed, outdo. Because
69
MATTHIAS WEISS
the Chinese had the advantage of a tradition of more than a thousand
years, the objective of surpassing the quantity and quality of their production was not easy to achieve. Though a piece of mass production, the plate
showing pilgrims to Cythera illustrates this: The porcelain is thin enough
to let light through; the color palette is elegantly confined to black, gold,
and various shades of iron red; and the paint is applied as gently as possible—features which evoke a sense of rococo-ish lightness and playfulness.
At the same time, though, the subtlety of the painted scene in terms
of sexual allusions may be attributable to the fact that the Chinese artist
did not appreciate the subject in all its dimensions. What is much more
noteworthy is that the artist, intentionally or not, combined his European
model with Chinese elements such as the boats, the roof of the church-like
building, and, most of all, the delicately dabbed-on leaves of the trees. This
creates a ‘Chinese’ setting of sorts for the scene as a whole, suggesting
that the utopian island of Cythera is now no longer found in the Mediterranean but much further east, in China. On the production side, such a subversion of the subject by translocating it is unlikely to have been deliberate.
As mentioned, pieces such as the plate showing pilgrims to Cythera were
mass produced for the delectation of European clients, and the painter
most likely did not care about the spiritual or physical nuances of the concept of the Cytherian love. In this sense, there is good reason to classify
the work as an europerie (⏵Europerie), a neologism coined by Bruno Kisch
in 1937 to describe—primarily but not exclusively—the adaptation of European styles and motifs in Chinese porcelain production intended for sale
overseas. In terms of reception, however, the combination of a well-known
European topic with a Chinese setting may have resulted in a conflation of
the two. And this may, indeed, have been quite meaningful to customers in
the West, if we keep in mind that Voltaire (1694–1778) and others idealized
the so-called Middle Kingdom as a utopian place where all the shortcomings of their own societies had long been overcome.
From an even larger transcultural perspective, a plate such as the
one showing pilgrims to Cythera reveals the mutuality and complexity of
exchange processes, especially during the period when both the Europeans and the Chinese frequently appropriated and re-appropriated motifs
as well as techniques from one another. This is especially evident in the
use of ornaments and color: As we learn from a January 1722 letter written
by the Jingdezhen-based Jesuit Franҫois xavier d’Entrecolles (Yin Hongxu,
1664–1741), the Chinese were unsuccessfully experimenting with black
painted decoration (d’Entrecolles 1843, 316). Around the same time, a technique of black-enamel painting called schwarzlotmalerei was developed in
Europe, that German hausmaler preferably used on white wares imported
from China rather than on porcelain from the newly established factory
in Meissen. Presumably, those hybrids (à⏵Hybridity) were sent back to
Guangzhou in order to be copied by Chinese painters, although the technique was perfected—and adopted for chine de commande—only later as
a direct result of the Viennese du Paquier period (1719–1744). Yet another
70
CYTHERIAN CHINA
feature of the du Paquier manufacture was the decorative border of laubund bandelwerk, which was based on two series of engravings by Paul Decker
(1677–1713). Continually modified and varied, its main elements were strapwork, palmettes, trelliswork cartouches or foliate scrolls (Le Corbeiller 1974,
68). In the case of the plate from the Kunstgewerbemuseum, the strapwork
is supplemented by little cornucopias and a golden shepherd border.
Looking not just at encre de chine pieces (see Howard and Ayers 1978,
vol. II, no. 354; Goldsmith Phillips 1956, 137) but also at polychrome
examples showing the same Cytherian arrangement (see Beurdeley
1962, no. 122; Howard and Ayers 1978, vol. II, no. 353; Jörg 1989, no. 80;
Litzenburg 2003, no. 155), a similar argument may be made. Today,
the correct name for this type of decoration is famille rose, a term that
emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century (Jacquemart and Le
Blant 1862, 77–78) to distinguish a color palette dominated by different
shades of pink, white, and yellow from an earlier one (the so-called green
family or famille verte). Used from around 1720 on, the Chinese called this
new palette yangcai, meaning “foreign colors”, most likely in reference to
the fact that the craftsmen at the Imperial kilns developed the recipes for
their new tints in collaboration with Jesuit missionaries (Kerr 2000). Taking
all this into account, europeries like the polychrome and encre de chine
plates showing pilgrims to Cythera cannot be dismissed as merely copying
figural motifs and lavish ornaments, but also need to be understood as
sharing technical expertise such as the invention and application of new
painting techniques—which had tremendous impact on Chinese taste
as well. Therefore, the history of (export) porcelain should be written as
a multi-layered history or as entangled histories (à⏵Entangled Histories)
linked primarily by economic interests. Nonetheless, the history of the
elaborately decorated plate from the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin and
all related pieces in other collections throughout Europe and the United
States is not just about selling tableware, but also about scientific inquiry,
artistic rivalry, and a utopian idea of love, with the latter at the same time
showing the limits of such mutual exchange processes.
Figures
Fig. 1: © SMB, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Dietmar Katz.
Fig. 2: © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
References
Beurdeley, Michel. 1962. Porzellan aus China: “Compagnie des Indes”. Munich:
Bruckmann.
Cowart, Georgia. 2001. “Watteau’s Pilgrimage to Cythera and the Subversive Utopia
of the Opera-Ballet.” The Art Bulletin LxxxIII (3): 461–478.
71
MATTHIAS WEISS
D’Entrecolles, Franҫois xavier. 1843. “Lettre du P. d’Entrecolles […] à Kim-te-tchim,
le 25 Janvier 1722.” In Lettres édifiantes et curieuses concernant l’Asie, l’Afrique
et l’Amérique […], edited by Louis Aimé-Martin, 309–316. Paris: Societé du
Panthéon Littéraire.
Dickhaut, Kirsten. 2014. “Kytherische Liebe / Liebe auf Kythera.” In Liebessemantik:
Frühneuzeitliche Darstellungen von Liebe in Italien und Frankreich, edited by
Kirsten Dickhaut, 263–327. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Ducret, Siegfried. 1972. Meißner Porzellan, bemalt in Augsburg, 1718 bis um 1750.
Vol. II: Bunte Augsburger Hausmalereien. Braunschweig: Klinkhardt &
Biermann.
Goldsmith Phillips, John. 1956. China Trade-Porcelain: An Account of its Historical Background, Manufacture, and Decoration and a Study of the Helena
Woolworth McCann Collection. Published for the Winfield Foundation and the
Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Held, Jutta. 1985. Antoine Watteau: Einschiffung nach Kythera. Versöhnung von Leidenschaft und Vernunft. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer.
Howard, David, and John Ayers. 1978. China for the West: Chinese Porcelain and other
Decorative Arts for Export illustrated from the Mottahedeh Collection. Vols. I
and II. London: Sotheby Parke Bernet.
Jacquemart, Albert, and Edmond Le Blant. 1862. Histoire Artistique, Industrielle et
Commerciale de la Porcelaine. Paris: Techener.
Jörg, Christian J. 1989. Chinese Export Porcelain: Chine de Commande from the Royal
Museum of Art and History in Brussels. Hong Kong: Urban Council.
Kerr, Rose. 2000. “What Were the Origins of Chinese Famille Rose?” Orientations
xxxI (5): 53–59.
Le Corbeiller, Clare. 1974. China Trade Porcelain: Patterns of Exchange. Additions to
the Helena Woolworth McCann Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
New York: Graphic Society.
Litzenburg, Thomas V. 2003. Chinese Export Porcelain in the Reeves Center Collection
at Washington and Lee University. London: Third Millenium.
Lübke, Dieter. 2013. Meißner Watteau-Dekore aus dem 18. Jahrhundert. Bramsche:
Rasch.
Rijksmuseum. 2017. Search in Rijksstudio: Reizigers naar het eiland Cythere, Bernard
Picart, 1705 [sic!]. Accessed November 27, 2017. https://www.rijksmuseum.
nl/en/collection/RP-P-1921-273.
Victoria and Albert Museum. 2017. V&A Search the Collections: A courtier pouring
wine for a lady. Accessed November 16, 2017. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/
item/O892090/a-courtier-pouring-wine-for-drawing/.
Weiß, Matthias. 2017. Katalog. In Wechselblicke: Zwischen China und Europa
1669–1907 / Exchanging Gazes. Between China and Europe 1669–1907, edited
by Matthias Weiß, Eva-Maria Troelenberg, and Joachim Brand, 141–327.
Petersberg: Michael Imhof.
72
PART III
Building Transcultural
Modernity
Figure 1: Erich Mendelsohn, Weizmann House, 1934–1936, Rehovot, Israel,
exterior view.
Sonja Hull
The Weizmann House:
Staging the Nation-Building
Process of Israel
Abstract In 1934, Chaim Weizmann, the President of the Zionist Organization and later first President of Israel, commissioned Erich Mendelsohn
(1887‒1953) to build his residence on a hilltop in Rehovot, a small-town
southeast of Tel Aviv. The Weizmann House served not only as a private
home, but also as a stage for formal and social gatherings and has now
found its place in the nation’s history. Erich Mendelsohn, a German-Jewish
architect, strove for an architectural language adapted to the specific environment, combining local building traditions with the paradigms of modern Western architecture. Mendelsohn’s design for the Weizmann House
illustrates most clearly his proposition of an East-West synthesis.
Keywords Architecture, 20th century, Nation building, Cultural transfer,
Israel
Hull, Sonja. 2021. “The Weizmann House: Staging the Nation-Building Process of Israel.”
In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin
Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 74–81. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9.
Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.
c10406
75
SONJA HULL
The Weizmann House stands isolated on a hilltop in Rehovot, a small town
southeast of Tel Aviv that, in the 1930s, was surrounded by orange plantations and offered an unobstructed view of the Mediterranean Sea to the
west and the Judean Mountains to the east. A sketch by Erich Mendelsohn
(1887‒1953), its German-Jewish architect, reconstructs the path of a visitor
to the house from four perspectives—each accompanied by descriptions
of the visitor’s point of view: “street ascending to the house,” “in the curve
before the house entrance,” “in front of the house,” and “the loop”—pointing to the careful calculation of perspective. The building is presented to
the visitor, who is ascending along a meandering path, from all sides—as
if it were a sculpture on a pedestal. As a result of the constantly changing viewpoint of the observer, a dynamic tension is created during their
approach.
The private residence of Chaim Weizmann was built between 1934 and
1936. Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization, commissioned
Mendelsohn not just with the planning of the building but also with the
design of the surrounding landscape. This gave Mendelsohn the freedom
to steer the approaching view. The property was acquired in April 1934 at
the urging of Vera Weizmann, the wife of Chaim Weizmann, who was the
driving force behind the project. She was well aware of the value of the
property due to its exceptional location: “I was buying the view” (Weizmann,
V. 1967, qtd. in Heinze-Mühleib 1986, 91).
Erich Mendelsohn had already achieved international recognition for
his work when the political events in Germany forced him to leave Berlin in
1933.1 He subsequently lived and practiced in London and Jerusalem until
he finally emigrated to the United States in 1941. Previously established
relationships to influential Jewish emigrants, such as Chaim Weizmann and
Salman Schocken, secured Mendelsohn his first commissions in Palestine.
The client’s social standing determined the representative character of
the Weizmann House, which therefore must be seen not just as a private
home, but as the residence of a Zionist leader. The representative function
only increased after Weizmann became president of the newly founded
state of Israel in 1949 and the house came to serve as the presidential
residence. The originally intended—and later projected—significance and
especially the highly symbolic role the building was destined to assume
in the nation-building process (à⏵Nation) are illustrative of the building’s
unique biography. A closer look at the building’s architectural characteristics will further clarify how Mendelsohn’s design concept of an “East-West
1
76
A frequent point of reference for Mendelsohn’s architecture is one of his first
commissions, the Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany (1919). A series of
department stores built in the 1920s in Stuttgart, Chemnitz, and Nuremberg
for the German-Jewish businessman Salman Schocken incorporate design
principles for which Mendelsohn would gain recognition: Dynamic tensions
achieved by streamlined facades respond to the urban surroundings, and
a functional arrangement of the interior layout ensures efficient utilization of
space.
THE WEIZMANN HOUSE: STAGING THE NATION-BUILDING PROCESS OF ISRAEL
Figure 2: Erich Mendelsohn, Weizmann House, 1934–1936, Rehovot, Israel, inner
courtyard with swimming pool.
synthesis” is realized in reference to the location and how this specific form
of cultural transfer (à⏵Cultural Transfer, à⏵East / West) paved the way for the
Weizmann House to become part of Israel’s national history.
At the time, the only buildings in the immediate vicinity of the residence
were the Agricultural College and the Daniel Sieff Research Institute, which
was founded in 1934 by Chaim Weizmann and came to be known as the
Weizmann Institute after 1949. Both buildings were also erected according
to designs by Mendelsohn (Zevi 1999, 271–272). Beyond the representational function of the residence, landscape and climate were thus the only
two external factors of relevance for the design. The walls of the U-shaped
building are composed of whitewashed interlocked blocks of stone which
are arranged symmetrically around the open courtyard. A utility wing
attached to the northeast corner of the house breaks with the otherwise
strict symmetry of the compound but is cleverly hidden from the eyes of
the approaching visitor. The axis of symmetry runs from east to west and
opens the inner courtyard towards the west, allowing the coastal winds to
circulate within. The courtyard is flanked by two single-story wings that,
together with the covered terrace to the west, obstruct the view of the
inner courtyard, thus giving the building a closed and introverted character. The inner courtyard with pool is the cooling center of the house and
all rooms have large windows opening to it. At the same time, the external
walls prevent direct exposure to the sun. Small oculi windows rhythmically
structure the facade and create a dialogue between openness and closure, providing ventilation, natural lighting, and views without exposing
the interior to climatic conditions or revealing it to the surroundings (see
Fig. 2).
77
SONJA HULL
The spiral staircase at the center of the building visibly extends beyond
the height of the building, introducing a vertical axis. The verticality of the
semi-cylindrical stairwell is further reinforced by vertical slats that shade
the interior from the sun’s glare and at the same time turn the central stairwell into an iconic design element; during the day they create a decorative
light pattern inside and at night the experience is reversed, as a crown of
emanating light rays adorns the hilltop building. This element was new
to Mendelsohn’s work and appears here for the first time on the exterior
of a private residential house, pointing to its intended representational
character. The semi-circular motif of the stairwell is taken up again on the
opposite east side of the building in a half-round bay window on the second floor. The generously proportioned rooms on the ground floor, the
large entrance and dining areas and, flanking the inner courtyard, a library
and living room contrast with the small private rooms on the upper floor.
In planning the building, Mendelsohn placed great emphasis on minimizing the size of the private rooms, yet without neglecting the comfort and
individuality of the inhabitants. This design principle is already evident in
the planning of his own house Am Rupenhorn in Berlin (Mendelsohn 1931).
The symbolic function of the Weizmann House as the political and social
stage of the President of the Zionist Organization—and later President of
Israel—is reflected in its overall design, particularly in the floor plan and
the towering staircase.
The oculi, discussed earlier as an adaptation to climatic conditions, are
particularly striking design elements. The circular shape of these windows
may be seen as symbolically charged. The similarity to the portholes of
large ships is obvious. Additional features reinforce this symbolism: The
single-story wings flanking the inner courtyard appear like the hull of
a ship and the staircase towering over the rest of the building like the ship’s
bridge. How is this symbolism to be interpreted? At the time, ship motifs
were a common modernist design element, often referring to machine
aesthetics and futuristic thinking. But in this case a different motivation
is more likely. A ship implies movement. On the one hand, this points
to Mendelsohn’s design principle of dynamism and, on the other, to the
movement of the Jewish people. The majority of Jewish immigrants came
by ship to Palestine or Eretz Israel, as the area was also called by the Jewish
inhabitants—the land of their salvation. The ship can be seen as a metaphor precisely for that intermediate state of limbo between departure and
arrival (Heinze-Greenberg 1999, 251).
Mendelsohn who, like most German Zionists, was a follower of the
strand of cultural Zionism advocated by Martin Buber in opposition to
political Zionism, did not believe in the viability of a Jewish state, but was
concerned about the identity crisis of modern Judaism. Martin Buber
explains in his early writings that the “great spiritual traditions” of the
Orient would balance out Western excesses of materiality and that the
Jews serve as mediators for this mission (Nitzan-Shiftan 1996, 164). This
statement serves as a basis for the East-West synthesis subsequently
78
THE WEIZMANN HOUSE: STAGING THE NATION-BUILDING PROCESS OF ISRAEL
professed by Mendelsohn. In his travels to Palestine, Mendelsohn was
fascinated with the architecture of the organically formed Arab villages
(Heinze-Greenberg and Stephan 2004, 87) and analyzed cultural traditions in depth, an approach rejected by many Zionist architects (notably
those associated with the “Tel Aviv Chug”). Mendelsohn’s designs in Palestine in the 1930s combine the adaptation to climatic conditions and local
traditions with contemporary advances in Western building technologies.
The Weizmann House embodies this synthesis. The building’s calm and
introverted character owing to the closed wall surfaces and its static, cubic
character are a result of this leitmotif. During his time in Palestine, Erich
Mendelsohn aspired to create a new architectural language adapted to the
specific environment and combining local building traditions with the paradigms of modern Western architecture. In a pamphlet titled Palestine and
the World of Tomorrow, Mendelsohn writes: “Palestine of today is symbolizing the union between the most modern civilization and the most antique
culture. It is the place where intellect and vision, matter and spirit meet.
In the arrangement commanded by this union, both Arabs and Jews, both
members of the Semitic family, should be equally interested” (Whittick
1956, 132).
Mendelsohn was not alone in this architectural approach. The German
architect Bruno Taut, in his book Lessons on Architecture, which he wrote
while in exile in Istanbul in 1937, similarly claimed that a building could at
the same time be “modern” and “traditional” and that common fashions
can be overcome only if local preconditions are taken into account (Taut
1937, 61, 184). Mendelsohn always saw himself first and foremost as an
architect and put his profession above everything else (Heinze-Greenberg
and Stephan 2004, 124). Because he emigrated to the United States in 1941
and never returned to Palestine, Mendelsohn ended up playing a minor
role in the nation-building process of Israel where opposing ideals soon
gained prevalence. In the 1950s and 1960s, in particular, architecture was
used to reinforce the progressive image of the Zionist state. Redeeming
the soil and building the land were means to engineer a new society for
the people. Modernism in Israel during the 1920s and 1930s must be seen
as a pluralistic movement. Labels later used to describe it, such as Bauhaus or International Style, fail to account for the diversity of architectural
approaches to building in the new surroundings. The absence of a shared
Jewish visual heritage in the Diaspora and the lack of an immediate past
or local Jewish culture gave rise to a variety of architectural approaches
against a self-chosen backdrop. Just as there are multiple strands of Zionism, it is important to recognize the multiple forms of modernity. Any discussion of modern architecture in this time and space must also grapple
with history and ideology.
As the residence of the President of the Zionist Organization and later
first President of Israel, the Weizmann House served not just as a private
home but also as a stage for formal and social gatherings. Unlike many
other buildings built by Mendelsohn during his years in Palestine, the
79
SONJA HULL
Weizmann House has found its place in the nation’s history and is preserved as a public memorial and museum open to visitors.2 Children’s
tours dealing with “numerous topics, such as the symbols of the State of
Israel, the institution of the Presidency, and the importance of education
and science” (Weizmann House 2017) are offered at the site, thus continuing the building’s narrative as a center of Israeli national identity.
Mendelsohn’s design for the Weizmann House illustrates most clearly
his demand for a dialogue with and adaptation to the genius loci and surroundings. His proposition of an East-West synthesis is an attempt to bridge
the gap between biblical Palestine and the modern Western world. Different architectural languages are juxtaposed. A tension between introversion and openness is created: a sculptural volume defined by closed walls
punctured by purposefully placed windows is contrasted with the interior
view of an airy, open courtyard dominated by the monumental stairwell.
A deliberate steering of the gaze is involved in creating such a work of art.
Mendelsohn himself said about House Weizmann: “It is a house absolutely
of our time, [...] and yet adapted as a residence in a subtropical climate.
This, I feel, is a type of home which will again, after two thousand years,
become popular throughout the Orient, as it was when Judea was a Roman
Province” (interview in the Evening Standard, July 31, 1937, Heinze-Mühleib
1986, 112).
Figure
Fig. 1–2:
© bpk / Kunstbibliothek, SMB.
References
Heinze-Mühleib, Ita. 1986. Erich Mendelsohn: Bauten und Projekte in Palästina
(1934‒41). Munich: Scaneg.
Heinze-Greenberg, Ita. 1999. “Ich bin ein freier Bauer: Bauen in Palästina 1934 bis
1941.” In Erich Mendelsohn: Dynamik und Funktion: Realisierte Visionen eines
kosmopolitischen Architekten, edited by Regina Stephan, 240–287. OstfildernRuit: Hatje-Cantz.
Heinze-Greenberg, Ita, and Regina Stephan, eds. 2004. Luise und Erich Mendelsohn:
Eine Partnerschaft für die Kunst. Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje-Cantz.
Mendelsohn, Erich. 1931. Neues Haus – Neue Welt. Berlin: Mosse.
Nitzan-Shiftan, Alona. 1996. “Contested Zionism – Alternative Modernism: Erich
Mendelsohn and the Tel Aviv Chug in Mandate Palestine.” Architectural History 39: 147–180.
2
80
By contrast, the private residence of Salman Schocken in Jerusalem, which was
built at the same time as the Weizmann House in 1934‒1936, has been converted beyond recognition.
THE WEIZMANN HOUSE: STAGING THE NATION-BUILDING PROCESS OF ISRAEL
Taut, Bruno. 1977 [1937]. Architekturlehre, edited by Tilmann Heinisch and Goerd
Peschken. Hamburg: VSA.
Whittick, Arnold. 1956. Eric Mendelsohn. 2nd ed. London: Leonard Hill.
Weizmann House. 2017. “Educational.” Accessed September 13, 2017. http://www.
chaimweizmann.org.il/en/educational.
Zevi, Bruno, and Erich Mendelsohn. 1999. The Complete Works. Basel: Birkhäuser.
81
Figure 1: A sketch of Écochard’s grid.
Cristiana Strava
Critical Appropriations of
Modernity: Michel Écochard’s
8 by 8 Meter Housing Grid, Hay
Mohammadi, Casablanca
Abstract Using an object ethnography approach, in this chapter I focus
on an emblematic colonial planning and housing instrument designed
by the head of the urban planning service in 1950s Morocco. Combining attention to historical and transnational dimensions with the ethos
of ethnographic work, I unravel the conditions behind the grid’s design,
materialization, transnational circulation, and later appropriation and rich
transformation in the hands of its eventual inhabitants. As such, my intention is to explore and illuminate the contributions of multiple actors and to
shed light on the complicated entanglements between emblematic colonial materialities and the postcolonial lives grafted onto them.
Keywords Appropriation, Margins, Morocco, Modernism, Object Ethnography
Strava, Cristiana. 2021. “Critical Appropriations of Modernity: Michel Écochard’s 8 by
8 Meter Housing Grid, Hay Mohammadi, Casablanca.” In Reading Objects in the Contact
Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner,
82–89. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University
Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10407
83
CRISTIANA STRAVA
In the 1950s, Casablanca’s bidonvilles (slums) became the birthplace of
a new architectural wave that caught the imagination of a group of young
architects coming out of the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne
and transformed the city’s margins into a canvas for utopian fantasies that
contested the conventional norms of high modernism. Built on the gaping
holes of a colonial era quarry, Hay Mohammadi (formerly known as Carrière
Centrale) played a central part in these developments, and later became
known as a mythical neighborhood in the history of Morocco through its
association with revolutionary colonial housing schemes and decades of
post-independence political abuse and social struggle.
Home to North Africa’s oldest and once largest slum, Hay Mohammadi
served as a ‘laboratory’ for this experimentation with new urban planning and architectural forms just as anti-colonial sentiment and local
labor unions were exerting increasing pressure on the French authorities
(Rabinow 1989). One of several celebrated projects, the 8 by 8 meter grid
designed by Michel Écochard as an urban planning concept for the reorganization of the growing bidonvilles was widely acclaimed at the time
for the way it addressed a “problem of technique and of conscience for
France” (Écochard 1950, 6). Each plot would replace the slum dwellings
with a standard two-room home arranged around an open patio projected
to accommodate one family.
This essay takes an object ethnography (àà⏵Object ethnographies)
approach in unraveling the conditions behind the grid’s design, materialization, transnational circulation, and later appropriation (àà⏵Appropriation)
and transformation in the hands of its eventual inhabitants. As such, the
intention in the brief space allowed is to explore and illuminate the contributions of multiple actors—local and transnational—and to shed light
on the complicated entanglements between emblematic colonial materialities and the postcolonial lives grafted onto them (à⏵Decolonizing).
Born in France at the turn of the twentieth century, Michel Écochard
(1905–1985) was a prolific architect and urban planner, practicing in places
like Syria and Lebanon (1931–1944), Pakistan (1953–1954), and French West
Africa (1959–1963), before and after his Moroccan post. His life and work
have been the subject of several studies (see Verdeil 2012; de Mazieres
1985), the most thorough of which argues that Écochard was a representative figure of a new class of international ‘urban experts’ that was formed
on the African continent between the 1950s and 1970s (Avermaete 2010a).
During his brief tenure in Morocco (1947–1953), Écochard experimented with a new approach to urban planning that led to the large-scale
creation of new housing estates based on his standard 8 by 8 meter trame
(grid). Elaborating on Le Corbusier’s principle of “housing for the greatest
number,” Écochard rejected the mechanistic concept of “machine à habiter”
and instead proposed a design for an “urban tissue” that would “invite
appropriation,” allow for transformations, foresee demographic growth,
and evolve into a community over time (Écochard 1955b; Avermaete
2010b, 155).
84
CRITICAL APPROPRIATIONS OF MODERNITY
Drawing on ethnological research about Moroccan settlements that
had been gathered by the colonial apparatus but also from qualitative studies of the existing slums (cf. Berque 1959), Écochard advocated
a solution based on ‘neighborhood units,’ each of which could house up
to 1,800 inhabitants—a significant number for an administration that was
trying to deal with a growing bidonville population. This was a particularly
acute problem in Hay Mohammadi, whose population of 56,667 made it
the densest bidonville in the country at the time (Écochard 1955a). Each
neighborhood unit would be contained inside the housing grid composed
of 8 by 8 meter plots or ‘cells’ (see Fig. 1), which could theoretically allow for
multiple arrangements and combinations (Eleb 2000, 57). Loosely inspired
in this way by the vernacular architecture of rural Moroccan homes,1 this
design can also be seen as an oblique way of helping ‘mediate’ the transition from a rural mode of life to an industrial urban existence, and making
it easier for Moroccans to “acclimate to modernity” (cf. Cohen and Eleb
2002, 320–321).
Écochard’s grid became widely celebrated at the time in international
forums such as Architecture Moderne for the manner in which it was seen
to incorporate local typologies with what were considered modern, universal standards of space, hygiene, rest, education, and work (Smithson and
Smithson 1955; Cohen and Eleb 2002). Many commentators at the time
hoped the concepts developed in Morocco would travel to France where
they could invigorate ideas about urban life and its organization, and it
could be argued that the architecture of the French banlieues indeed owes
much to these early colonial experiments (von Osten 2010). Écochard did,
in fact, export the conceptual ideas of “housing for the greatest number”
and the formal design of the grid as part of later commissions for developing refugee housing in Karachi (1953) and a master plan for a ‘modernized’
Dakar (1963) (Avermaete 2010a).
As these later uses of the grid demonstrate, the ability of the design to
articulate solutions to ‘potentially volatile’ populations such as slum dwellers or refugees was a central feature of its popularity. Developed at a time
of growing anti-colonial unrest in Morocco, the grid and its power to order
and control both space and people cannot be divorced from its local political context. Although Écochard never mentioned the political situation in
his writings, he could not have been oblivious to it, and architecture historians argue that he rather saw his role as that of a humanist technocrat,
paving the way for further development (Eleb 2000; Avermaete 2010b).
Moroccan architect Aziza Chaouni seems to agree with this evaluation,
emphasizing the fact that it was Écochard himself who pushed the colonial
administration to act on the issue of housing for the local population (2011,
1
The vernacular movement in architecture garnered international attention in
1964 with Bernard Rudofsky’s Architecture without Architects, which glorified the
genius of builders who knew how to translate the “traditional” circumstances of
their communities into built form. See also Sibyl Moholy-Nagy 1957, and John
F. C. Turner 1977.
85
CRISTIANA STRAVA
Figure 2: Rooftop view of the appropriated grid.
62–63). It is clear, however, that such humanist ideals existed alongside an
increasing depoliticization of urban planning practices, as Écochard and
his team never questioned colonialism as such, only its neglect of ‘indigenous populations.’
Unanimously hailed as visionary at the time, almost seventy years later
the buildings are particularly poised to illuminate questions about transculturation, as they can be seen both figuratively and literally as archives
of the rich transformations and accumulations of a unique contact zone
(à⏵
à Expanded Contact Zone). Specifically, the case of the Hay Mohammadi
developments is considered to be an exceptional example of a transcultural
movement in architecture, or what Tom Avermaete has termed “another
modernism” (2005), that, in contrast to the universalist agenda of high
modernism, took as its inspiration not only ‘traditional’ North African built
forms but also the messy, contingent architecture of slums. The housing
estates the grid gave birth to, it was hoped, could breed a new society, neither French nor African.
As the families originally re-housed in the grid dwellings grew and
socio-economic conditions for the working class worsened in the years
following independence, the grid began to develop vertically. The spaces
above the open patios were gradually covered to allow for the building
of further floors, each new level indexing a new generation in the history
of the neighborhood’s demographic expansion. Colorful window shutters
and networks of clotheslines now animate the once sparse (see Fig. 2),
blank white walls of Écochard’s geometric designs. Interiors have been
equally transformed in response to personal and economic necessity (see
86
CRITICAL APPROPRIATIONS OF MODERNITY
Figure 3: Domestic interiors in the appropriated grid.
Fig. 3). Satellite dishes mushroomed on both the roofs and the buildings’
façades, as the grid developed into a palimpsest and archive of the community’s growth.
However, the recovery of Écochard’s legacy and designs during the late
twentieth century as part of emerging trans-national heritage-making discourses and practices has moved away from an appreciation of such contingencies and chosen to evade questions about the structural conditions
which have led to the complete appropriation (àà⏵Appropriation) and transformation of the original grid dwellings. The architectural sketch of the
grid and its aura have been and continue to be powerfully deployed and
celebrated by various stakeholders as emblems of Casablanca’s synonymous relation to modernity, frequently juxtaposed with images of urban
informality as a way of pointing towards the city’s fall from modernist
grace.
Such dichotomous visions often emerge in the efforts of local architectural heritage preservation associations, which describe the area as
an ‘open-air museum’ but are less inclined to give equal weight to the
lived-in grid, decrying the material appropriation and transformation of
the original dwellings by an historically marginalized and impoverished
community (Strava 2016). But it is ultimately by paying attention to these
new articulations of everyday uses and transformations of Écochard’s grid
that we can access deeper understandings of the historical dynamics that
continue to animate such contact zones. Current inhabitants are only too
aware, and frequently proud, of their neighborhood’s history and heritage, yet they must also contend with the enduring effects of structural and
87
CRISTIANA STRAVA
political violence that continues to mark everyday lives and spaces in the
area (Strava 2017). As such, these buildings challenge facile understandings of heritage (à⏵Heritage) and foreground crucial issues pertaining to
which types of ‘contact’ and ‘exchange’ are considered desirable by those
with the institutional power to curate such questions and inspire productive approaches towards ongoing appropriations.
Figures
Fig. 1:
Fig. 2–3:
Écochard, Michel, 1955b, p. 105. Casablanca: Le Roman d’une Ville.
Collaborative photo-archive generated via a photo-voice exercise with
neighbourhood inhabitants, 2014.
References
Avermaete, Tom. 2005. Another Modern: The Post-war Architecture and Urbanism of
Candilis-Josic-Woods. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers.
———. 2010a. “Framing the Afropolis: Michel Ecochard and the African City for the
Greatest Number.” OASE. Architectural Journal 83: 77–100.
———. 2010b. “CIAM, TEAM X and the Rediscovery of African Settlements.” In
Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular Dialogues and Contested Identities, edited by Jean-François Lejeune and Michelang Sabatino,
251–264. New York: Routledge.
Berque, Jacques. 1959. “Medinas, villeneuves et bidonvilles.” Les Cahiers de Tunisie
21–22: 5–42.
Chaouni, Aziza. 2011. “Depoliticizing group GAMMA.” In Third World Modernism:
Architecture, Development and Identity, edited by Lu Dunafang, 57–84. New
York: Routledge.
Cohen, Jean-Louis. and Monique Eleb. 2002. Casablanca: Colonial Myth and Architectural Ventures. New York: The Monacelli Press.
Écochard, Michel. 1950. “Urbanisme et construction pour le plus grand nombre”
(paper presented at the Chambre of commerce and Industry, February 10,
1950). Annales de l’ITBTP (October 1950): 3–12.
———. 1955a. “Habitat musulman au Maroc.” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 60:
36–40.
———. 1955b. Casablanca: Le Roman d’une Ville. Paris: Editions de Paris.
Eleb, Monique. 2000. “An Alternative Functionalist Universalism: Écochard, Candilis
and ATBAT-Afrique.” In Anxious Modernisms: Experimentation in Postwar Architectural Culture, edited by Sarah Goldhagen Williams and Réjean Legault,
55–73. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
De Mazieres, Nathalie. 1985. “Homage.” Environmental Design: Journal of the Islamic
Environmental Design Research Centre 1: 22–25.
Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl. 1957. Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture. New York: Horizon Press.
88
CRITICAL APPROPRIATIONS OF MODERNITY
Rabinow, Paul. 1989. French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Rudofsky, Bernard. 1964. Architecture Without Architects: A Short Introduction to Pedigreed Architecture. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
Smithson, Alison, and Peter Smithson. 1955. “Collective Housing in Morocco: The
Work of ATBAT-Afrique: Bodiansky, Candilis, Woods.” Architectural Design 1
(January): 2–8.
Strava, Cristiana. 2016. At Home with Modernity: Everyday Struggles and the Production of Livelihoods on the Margins of Casablanca, Morocco. PhD. SOAS University of London.
———. 2017. “At Home on the Margins: Care Giving and the ‘Un‐homely’ among
Casablanca’s Working Poor.” City & Society, 29 (2): 329–348.
Turner, John F.C. 1977. Housing by the People. New York: Pantheon Books.
Verdeil, Éric. 2012. “Michel Écochard in Lebanon and Syria (1956–1968). The Spread
of Modernism, the Building of the Independent States and the Rise of Local
Professionals of Planning.” Planning Perspectives 27 (2): 249–266.
Von Osten, Marion. 2010. “In the Desert of Modernity: Colonial Planning and after:
The Making of an Exhibition.” In Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the PastRebellions for the Future, edited by Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, and
Marion von Osten, 304–313. London: Black Dog.
89
PART IV
Displaying Stories in
the Contact Zone
Figure 1: Installation view, photographs / mixed media, National Museum of
Al Ain / Abu Dhabi, after 1973.
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
Constellations of Memory and
Representation: A Lunar Sample
Display in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi
Abstract This chapter looks at a wall display which was on view since
the 1970s in Abu Dhabi’s first national museum in the oasis town of Al Ain.
Created in the aftermath of the United Arab Emirate’s independence, this
display combined traditional visual topoi of the Arab Peninsula with photographic and material testimonies of modernization and progress. Its historical narrative, presented as an almost ‘Warburgian’ image atlas, thus
comprises a long history ranging from pre-Islamic times to the contemporary age of space exploration. As such, it represents a dynamic constellation of history which goes beyond the binary notions of tradition versus
progress or the ‘global’ versus the ‘local’ which are often prevalent in Orientalist discourses. At the same time, it represents the region’s entanglement
with the fossil-driven economies of the late twentieth century.
Keywords United Arab Emirates, National Museums, Photography,
Orientalism, Space
Troelenberg, Eva-Maria. 2021. “Constellations of Memory and Representation: A Lunar
Sample Display in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by
Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 92–99.
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10409
93
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG
A prominent part of the display in the main hall of the National Museum
of Abu Dhabi in the oasis town of Al Ain consists of a wall featuring
a remarkable mixed-media installation. It combines images of the region
with a moon rock sample collected during NASA’s Apollo 17 mission,
which was conducted shortly after the opening of the museum in the
early 1970s. Wide to the point of being panoramic, the wall that frames
this display invokes a simplified version of traditional local architecture, mirroring the type of façade that can be found in many fortresses
throughout the eastern parts of the Arabian peninsula and in the old
Al Jahili fort of Al Ain, which once had served as a temporary home for the
museum collections. This simple clay-built type of structure is characterized by crenellated exterior walls with protruding towers or buttresses.
In a highly stylized interpretation of such models, the brown- veneer display wall inside the museum is horizontally framed by a cream-colored
dado and top frieze and vertically structured by a symmetrical sequence
of staggered wall sections. This results in a wall composition of upright
rectangular fields graded against each other all in all translating architecture into a picture surface.1 Each of the wall sections features five to
six sizable black-and-white photographs showing landscapes or generic
scenes of everyday life in Abu Dhabi.
According to the short captions written in Arabic and English, the photographs mostly date from the 1960s. In them, seemingly timeless representations of deserts, oases, and camel caravans alternate with obvious
manifestations of modernity or contemporaneity such as infrastructural
facilities (a school, a postal office), or modern means of transportation
(cars and tire tracks in the sand). While not free from nostalgia, the photographs, taken in a reportage-like style, thus go beyond the common tropes
of Orientalist image-making (Nochlin 1983) in that they link traditional
notions to a de facto modern texture of Abu Dhabi.
Despite all efforts, it has been impossible thus far to conclusively identify the author of the photographs.2 Regardless of this, the photo archive
presented on the museum wall is to be considered part of a larger movement characterized by the documentation of changing topographies,
social conditions, and heritage concepts on the Arabian Peninsula. This
movement emerged in the wake of the oil boom and the ensuing economic and cultural changes around the mid-twentieth century. Hence, the
photographs can be seen as an integral part of the visual language of Arab
1
2
94
In terms of method and aesthetics, this mode of presentation appears related to
dioramic display cases such as those in the Hall of Asian Peoples in the Natural
History Museum of New York, opened in 1980, whose effect oscillates between
the neo-Orientalist and the postmodern (Bal 1992).
I thank Westrey Page who tapped a number of important hints and sources
to resolve this issue that, in general, illuminated the cultural genesis of the
museum. The fact that they did not materialize in a clear answer concerning
authorship can be considered exemplary for the problems we often face when
dealing with objects beyond the usual art historical canon with its clear-cut lineages and catalogues raisonées.
CONSTELLATIONS OF MEMORY AND REPRESENTATION
modernity. Both local photographers and travelers were involved in these
photographic endeavors (see e.g. Pitt Rivers Museum 2011; Rashid 1997).
The photographs at the Al Ain museum are a fundamental component of the institution’s narrative: they mirror the decade just before the
opening of the museum in its present state in 1971. The founding of the
National Museum in its current location was taken as a signal for establishing other museums throughout the Arab Emirates and may be considered an important element in the pre-history for the more recent museum
and heritage ‘boom’ in this part of the world (Exell and Rico 2014; Nayadi
2011). It was certainly no accident that the opening of the Al Ain Museum
coincided with the date the Emirates gained independence from British
dominion. The period around the mid-twentieth century leading up to this
caesura was crucial for the modernization of the region (see e.g. Hindelang
2016). The increasing exploitation of fossil fuels and infrastructural investments brought with them an interest in archaeological excavations and
the role of cultural heritage for modern Arab identities—an interest that,
as the example of this museum shows, extends as far back as the preIslamic period (Jahiliyya). The site of Al Ain had primarily gained attention
in this context for being the location of several prehistoric burial mounds.
Consequently, the earliest artefacts in the museum collection are from the
Neolithic period. Yet, as the photographs show, the institution also, from
the outset, looked at contemporary culture and modern means of representation. As Mohammed Amer Al Nayadi, the Director of Historical Environment at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, explains, the
museum holds a large archive of documentary photographs that serve as
a memory device for local traditions and vernacular life (2011, 33)—and
that likely were the source for the wall installation.
What is most interesting about the museum display, however, is that
its narrative does not confine itself to the dichotomy of the global and the
local, tradition and modernization, but goes a decisive step further. At the
center of the wall installation, marking the location where the gateway of
the historical fort it references would be, is a white surface that formally
seems to be both central to and distinct from the entire structure. This surface, framed in dark brown, contains a small display case featuring a basalt
stone sample collected on the Apollo 17 mission. Embedded in a translucid acrylic sphere, the fragment is mounted on a wooden plaque along
with a small flag of the UAE and captions in Arabic and English, which
inform the viewer about the journeys of both objects. The first caption,
referring to the flag, describes the political framework, stating that it “was
carried to the Moon aboard Spacecraft America during the Apollo XVII mission, December 7–19, 1972. Presented to the people of the UNITED ARAB
EMIRATES From the people of the United States of America. RICHARD
NIXON 1973”. The second caption tells us: “This fragment is a portion of
a rock from the Taurus Littrow Valley of the Moon. It is given as a symbol of
the unity of human endeavor and carries with it the hope of the American
people for a world at peace.” The commemorative plaque is one of many:
95
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG
All American states and territories as well as 135 states worldwide received
a fragment of the moon rock mounted, framed and captioned in largely
the same way (Wikipedia 2017; Office of Inspector General 2011, 17).
As hinted at by the date, 1973, this very prominent presentation of the
lunar sample in Al Ain was likely a slightly later addition to the original layout of the museum, deliberately giving the piece pride of place over other
diplomatic gifts. This assumption is further supported by a set of color
photographs surrounding the lunar sample display. Arranged in a pyramid pattern, these include photos of the Apollo 17 crew right next to the
showcase and, above it, images of planets, among them the famous “blue
marble” shot, the first full view of the earth from outer space, taken during
the Apollo 17 mission (Bredekamp 2011). The uppermost row of images,
however, is dedicated to the space shuttle Discovery, specifically to Discovery’s fifth flight in June 1985. The local significance of this mission is made
clear by the central image, the one sitting at the top of the pyramid. It portrays two astronauts in bright blue NASA spacesuits. The two men can be
identified as Sultan Salman al Saud and Abdulmohsem al Bassam. Al Saud
is a member of the Saudi royal family and was the first Muslim astronaut,
while al Bassam was his back-up. Al Saud participated in the Discovery mission as a so-called “payload specialist”. Apart from his responsibilities as
a crew member, he executed experiments and took photographs of the
Arabian Peninsula from the space shuttle, which were then used for scientific purposes (Spacefacts 2016).
It would be interesting to read this historical moment of the first Muslim entering outer space against the long history of astronomy, astrology,
and related traditions in Islamic culture, beginning with the idea of the
meteoric origin of the black stone embedded in the Ka’aba in Mecca, and
the reading of the stars, which both technically and metaphorically was an
important cultural technique in many centers of Islamic civilization since
the middle ages (King 2012). For the purpose of this short essay, however,
I would like to focus on the immediate contemporary frame of reference
provided by the display at the National Museum of Al Ain. As a whole, the
presentation spells out an Arab identity between past, present and future,
or between memory-making and contemporary representation. This identity-building function is reflected in the museum’s motto, written over the
entrance: “Whoever has no past has neither present nor future.” Of course,
this claim attributed to Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyan, emir of Abu Dhabi
and first president of the independent UAE, may seem like your typical
universalist truism that is to be expected from heads of states when asked
to coin a motto for their national museum—just as the peaceful mission
statement linked to the lunar rock sample is a staple of political rhetoric.
However, considering that the museum was founded at a crucial
moment in history when the Arab Emirates gained political independence,
this almost post-Warburgian combination of photo archives on a museum
wall does, in fact, articulate the link between past, present, and future
in a significant way. The Emirates sought to define their position within
96
CONSTELLATIONS OF MEMORY AND REPRESENTATION
a world order increasingly informed by an accelerating economy that was
driven, not least, by the exploitation of fossil fuels, the most important
resource of the region. On a global scale, the expansive, progress-oriented
spirit of the age manifested itself probably most strikingly in the conquest
of outer space, which was not just a technical challenge but also a continuation of the imperial age, a powerful symbol for competing agencies
and power-relations. This is usually described within the framework of
ideological competition on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, where the
achievements of astronautics and space technology were translated into
important cultural codes and signs within rivaling philosophies of history. The generosity NASA exhibits in providing and permitting the use of
images from its lunar missions is, to this day, illustrative of the degree to
which these endeavors were entrenched in the representation of political
agencies and power constellations (àà⏵Constellations) of the late modern
period (Tietenberg and Weddigen 2009, 4).
As our example shows, it is interesting to also consider the positions
in between the two large geopolitical “blocks” that shaped the landscape
before 1989: The museum display from the 1970s–1980s demonstrates
how a rapidly emerging country such as the UAE, with its small and hitherto peripheral and colonized territory, but with enormous economic
potential, defined its place in the world by responding not just to modern
techniques of representation such as museum display and photography,
but also to certain cultural and political codes. In the particular context of
Abu Dhabi, this creates a juxtaposition or combination of two grand narratives, both of them spelled out in a relation between space and time. One
is the traditional notion of the desert, associated with liberty, endlessness
as well as timelessness, and the lure of the seemingly impenetrable (Bevis
2010). Those Orientalist clichés (àà⏵Orientalism) are already challenged,
however, by the black-and-white photographs in the display, which show
deserts and oases as theatres of contemporaneity, connected to the modern world. In this context, the second narrative, the modern penetration
of outer space, is therefore not a counter-narrative, but rather an almost
typological analogy, a more-than-plausible linking of local Arab history to
contemporary world history, and to visions for the future.
The result is not lost in a mere imitation of representational codes and
media—rather, the museum display described above establishes the visual
and iconographic syntax of a contact zone that speaks to the conditions
of local history, its current changes at a particular point in history and its
potentials for the future. As such, it might be considered an example of
resilient identity-building (à⏵Resilience) at the moment of independence.
From today’s point of view, it has become apparent that such a position
was susceptible to the enticements of teleological progressivism. Looking
at the results of the “oil boom” that was to follow, with all its political and
social implications, one might ask when and where ensuing developments
in the Persian Gulf region reached a critical dialectic between resilient
development and hyper-progressive economic growth.
97
EVA-MARIA TROELENBERG
On the whole, this brief case study aimed to provide insight into what
might be understood as a basic constellation of modernity on the path to
globalization: Spelled out between local Arab history and the universalism
of an emerging “world culture,” the narrative of the museum display registers far more than merely a process of “Westernization” through museum
or technology (à⏵East / West). Rather, it testifies to progressive transculturalism as well as the challenges and continuing asymmetries of cultural and
economic globalization.
ORCID®
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5536-9460
Figure
Fig. 1: Photo: Eva-Maria Troelenberg, 2013.
References
Bal, Mieke. 1992. “Telling, Showing, Showing Off.” Critical Inquiry 18 (3): 556–594.
Bevis, Richard. 2010. The Modern Aesthetics of Great Natural Space. Victoria: Trafford
Publishing.
Bredekamp, Horst. 2011. “Blue Marble: der blaue Planet.” In Atlas der Weltbilder,
edited by Christoph Markschies, Steffen Siegel, and Achim Spelten,
366–375. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
Exell, Karen, and Trinidad Rico, eds. 2014. Cultural Heritage in the Arabian Peninsula:
Debates, Discourses and Practices. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge.
Hindelang, Laura. 2016. “Wüstenblume und Falke für Abu Dhabi: Schweizer
Entwürfe einer identitätsstiftenden Architektur der 1970er Jahre.” kritische
berichte 44 (2): 139–152.
King, David A. 2012. Islamic Astronomy and Geography. Aldershot:
Ashgate-Variorum.
Nayadi, Mohammad Amer Mur Al. 2011. “The Al Ain National Museum.” Museum
International 63 (3–4): 26–34.
Nochlin, Linda. 1983. “The Imaginary Orient.” Art in America 71 (5): 119–131,
187–191.
Office of Inspector General. 2011. “NASA’s Management of Moon Rocks and
Other Astromaterials Loaned for Research, Education, and Public Display.”
Accessed June 3, 2017. https://oig.nasa.gov/audits/reports/FY12/IG-12-00.
Pitt Rivers Museum. 2011. “Photographs of Arabia by Wilfred Thesiger: An online
project by the Pitt Rivers Museum.” Accessed June 4, 2017. http://web.prm.
ox.ac.uk/thesiger/.
Rashid, Noor Ali. 1997. The UAE: Visions of Change. Dubai: Emirates Printing Press.
98
CONSTELLATIONS OF MEMORY AND REPRESENTATION
Spacefacts. 2016. “Human Spaceflights.” Accessed June 2, 2017. http://www.
spacefacts.de/mission/english/sts-51g.htm.
Tietenberg, Anette, and Tristan Weddigen. 2009. “Editorial, Planetarische Perspektiven: Bilder der Raumfahrt.” kritische berichte 37 (3): 3–6.
Wikipedia. 2017. “Apollo 17 lunar sample display.” Accessed June 3, 2017. https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_17_lunar_sample_display.
99
Alison Boyd
A Modernist Display at the Barnes
Foundation: Curating Formalism,
Primitivism, and Democracy
Abstract The collector Albert Barnes (1872–1951) put heterogenous
objects—from African sculpture to modernist paintings to utilitarian ironwork—into contact with one another by carefully composing them into art
“ensembles.” This chapter examines three different ways to analyze one
of Barnes’s ensembles. It investigates the explicit ways that Barnes used
aesthetic formalism to bring together objects in his display but, also, the
implicit ways that his ideas about American democracy and primitivism
undergirded the relationships that he structured between not only the objects in his collection but also the people that he brought together in his
galleries.
Keyword Primitivism
Boyd, Alison. 2021. “A Modernist Display at the Barnes Foundation: Curating Formalism,
Primitivism, and Democracy.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria
Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 101–107. Heidelberg Studies
on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/ 10.17885/heiup.766.c10410
101
ALISON BOYD
In the Barnes Foundation galleries in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which
were installed first in Merion, Pennsylvania from 1924–1951 and locked into
place at the collector Albert Barnes’s death, unexpected sets of objects are
arranged in such tight proximity that the viewer must grapple with them
within multiple sets of relations. Barnes understood himself, in a sense, to
be doing work akin to that of an artist as he brought objects together so
that each wall functioned as a carefully arranged composition. Along a wall
in gallery 22, the curve of the elongated neck of a Modigliani female figure
rhymes with the shape of the handle of a nineteenth-century American
ladle hung parallel to it. Two Kota reliquary sculptures, two Bamana masks,
and two small Picasso heads are spaced along the center of the wall, which
draws attention to repetitions in surface patterns across these objects:
From the grid of hatch marks on the painted figures’ noses and cheeks,
to the linear striations that groove the faces of the wooden masks to the
series of embedded almond shapes that delineate the eyes in both the Kota
sculptures and the Picasso paintings. These relations multiply through the
Barnes Foundation’s tightly installed displays as they link across objects
from different times, places, and mediums (à⏵Canon). While Barnes was
arranging the heterogeneous objects he collected, he was simultaneously
bringing unexpected groups of people together in the galleries. The foundation grew out of aesthetic courses that he and his staff taught to his
factory workers in the 1910s—who were primarily African-American men
and white women—and he refused entry to anyone he viewed as elite,
arguing that the foundation was created only for the “common man.” This
entry briefly examines three different modalities by which to analyze how
this display “ensemble” constructs contacts between the objects: Barnes’
explicit use of aesthetic formalism, but also the implicit ways that his ideas
about American democracy and primitivism undergirded the relationships
he structured between both objects and people in this gallery.
Lecturing in the 1920s, Barnes insisted that students analyze the formal similarities, “the merely factual appearances of things,” qualities such
as “color, line, light, and space” of the objects that he had arranged so carefully and intentionally (Barnes 1937, 55). He argued for a purely aesthetic
approach to art that was dominant especially in Anglo-American art criticism
in the early twentieth century, often termed formalism. He emphasized how
this approach to art, supposedly reliant only on the sense of sight, prioritizes
the viewer’s experience in front of art. The gallery discussed here was intentionally designed to be small; this was both to bring the viewer close to the
artworks but also to bring the artworks close to one another. It was not content (a man with a large nose; a sculptural depiction of a face) or art history
(Picasso painted the heads in 1907 and they have been analyzed in terms of
the development of cubism; an artist from the Mbamba group of the Kota
people created the reliquaries either to be part of a shrine or for the tourist market in the late nineteenth, early twentieth century and a sculptural
element of each of them was mounted on wood around 1920) that Barnes
wanted us to see, but similarities in plastic form across his display.
102
A MODERNIST DISPLAY AT THE BARNES FOUNDATION
Figure 1: Barnes Foundation, ensemble view, room 22, south wall, Philadelphia, 2012.
103
ALISON BOYD
The way Barnes placed these objects into contact with one another also
depended, however, on the foundation’s mission to provide democratic
education based on the practices of the pragmatist philosopher, John
Dewey, its first head of education. The displays, therefore, manifest some
of the particular social, cultural, and political dynamics through which those
pragmatic ideas about democracy arose in the United States in the 1920s.
The foundation is most famous for its collection of modern art and
the displays have been criticized for being random or chaotic rather than
offering a coherent concept of modernism, especially in contrast to the
linear mode of display made canonical at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York. Barnes’ solution for a modern and democratic way to display
art, however, depended on there being contingent relationships between
objects, whereby it was the viewer’s job to discover associations between
them. Barnes grafted John Dewey’s philosophy—that to create democratic
citizens you needed to provide an open-ended education based on experiential learning—onto his own formalist aesthetic method. He believed that
a student who “learned how to see” in his galleries could approach all of life
with that same highly attuned critical awareness. According to the mission
statement, the foundation was for “people who are ordinarily considered
to be barred, by their race or station in life, from participation in any but
mechanical and servile activities.” The idea of democratic education was
explicit in the foundation’s program to educate working-class people in
aesthetics with the intention that it would enable them to participate in the
American project not just as laborers but as contributors to “the spiritual
values in civilization” (Mullen 1925).
The promotion of democratic education can also be read more implicitly, however, in how this display itself collapses categories of high and low
art. Hanging a humble iron ladle next to a Modigliani fine arts painting,
a simple metal handle above a carved wooden crucifixion, or a “primitive”
Bamana mask next to a Picasso can be seen as a welcoming gesture to the
“common man” who, like these objects, would rarely elsewhere be found in
an art gallery. Dewey wrote,
Art is ceasing to be connected as exclusively as it was once with
[…] paintings on the walls of the well-to-do. To my mind, one of the
most significant phenomena of the present is recognition that art
reaches into the lives of people at every point; that material wealth
and comfort are in the end a form of poverty save as they are animated by what art and art alone can provide. A necessary part of
this changed attitude is the breaking down of the walls that so long
divided what were called the fine arts from applied and industrial
arts (Dewey 1937, 95).
For Dewey, this new and “revolutionary” experience of art by a wide range
of people required that they learn to engage with a more egalitarian spectrum of objects, such as those in this display.
104
A MODERNIST DISPLAY AT THE BARNES FOUNDATION
A third modality for reading the relationships between objects on this
wall, namely primitivism (⏵Primitivism), is integral to, but also undermines, Barnes’ vision for democracy in this gallery. Like democracy, primitivism was an organizing principle for how Barnes understood both
people and objects to relate. Barnes collected works by primitivist artists
such as those seen here by Modigliani and Picasso. More to the point
though, through his display ensembles he forwarded a theory by which
objects deemed “primitive,” first and primarily African sculpture, could
provide “joy and instruction” for artists and viewers who wanted to understand or create modern art. The foundation’s catalogue, Primitive Negro
Sculpture, which Barnes heavily edited, stated: “By 1907, the European artworld was ready to discover African Sculpture […]. After catching the spell
of its vigorous and seductive rhythms, no artist can return to academic
banalities” (Guillaume and Munro 1926, 130; 134). The display makes the
same argument as the catalogue. 1907 was the year that Picasso painted
the two works found in this gallery, which are framed on the wall and in
the vitrine below them by African sculpture. It was the same year Picasso
famously described himself as being terrified by an encounter with a vitrine of African sculpture at the Trocadero museum. And the same year that
Picasso painted Les Demoiselles D’Avignon, for which these are probably
studies, and which is now widely treated as “the first unequivocal twentieth-century masterpiece, a principal detonator of the modern movement”
(Richardson 1991, 465). The term “discover,” with all of its connotations
of colonial exploration and exploitation, as well as the market savvy of
a good collector, is also significant.1 African sculpture ensconced in this
display was intended to act as proof of the genius of modern artists like
Picasso who “discovered” it and Barnes’ understanding of its significance
to modern art, and as a pedagogical tool for the viewer to be able to have
a similar insight.
The idea that primitive art could provide “joy and instruction,” however,
was not limited to the objects in the collection but also mapped onto how
people at the foundation were understood to relate to one another. Barnes
spoke of his African-American students/workers as aesthetically and spiritually inspiring in terms that paralleled the role he assigned to the African
objects in the collection.
For twenty-five years I worked side by side with a group of Negros
in a chemical laboratory, and I learned that I could depend upon
them to do well what they should do, and I nearly always had the
added aesthetic pleasure of seeing them make a vivid drama out of
the task. If we learn the lesson that the obvious fact needed to give
interest and color to our prosaic civilization is precisely the poetry
1
For a critical analysis of this rhetorical construction in which modern Western
artists “discovered” so-called primitive, folk, or indigenous arts, see Gikandi 2003
and Mitter 2008.
105
ALISON BOYD
and drama which the Negro actually lives every day, it is incredible
that we should not consent to form a working alliance with him for
the development of a richer life […] (Barnes 1936, 386).
Barnes’ paternalistic and demeaning impulse to see African Americans as
“artists in living” (Barnes 1924) who brought color to modern American
society functioned according to the same logic in which Barnes wrote that
African sculpture provided a new “stimulus” and “access to energy” for
modern European art (Barnes and De Mazia 1933, 16); and it reveals a fundamental hierarchy inherent in his notion of democratic education. Both
African Americans as people and African sculpture as objects were treated
as catalysts rather than as equal and equivalent actors at the foundation
(à⏵Agency).
Barnes believed that bringing “primitive” and “folk” arts into relation
with both his modern art collection and his ancient art and old master
paintings would encourage a more open and democratic vision. At the
same time, primitive and folk remained categories that were defined by
and for a narrowly imagined subset of modern Western artists. A lineage
of Western fine arts remained central to the foundation’s narrative even
when Barnes and his colleagues were challenging it. In this way, although
Barnes invited previously marginalized arts into the collection, it was to put
them in the service of a particular Western modern art and vision in ways
that erased their own specificity (⏵Appropriation). Analyzing this ensemble
according to the multiple ways it put objects into contact with one another
can, therefore, also show us the shortcomings of Barnes’ promotion of
democracy and a socially engaged modernism in the 1920s–1940s. His
insistent idealistic assertion of the terms “democracy” and “modernism”
papered over differences in how objects—and by extension people—were
unevenly positioned according to their identities in his own galleries and
the United States more broadly.
Figure
Fig. 1: Photo: © 2020 The Barnes Foundation.
References
Barnes, Albert Coombs. January 25, 1924. Letter to Johnson. Presidents’ Files,
AR.ABC.1924.121. Merion: Barnes Foundation Archive.
———. 1936. “The Art of the American Negro.” In The Barnwell Addresses, edited by
John Louis Haney, 373–386. Philadelphia: The Central High School.
———. 1937. The Art in Painting, 3rd ed. New York: Harcourt.
Barnes, Albert Coombs, and Violette De Mazia. 1933. The Art of Henri Matisse. New
York: Scribners.
106
A MODERNIST DISPLAY AT THE BARNES FOUNDATION
Dewey, John. 1937. “The Educational Function of a Museum of Decorative Arts.”
Chronicle of the Museum for the Arts of Decoration of the Cooper Union, 1:
93–99.
Gikandi, Simon. 2003. “Picasso, Africa, and the Schemata of Difference.” Modernism/modernity, 10 (3): 455–480.
Mullen, Mary. 1925. “The Barnes Foundation: An Experiment in Education.” Journal
of the Barnes Foundation, 1: 1–3.
Mitter, Partha. 2008. “Decentering Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art
from the Periphery.” The Art Bulletin, 90 (4): 531–548.
Guillaume, Paul, and Thomas Munro. 1926. Primitive Negro Sculpture. New York:
Harcourt, Brace & Company.
Richardson, John. 1991. A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy 1881–1906. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf.
107
Figure 1: Installation view of Prehistoric Rock Pictures in Europe and Africa, April 28th
to May 30th, 1937. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Westrey Page
Translating Prehistory:
Empathy and Rock Painting
Facsimiles in the New York
Museum of Modern Art
Abstract Taking the 1937 MoMA exhibition “Prehistoric Rock Pictures in
Europe and Africa” as its starting point, this chapter examines how Alfred H.
Barr’s exhibitionary practice interacted with the cultural theory of German
ethnologist Leo Frobenius to render images of a pluralistic Otherness—
here referring to cultures and people distanced by time, geography, or
both simultaneously—empathetically accessible. This empathetic engagement—both in the galleries and in the translation of rock art in the field—is
investigated as an approximating strategy that has deeper ramifications
for the object in the contact zone.
Keywords Leo Frobenius, Alfred H. Barr, MoMA, Facsimile, Copying,
Prehistoric Rock Painting, Othering, Translation, Empathy
Page, Westrey. 2021. “Translating Prehistory: Empathy and Rock Painting Facsimiles
in the New York Museum of Modern Art.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by
Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 108–115.
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10411
109
WESTREY PAGE
In 1937, the New York Museum of Modern Art exhibited over 150 rock
painting facsimiles 1 produced by field painters accompanying the expeditions of German ethnologist Leo Frobenius (1873–1938). Although similar
copies had been displayed in museums across Europe, this exhibition, entitled “Prehistoric Rock Pictures in Europe and Africa,” 2 had the unique touch
of Alfred H. Barr (1902–1981), the MoMA director at the time. This essay
considers how Barr’s exhibitionary practice interacted with Leo Frobenius’
cultural theory to render images of a pluralistic ‘Otherness’ (à⏵Othering)—
here referring to cultures and people distanced by time, geography, or
both simultaneously—empathetically accessible. This empathetic engagement not only permeated the galleries of the MoMA, but also the translation of rock art in the field, and it emerges as an approximating strategy
that has deeper ramifications for the object in the contact zone.
The art historical cornerstone of Alfred H. Barr’s ‘white cube’ formalism emphasized, as he claimed, the “comparison of various artistic experiences,” which pared down contextualization to enhance aestheticization
(Meyer 2013, 160–162). This photograph illustrates how the 1937 exhibition exemplified this method: With little background information, intimate
lighting, no frames and no copyist attribution, the facsimiles nearly became
the rock walls themselves. The monumental copies shown here were of
paintings in Southern Rhodesia, today Zimbabwe. The Mtoko cave scene—
to the right—exhibits layers of actors and activity, coordinated according
to some inaccessible logic, while the copy from Makumbe on the left seemingly picks up the darkly shaded, compacted cylindrical forms in this ‘procession’ and magnifies them in their own kind of floating sequence. The
black, padded seating before the expansive canvases provided a point to
pause and wonder at these formal properties, enabling the moment to
experience and compare them, as Barr desired, with modernist works.
In coordination with the exhibition, the fourth floor of the MoMA displayed modernist artists—among them Paul Klee, Hans Arp, and Joan
Miró—and Federal Art Project facsimiles of Native American pictographs
from California.3 The sheer vastness of time and space thus placed in dialogue, the ‘artworks’ (or rather their originals) spanning three continents
and 30,000 years, further contributed to the nearly sacred atmosphere of
the galleries. In the opening of the exhibition’s catalogue, Barr wrote of
the “deeper and more general magic” emanating from the facsimiles of
prehistoric art, how they evoked a “familiar atmosphere of antediluvian
first things, a strenuous Eden” (Museum of Modern Art 1937, 9–10). The
copies additionally exuded a Romantic aesthetic, using mixed techniques
1
2
3
To be completely accurate, the images were facsimiles of facsimiles produced by
an assistant shortly before the MoMA show; they were intended to be sold to the
museum after the exhibition. See Kuba 2016.
For more on this exhibition see Seibert 2014, Meyer 2013, and Kuba 2016.
While Douglas C. Fox, Frobenius’ American colleague, did most of the hanging of
images with Dorothy C. Miller, Alfred H. Barr added the modernists and had set
the precedent for this style in previous exhibitions.
110
TRANSLATING PREHISTORY: EMPATHY AND ROCK PAINTING FACSIMILES
to achieve meticulous layers of faded lines, cracks, and scratched surfaces
of the rock walls, congruous with Frobenius’ conception of rock paintings
as energy-laden “monumental ruins” (Frobenius 1921, 124). In underlining
the decontextualized expanse of time and sense of global unity, the exhibition minimized didactic specificity to augment the images’ mystery and
inscriptional flexibility facing an observer’s empathetic gaze.
This malleability also stemmed from the approach towards images
and Otherness developed by Leo Frobenius, whose admirers reflect the
difficulty of placing his work along spectrums of colonizers and seemingly
anti-Eurocentric thinkers of his day. Although this essay cannot thoroughly
review Frobenius and his cultural theory, which he amended and contradicted, the notions of history and culture in his Kulturmorphologie as
experiential entities and the role of images in carrying and simultaneously
preserving the spirit of a culture are central to the analysis of connecting to
Otherness in aestheticized yet emotionally-laden contact zones.
Frobenius held that all cultures are animate organisms, living independent of human intervention and cycling through the same life stages that
its inhabitants do—infancy, young adulthood, and old age. To him, an ideal
cultural researcher intuitively experiences a vast and living spectrum of
feeling, tapping into the same energy that lives in the early stage of every
culture but that subsists like an active sediment, emerging in later stages
and prompting creativity (Kramer 1995, 98–99; Frobenius 1921, 112). In
other words, within Frobenius’ theory, modern subjects stand before
a concept of history that is both perceptually and emotionally accessible
(Stravinaki 2016). A communion is possible through the gateway of the
image, and, indeed, this intimate engagement with the past is desired to
revitalize the ‘mechanistic’ present.
A critical part of this engagement, however, rested in the ‘translation’
(à⏵Translation) of any given art form, which had to capture and preserve
its spirit. In recalling what he once witnessed among the Baluba in Central
Africa, Frobenius observed how good storytellers did not use lifeless ‘literal
translations’ (1921, 20–21). Rather than the story being carried by lexical
units, he saw that it was through evoking the intuitive listener, by engaging
their soulful substance, that the story became alive and, in this sense, comprehensible. In the catalogue to the MoMA exhibition, Frobenius similarly
commented on images:
The fact remains that every picture, whether carved into the rock by
prehistoric man, drawn by a child or painted by a Raphael, is alive
with a certain definite spirit, a spirit with which the facsimile must
be infused. (1937, 19)
Images thus also required a living, intuitive engagement from their ‘translators’. Color photography, though a viable option for recording rock paintings, was rejected as a mode of capturing their essence. While there was
also a practical component to this, Frobenius attacked the ‘mechanistic’ (as
111
WESTREY PAGE
opposed to intuitive) culture he observed in the contemporary Western
world and directly likened photography to a dry and all-too rational tool
for objects that were imbued with a powerful spirit. The predominantly
female copyists working for Frobenius (see Fig. 2) were thus to be precise
but intuitive beholders, approaching images to enliven them once again
through a kind of co-experience.4 Thus, while Barr created a decontextualizing aesthetic space, Frobenius provided translations that re-captured the
‘spirit’ of rock images, which at the same time presupposed an empathetic
engagement as a call to greater comprehension and allowed later viewers
to better bridge Otherness themselves.
Evaluating such an engagement benefits from examining the etymology of ‘empathy’ (à⏵Empathy), as it helps illuminate the politics of connecting with ‘Otherness.’ While German Romantics used the verb form to
denote a harmonious “feeling-into” with nature, the Einfühlung (‘empathy’)
into inanimate objects was theorized in the late nineteenth century notably by Robert Vischer and Theodor Lipps, the latter of whom formulated
the definition of empathy that was first translated into English in 1909.
Lipps identified forms as hosting life themselves and described empathy
as the “objectivated enjoyment of the self”: the ego is taken with the “life
potentiality” that lives in the apperceived object and infuses itself into it
(1906; Mallgrave and Ikonomou 1994, 29). Empathy emerges here as an
ego-driven, imperializing relation to the outside world that engenders
a very particular kind of ‘co-experience.’ 5 Frobenius reflects an affinity for
the holistic connection with nature among Romantics. But even more so,
he epitomizes the common trait to formulations of empathy that Edith
Stein summarized in 1917 as being given the experience of others and
their internal states (Stein 1917, 7). Frobenius’ theory of living, accessible
cultures and his practice of achieving ‘understanding’ of them resonates
with these stations along ‘empathy’s’ etymology in a way that illuminates
its ramifications as an approximating tool. In the context of the facsimiles,
this approach collapsed epistemological distance to objects of prehistory
and enabled inscription into narratives of unity, cultural similarity, or, specifically in Barr’s exhibition, modernism.
The 1937 MoMA show thus conjoined two practices—Barr’s formalism and Frobenius’ empathetic approach to images and culture—in a way
that exposed prehistoric images to appropriative gestures. Their unknowability, furthermore, pronounced in Alfred H. Barr’s formalistic exhibitionary practice, intensified the intuitive, empathetic call to understanding.
4
5
For more on the copyists of Frobenius’ expeditions, including their backgrounds
and particularly the largely female composition of the team, see Seibert 2014;
Kuba 2012; Stappert 2016. For more on Frobenius’ ideas about gender, see
Franzen, Kohl, and Recker 2011, 79; Streck 2014, 170–173.
Although Lipps saw empathy as having a pro-humanity character, Christiane
Voss has argued that the animation or autonomy of the object in his theory
is always dependent on the perceiving beholder. Voss has also used the term
‘imperialistic’ to describe empathy (Voss 2008).
112
TRANSLATING PREHISTORY: EMPATHY AND ROCK PAINTING FACSIMILES
Figure 2: Maria Weyersberg and Elisabeth Mannsfeld copying paintings on Farm
Heldenmoed, South Africa during the Ninth German Inner Africa Expedition (1928–1930).
113
WESTREY PAGE
‘Otherness’ was thus conglomerated in a display of apparent timelessness and soulful communion, complementing Leo Frobenius’ theory of
the accessible, animate spirit of culture and history. These approaches,
read with an eye to ‘empathy’, render images of Others into a malleable
counterpart in the aesthetic exchange, imperialized, in a sense, by the
beholder.
Figures
Fig. 1: Photo: Soichi Sunami. DIGITAL IMAGE © 2019 The Museum of Modern
Art / Scala, Florence.
Fig. 2: © Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt a. M.
References
Franzen, Christoph Johannes, Karl-Heinz Kohl, and Marie-Luise Recker, eds. 2011.
Der Kaiser und sein Forscher: Der Briefwechsel zwischen Wilhelm II. und Leo
Frobenius (1924–1938). Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.
Frobenius, Leo. 1921. Paideuma: Umrisse einer Kultur – und Seelenlehre. Munich: C. H.
Beck.
Kramer, Fritz. 1995. “Einfühlung: Überlegungen zur Geschichte der Ethnologie im
präfaschistischen Deutschland.” In Lebenslust und Fremdenfurcht: Ethnologie im Dritten Reich, edited by Thomas Hauschild, 85–102. Frankfurt a. M.:
Suhrkamp.
Kuba, Richard. 2012. “Porträts Ferner Welten: Expeditionsmalerei in Afrika
zwischen Ethnografie und Kunst.” In Objekt Atlas: Feldforschung im Museum,
ed. Clémentine Deliss, 327–344. Bielefeld: Kerber.
———. 2016. “Leo Frobenius in New York: Felsbilder im Museum of Modern Art.”
In Kunst der Vorzeit: Felsbilder aus der Sammlung Frobenius, edited by KarlHeinz Kohl, Richard Kuba, and Hélène Ivanoff, 186–199. Munich: Prestel.
Lipps, Theodor. 1906. “Einfühlung und Ästhetischer Genuß.” Die Zukunft, 54, January: 100–114.
Mallgrave, Harry Francis, and Eleftherious Ikonomou, eds. 1994. Empathy, Form
and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics, 1873–93. Santa Monica: Getty
Research Institute. 17–29.
Meyer, Richard. 2013. What Was Contemporary Art? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Museum of Modern Art. 1937. Prehistoric rock pictures in Europe and Africa: from
material in the archives of the Research Institute for the Morphology of Civilization. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.
Seibert, E., 2014. “Prähistorische Malerei im Museum of Modern Art in New York
(1937).” kunsttexte, 2. https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/handle/18452/7990.
Stappert, Gisela. 2016. “Die Kunst des Kopierens.” In Kunst der Vorzeit: Felsbilder
aus der Sammlung Frobenius, edited by Karl-Heinz Kohl, Richard Kuba, and
Hélène Ivanoff, 72–88. Munich: Prestel.
114
TRANSLATING PREHISTORY: EMPATHY AND ROCK PAINTING FACSIMILES
Stein, Edith. 1917. Zum Problem der Einfühlung. Halle: Buchhandlung des
Waisenhauses.
Streck, Bernhard. 2014. Leo Frobenius: Afrikaforscher, Ethnologe, Abenteurer.
Frankfurt a. M.: Societäts-Verlag.
Voss, Christiane. 2008. “Einfühlung als Epistemische und Ästhetische Kategorie
bei Hume und Lipps.” In Einfühlung: Zu Geschichte und Gegenwart eines
ästhetischen Konzepts, edited by Robin Curtis, and Gertrud Koch, 37–47.
Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink.
115
Figure 1: Emily Jacir: stazione, 2008–2009, Public intervention on Line 1 vaporetto
stops, Venice, Italy. Commissioned for Palestine c/o Venice, collateral event of the
53rd International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Veneza.
Lea Mönninghoff
A “Non-Existing Existence”
in the Contact Zone: Emily
Jacir’s stazione (2008–2009)
Abstract With discussing the contribution of the artist Emily Jacir for the
53rd Venice Biennale 2009 stazione (2008–2009), this chapter will discuss
the impact of the cancelled intervention and the artist‘s alternative artistic
outcome. Taking the brochure Jacir created in reaction to the cancellation
of her intervention in the urban space of Venice, as an object representing
the narrative of her project, this chapter will discuss both the brochure and
Jacir’s planned artistic intervention with reference to the notion of Venice
as an urban contact zone.
Keywords Cross-cultural Exchange, Cultural Transfer, Emily Jacir, Entangled Histories, Urban Contact Zone
Mönninghoff, Lea. 2021. “A ‘Non-Existing Existence’ in the Contact Zone: Emily Jacir’s
‘stazione’ (2008–2009).” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria
Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 116–122. Heidelberg
Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10412
117
LEA MöNNINGHOFF
stazione is a public intervention which was slated to take place at the 53rd
Venice Biennale.
It was abruptly and unexplainedly cancelled by Venetian municipal authorities and remains unrealized.” This statement written on the wall and the
acrylic display box below it with brochures in Italian, English, and Arabic
(see Fig. 1) are the only objects remaining from Emily Jacir’s artistic intervention stazione (2008–2009).
The brochure is a map of the city of Venice, handed out to visitors in
the “Palestinian Pavilion” during the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009. It guides
interested individuals through the city center of Venice to all the places
where Jacir’s intervention was supposed to have taken place. Arriving at
these places, they will see—nothing. All that is there is the information in
the brochure to explain Jacir’s artistic project. What remains is the lack of
an artwork, a lack that is symbolic of Jacir’s work as part of the first Palestinian participation at the Venice Biennale, the lack representing the act of
cancellation and the map a highly symbolic object of resistance as a subversive artistic response to this. Both are part of the discursive potential
of Venice as a contact zone. It is the “non-existing existence” of the project—a term borrowed from Jean Fisher (see Fisher 2009, 7)—which points
to its non-existence as a result of the cancellation and at the same time
to its existence as a result of the brochure, giving the project its lasting
importance.
Mary Louise Pratt defines contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly
asymmetrical relations of power” (Pratt 1991, 34). stazione, and especially the brochure, are part of this meeting, clashing, and grappling.
Taking the brochure as an object representing the narrative of Jacir’s
project, this essay will discuss both the brochure and Jacir’s planned
artistic intervention with reference to the notion of Venice as an urban
contact zone.
To show how stazione would have worked—and how the brochure still
works—in the contact zone of urban Venice, it is useful to have a closer
look at the artwork itself. There are four dimensions to stazione:
1. The visible result of the Arabic names being added to the various
vaporetto, or waterbus, stops (cancelled before realization).
2. Jacir’s two-year artistic research project about historical cross-cultural exchange between the Arab world, specifically Palestine, and
Venice and its impact today.
3. The text for the catalogue accompanying the Palestine c/o Venice
exhibition, in which Jacir explains the project and presents some of
her research findings.
4. The brochure with the map, which was added after her project was
cancelled by the vaporetto company ACTV, including photographs
of each station with the translations as if they had been realized (see
Fig. 2).
118
A “NON-EXISTING EXISTENCE” IN THE CONTACT ZONE: EMILY JACIR’S STAZIONE (2008–2009)
Figure 2: Emily Jacir: stazione 2008–2009. Public installation on Line 1 vaporetto
stops (S. Marcuola). 2008–2009, digital photograph.
stazione was planned as one of six artistic statements in the exhibition
Palestine c/o Venice curated by Salwa Mikdadi. Jacir’s original intention was
to add translations in Arabic to the Italian names of all vaporetto stops
along Line 1. Line 1 runs through the Grand Canal and passes various monuments whose architecture is exemplary for the cross-cultural exchange
between Venice and the Arab world. The Arabic names would “put them
[the Arabic translations] in direct dialogue with the architecture and urban
design of the surrounding buildings, thereby linking them with various
elements of Venice’s shared heritage with the Arab world” (Jacir 2009, 48).
The artist’s intention was to show and evoke the city’s cross-cultural history (à⏵Entangled Histories) and cultural transfer (à⏵Cultural Transfer) with
the Arab world, specifically Palestine, and to create a space for discussions
about a future connection by emphasizing this “shared heritage.”
Jacir hoped that the Arabic names at the vaporetto stops would have
been the starting point for a new discussion about Palestine’s and Venice’s
“cross-cultural fertilization” (Jacir 2009, 48). Looking at the digitally reconstructed pictures of these stops with the Arabic names included in the
map, one realizes that Jacir’s intervention in this public urban space would
have invoked various associations for visitors (Biennale goers as well as
citizens of Venice and tourists): On the one hand, the Arabic calligraphy
could have appeared as a “mystical” element (Blankenship 2003, 61) pointing to the history of the two regions. On the other hand, they also could
119
LEA MöNNINGHOFF
have functioned as a provocation, as some viewers—and, perhaps, also
some organizers responsible for the cancellation—would have associated
the Arabic signage with anxieties about the effects of contemporary Arab
migration, rather than considering the shared history Jacir was interested
in. Added to specific stops along the Grand Canal, the Arabic translations
would have highlighted specific architectural monuments near these
places, such as the Doge’s Palace, the Ca’ d’Oro, and the Torre dell’Orologio,
which embody the cultural transfer between Venice, the Arab world, and
the Eastern Mediterranean in the fifteenth century. It is beyond the scope
of this article to study these architectural exchanges in depth, but it should
be noted that buildings such as the Ca’ d’Oro, rather than simply adapting “Eastern” architecture, are, in fact, hybrid constructions composed of
individual memories from the trade routes and traveler’s accounts and
resulted in the “layered architectural heritage” of Venice (Wood 2017, 135;
see Howard 2000, 142–146). In addition to highlighting the architectural
exchange, this artistic project also points to exchanges between Palestine
and Venice in the fields of science, medicine, cartography, and philosophy. With Venice having served as the principal port for pilgrims to start
their maritime journey to the “Holy Land”/Palestine since the Middle Ages
(Howard 2000, 190), Jacir presents the city as an important station for
the cross-cultural transfer between these regions. As yet another consequence of the cross-cultural history of Venice and Palestine, the numerous Arabic words that were absorbed into the Venetian dialect (and are
still in use today) serve as evidence of the “multiple, plural, shifting, and
eclectic” boundaries of the Mediterranean linguistic space (Dursteler 2016,
46–47).1 Hence, it is the aspect of language, in particular, that Jacir’s artistic
research relates to the contemporary situation. With more than 246 million speakers, Arabic is the fifth most-spoken language in the world, and
yet Arabic translations at touristic attractions outside the Arabic-speaking
world are a very rare sight, including Venice. By adding the Arabic names
to those very public spots along the Line 1 vaporetto, stazione would have
alluded to this “non-existing existing” language (non-existing in the sense
of not visually existing) in the urban display of Venice. In other words, it
would have referred to the shared history yet at the same time highlighted
the absence of those mutual moments in contemporary Venice. More than
any other aspect of the work, this act of translation could have sparked
provocation and conflict.
This brings me back to the brochure and the map. With the cancellation of the project, the idea of showing the “rich history of cross-cultural
fertilization” (Jacir 2009, 48) between Palestine and Venice in this secular
and reconciliatory way in public urban space remained unrealized. But
1
Due to the vivid exchange between Venice and Palestine, Venetian influence on
Palestinian culture was, of course, also significant. It was a permanent process
of exchange, changes, and appropriation. See for this wider view on the crosscultural history of Venice and various Arabic countries: Wood 2017, 134–141.
120
A “NON-EXISTING EXISTENCE” IN THE CONTACT ZONE: EMILY JACIR’S STAZIONE (2008–2009)
I would argue that, in creating the brochure, Jacir ignored the cancellation
of her project and actually opened up a new space for future discussions—
discussions about cross-cultural exchange in historical, present-day, and
future Venice as a contact zone.
As a guiding tool, a map is always a selective and highly subjective document—which at the same time makes it so effective in allowing the past
to become part of the present of the map user (Woods 1992, 1). Jacir’s
map is going a step further: “And when they [the visitors] arrived [at the
planned places of Jacir’s project], they would discover it wasn’t there, with
my intention being that maybe sometime in the future people will think
it was there, because I created this brochure [suggesting] that it actually
happened, when it didn’t” (Jacir 2015, n.p.).
In creating a map to guide the visitors to the absent artwork, Jacir’s
intention was to create a new fictive past for the unknown future. Even
though the cross-cultural Arabic-Venetian past cannot be part of the present, the map still upholds the idea for the future. The object of the brochure still exists and will exist. Because the brochure was produced, the
space for showing cross-cultural exchanges between Palestine and Venice
also still exists—the map functions as an artifact for this “never-happened
happening” and for the “never-shown shown” presence of Arabic-Venetian
cross-cultural interaction in contemporary Venice.
The map indeed extends this space to allow for a contemporary discussion about cross-cultural exchanges. Representing the “meeting, clashing
and grappling” of the different parties in the contact zone (ACTV, the artist,
the Biennale organizers, etc.), the map will remind viewers in the future of
the “highly asymmetrical relations of power” (Pratt 1991, 34). In this way,
the brochure opens up a space for new discussions and negotiations in the
contact zone of the urban space of Venice today: As a place representing
historical as well as contemporary cross-cultural exchange symbolized by
the “non-existing existing” Arabic translations, and as a place for ongoing
meetings, discussions, and conflicts negotiating the relationship between
the Venetian and Palestinian cultures. The map will be a part of this.
Figures
Fig. 1: © Emily Jacir.
Fig. 2: © Emily Jacir 2009, Courtesy: Emily Jacir.
References
Blankenship, Sherry. 2003. “Cultural Considerations: Arabic Calligraphy and Latin
Typography.” Design Issues 9 (2): 60–63.
Dursteler, Eric R. 2016. “Language and Identity in the Early Modern Mediterranean.” In Mediterranean identities in the Premodern Era: Entrepôts, Islands,
121
LEA MöNNINGHOFF
Empires, edited by John Watkins and Kathryn L. Reyerson, 35–52. London:
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Fisher, Jean. 2009. “Voices in the Singular Plural: ‘Palestine c/o Venice’ and the Intellectual Under Siege.” Third Text 23 (6): 789–801.
Howard, Deborah. 2000. Venice and the East: The Impact of the Islamic world on Venetian Architecture, 1100–1500. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Jacir, Emily. 2009. “stazione, 2008–2009.” In Palestine c/o Venice, edited by Salwa
Mikdadi, 48. Beirut: Mind the gap.
———. 2015. “Artist Emily Jacir Brings the Palestinian Experience to the Venice Biennale.” Interview by Amy Goodman, August 12, 2015. Video
with transcript, 33:35. https://www.democracynow.org/2015/8/12/
artist_emily_jacir_brings_the_palestinian.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1991. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession: 33–40.
Wood, Denis, and John Fels. 1992. The Power of Maps. London: Routledge.
Wood, Paul, Kathleen Christian and Leah Ruth Clark. 2017. “Aspects of Art in
Venice: Encounters with the East.” In European Art and the Wider World,
1350–1550, edited by Kathleen Christian and Leah Ruth Clark, 133–166.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
122
PART V
Figurative Objects,
Trajectories, and
Valuations
Frederika Tevebring
Baubo on the Pig:
Travel across Disciplines
Abstract In the mid-nineteenth century, the Altes Museum in Berlin acquired a small terracotta statuette of a nude woman riding on a pig. Although it is likely from Ptolemaic Egypt, little can be said for certain about
the object—which makes its name, “Baubo,” particularly curious. The object, after all, resembles a character by the same name in Goethe’s Faust.
But was, in this case, Goethe inspired by antiquity, or rather antiquity inspired by Goethe? By untangling Baubo’s modern biography, this chapter
critically illustrates the mutual influences between ancient studies, literature, and collecting in the nineteenth century.
Keywords Faust I Walpurgis Scene, Baubo, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,
James Millingen, Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica
Tevebring, Frederika. 2021. “Baubo on the Pig: Travel across Disciplines.” In Reading
Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and
Anna Sophia Messner, 125–131. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg:
Heidelberg University Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10414
125
FREDERIKA TEVEBRING
In the depot of the Altes Museum in Berlin is a small terracotta statuette
featuring a nude woman riding sidesaddle on a pig. The object is likely
from Hellenistic Egypt, although little can be said with certainty about its
ancient and modern history. It is filed as TC4875 but known as “Baubo on
the Pig,” named after a mythical Greek woman said to have exposed herself to the goddess Demeter. Although the object itself is stored away and
largely forgotten, it continues to exercise an indirect influence in literary
studies and archaeology. A similar pig-riding Baubo appears in Goethe’s
Faust I and the statuette in Berlin has given name to a type of ancient figurines often found in excavations in Egypt. How these modern and ancient
manifestations of Baubo relate to each other, however, is far from obvious.
This brief essay will not attempt to uncover the ancient history of Baubo on
the Pig—despite all efforts, this remains impossible—but rather examine
the object’s modern afterlife and how modern interpretations have come
to be ancient truths. Mapping the influences and associations of Baubo
leads us to the entangled and mutually influential histories (àà⏵Entangled
Histories) of creative and scholarly approaches to antiquity and confronts
us with a possible instance not just of antiquity inspiring poetry but also,
indeed, of modern poetry shaping antiquity.
Baubo on the Pig appears in the museum’s ledger in 1848 where it is
registered as “Baubo.” As is common for objects acquired in the early to
mid-nineteenth century, there is no information about the seller or provenance. The statuette is a mold-made terracotta figure in the form of
a woman, nude save for a veil, riding a pig with her legs spread wide. Her
right hand supports her lifted leg while her left hand holds an unidentified object with vertical slats. Similar squatting figures (with or without
pigs) have been found in Egypt, where Greek craftsmen had introduced
small-scale terracotta production in the fourth century BC. The statuette in
Berlin likely comes from this tradition. The name associates the female figure with a myth first attested by late antique Church Fathers. Claiming to
recount a pagan tradition, Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, and Eusebius
write that Baubo was one of the locals who welcomed Demeter at Eleusis
as the goddess was searching for her abducted daughter Persephone. In
her grief, Demeter refused all offers of food and drink until Baubo eventually managed to cheer her up by lifting her robes and exposing herself.
Today, the museum’s catalogue expresses reservation about the pig rider’s
identity. This is understandable, since the statuette does indeed have little
to do with the myth. Baubo cannot reasonably be naked if she is also lifting
her clothing, and although pigs did play a role in the cult at Eleusis there
are no accounts about them being ridden. More than any ancient account,
the Berlin Baubo recalls a modern literary counterpart, a witch mentioned
in Goethe’s Faust I.
Towards the end of the first part of Faust, Faust and Mephistopheles
travel to the Blocksberg to take part in the annual Walpurgis night fest,
where witches gather to dance with the devil. As they are finding their way
there, they hear the storm of witches gathering to fly to the mountain.
126
BAUBO ON THE PIG: TRAVEL ACROSS DISCIPLINES
Figure 1: Baubo on the Pig. Provenance unknown. Terracotta; 11.8 × 8.5 × 3.5 cm.
Berlin, Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, TC 4875.
127
FREDERIKA TEVEBRING
Witches’ Chorus
The witches ride to Blocksberg’s top,
The stubble is yellow, and green the crop.
They gather on the mountainside,
Sir Urian comes to preside.
We are riding over crag and brink,
The witches fart, the billy goat stinks.
Voice
Old Baubo comes alone right now,
She is riding on a mother sow.
Chorus
Give honor to whom honor’s due!
Dame Baubo, lead our retinue!
A real swine and mother too,
The witches’ crew will follow you.
(Goethe 1808: 3962–3967. Translated by Kaufmann, 1962)
Heading the witches’ procession in Goethe is the venerable Dame Baubo,
riding on a pig. The passage is curious for several reasons. Although
Goethe often incorporates ancient figures in his work, Faust I is firmly
set in a medieval Germanic context. Baubo is an exception, a VIP guest
invited from ancient Greece to lead the party of German witches. Moreover, Goethe wrote the Walpurgis scene in the final years of the eighteenth
century and the first part of Faust was published in 1808, about fifty years
before the terracotta statuette appeared in Berlin. To bridge this time gap,
we must acknowledge at least the possibility that, in this case, Goethe did
not borrow from antiquity but, instead, shaped the interpretation of this
ancient object through his fiction.
The relationship between the Berlin pig rider and Goethe’s witch is
further complicated by the fact that neither resembles ancient accounts
of Baubo. This riddle, however, has not been much cause for concern in
Goethe scholarship (the exception being Otto Kern who, like me, cannot offer a conclusive explanation of which Baubo inspired which; Kern
1897). Commentaries on Faust treat Baubo as one of the many Greek
figures borrowed by Goethe. The explanations consistently stress her
association with sexuality. It is explained, for example, that Baubo is, “a
bawdy nurse and ‘personified vulva’” (Schöne 1994, 349), a “Greek goddess of a phallic cult” (Swanwick 2013), or “a form of personification of the
vulva as a symbol of fertility” (von Wilpert 1998). The notion that Baubo is
a personified vulva, however, does not fit with the ancient accounts. Yet
this characterization is derived, via a detour, from the Berlin pig rider and
Goethe’s text.
The Berlin statuette is first mentioned in an 1843 article by James
Millingen. Millingen was a Dutch-British citizen who had settled in Italy
128
BAUBO ON THE PIG: TRAVEL ACROSS DISCIPLINES
after a career in banking in France. In Italy, he began collecting and publishing antiquities, some of which he sold to museums in northern Europe.
There is no mention of the statuette before this article and Millingen’s
argument for why it should be identified as Baubo gives the clear impression that this had not been suggested previously. This, together with the
fact that Millingen was well connected with the Berlin museum establishment, makes it likely that Millingen not only sold the statuette to Berlin
himself but also named it. Millingen’s argument for why the statuette
depicts Baubo is circular and relies on unsupported assumptions about
the cult at Eleusis. His argument revolves around the unidentified object
in the woman’s left hand. Millingen identifies it as a comb, reminding
the reader that the Greek word for comb, κτείς, like the corresponding
Latin word pectin, was used as a euphemism for the female genitalia.
The object, he suggests, is a symbolic vagina and, therefore, this statuette proves that such an object was displayed at the Eleusinian mysteries in reference to Baubo’s meeting with Demeter. Together with the
obscene posture, he concludes, the symbolic vulva identifies the figure
as Baubo. It also—and this is where Millingen’s argument becomes circular—reveals that Baubo was represented as a vulva at Eleusis. Being
the seller of the object, Millingen would have had ulterior motives for
holding the object up as a key to the rituals at Eleusis and his argument
has been refuted at least since the early twentieth century (for example,
by Perdrizet). More than any ancient narrative about Baubo, Millingen’s
Baubo recalls Goethe’s Faust, a work that Millingen, who moved in the
circles of German intellectuals surrounding Goethe himself, was most
certainly familiar with.
The similarities between Goethe’s and Millingen’s Baubo and the holes
in Millingen’s argument make it likely that Millingen recognized Goethe’s
Baubo, rather than any ancient figure from the myths surrounding Eleusis,
in the pig rider. Yet despite being incorrect, Millingen’s article has had
a lasting impact that continues to this day. The statuette in Berlin is still
known as Baubo and, even more important, following the publication of
it by Millingen, “Baubo” has become a label denoting a large group of
ancient statuettes. These so-called “Baubos” are small figurines in the form
of female figures squatting or spreading their legs and gesturing towards
their vulva. They are often found in archaeological excavations and mostly
date back to Ptolemaic Egypt (similar ones have also been discovered
across the Mediterranean, above all in southern Italy). Their findspots are
either unknown or too general to allow conclusive or general arguments
about their function: living spaces, rubbish heaps, and occasionally graves.
While there is no reason to believe that these objects were known as Baubo
in antiquity, they continue to be denoted as Baubo figurines in excavation
reports and museum catalogues. Yet since it is agreed that they do not
depict a mythical figure named Baubo, the label is deployed as a conscious
misnomer, often applied with reservations expressed in square brackets or
prefaced by “so-called.” In the case of these objects, “Baubo” is not a name
129
FREDERIKA TEVEBRING
denoting a mythical figure, but a label identifying a certain iconographical
type. This type, however, is not clearly defined. Similar Egyptian figures
show squatting clothed females or naked males, but the label “Baubo” is
reserved for those figures that gesture towards or otherwise are considered to draw attention to their vulva. The label identifies these figurines as
a discrete type and has solidified the association between the name Baubo
and the vulva. Thus, Millingen’s argument is repeated, even though his
conclusion has been rejected.
Millingen’s name for the pig rider has become an iconographic label
defined by the sexual gesture. The ubiquity of these “Baubo figurines” and
their interpretation has been so influential that the name Baubo is often
explained as a personification of the vulva rather than as a reference to
an ancient mythical narrative. This is the ancient Baubo described in commentaries to Goethe’s Faust, but it now becomes clear that Goethe, in fact,
helped fabricate the ancient tradition that the commentaries uncritically
infer he borrowed from. While the commentaries assume a linear relation
of influence, a past uncovered by ancient scholars and borrowed from by
art, a closer look reveals a more complex relationship that is circular rather
than linear. Goethe creates Baubo as much as he borrows her.
Goethe’s and Millingen’s roles in shaping the associations linked to the
name Baubo have been largely forgotten. This is in part because their contributions are not considered scholarship: Goethe’s use of Baubo is fictional
and Millingen’s misidentification is attributed to him being a “mere” collector and autodidact. Their work does not fit into a narrative of increased
understanding of the past. However, as this brief outline of Baubo’s modern history shows, the interdependencies between investigating and
shaping the past are rarely linear. This was especially true in the early nineteenth century, when academic fields as we know them today were still
taking shape and the methods of, and rationales for, knowing the ancient
past were being negotiated between art and scholarship. This symbiotic
relationship was reflected in the first international archaeological society,
the Instituto di corrispondenza archeologica in Rome, of which Millingen
was one of the founding members and Goethe an honorary member. The
institute would develop into the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), but
at its inception it included artists and collectors alongside renowned philologists and archaeologists such as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Eduard
Gerhard.
Today, the instituto’s efforts to bring together scholarly and creative
approaches to antiquity might be labeled cross-disciplinary, but for the
members of the early institute, understanding ancient culture was inherently a creative endeavor. To the generations of Goethe and Millingen, the
objective of studying the past was to shape the present and future culture.
This necessarily involved not just objective knowledge of antiquity, but
also a creative shaping of it. The Berlin research group Transformationen
der Antike (SFB 644) has coined the term Allelopoiesis (àà⏵Allelopoiesis) to
describe the process by which modernity and antiquity define each other.
130
BAUBO ON THE PIG: TRAVEL ACROSS DISCIPLINES
For Goethe, and to some extent also for Millingen, the active process of
selecting and shaping the ancient referent was seen as inherent to the
engagement with the ancient past. Baubo on the Pig stands in the contact
zone (àà⏵Expanded Contact Zone) between various disciplines as we understand them today and tracing the object’s history takes us back to their
intertwined and interdependent histories.
Figure
Fig. 1: © Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz. Photo: Johannes Laurentius.
References
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1808. Faust. Translated by Walter Kaufmann, 1962. New
York: Anchor.
———. 1808. Faust, Part One. Translated by Anna Swanwick, 2013. North
Chelmsford: Courier Corporation.
Kern, Otto. 1897. “Baubo in der Walpurgisnacht.” Goethe-Jahrbuch, 18: 271–273.
Millingen, J. 1843. “Baubo.” Annali dell’instituto di corrispondenza archeologica xv:
72–97, pl. E.
Schöne, Albrecht. 1994. Johann Wolfgang Goethe: “Faust,” Kommentare. Frankfurt
a. M.: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag.
von Wilpert, Gero. 1998. “Baubo.” Goethe-Lexikon, 80. Stuttgart: Kröner.
131
Figure 1: This clipping from The Illustrated London News (August 7th, 1897, p. 194)
shows a pair of leopards, 50 × 79 × 15 cm and 49 × 77 × 14 cm, respectively.
Felicity Bodenstein
The Global Market Trajectories
of Two Brass Leopards from
Benin City (1897–1953)
Abstract The art market trajectory of these two brass leopards, looted in
Benin in 1897, illustrates the relationship between processes of commodification and changes in the narratives about African art; processes that are
often visualized in the readily communicating circuits of commercial galleries and museum exhibitions. Read in direct relationship to their successive
displacements, the price history of these objects attests to the stark economic asymmetries, as well as to the difference of their cultural meaning,
between the place from which the piece originated and the place where it
is today and to the long history of enrichment that such objects provide
through their commodification.
Keywords Benin City, Leopards, Benin Bronzes, Art market, Provenance,
Resale
Bodenstein, Felicity. 2021. “The Global Market Trajectories of Two Brass Leopards from
Benin City (1897–1953).” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 132–139. Heidelberg Studies on
Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10415
133
FELICITY BODENSTEIN
The invasion of Benin City, referred to in British sources as the “punitive
expedition” of 1897, was largely motivated by the ambitions of British colonial administrators to expand their control over the trade routes going
through the Edo territory that was ruled over by the Oba Ovonramwen
(ca. 1857–1914). It deeply transformed the longstanding trade relationships that had existed between that area and Europe since 1486 and the
arrival of the first Portuguese explorers (Igbafe 1979; Home 1982). It also
led to the commodification (à⏵Commodification) of a very specific group of
objects related to the royal house of Benin City and its guilds. Reception
histories have tended to focus on the writings of critics and on such admittedly central figures as Felix von Luschan for their role in evaluating these
objects, but there is another evaluation process that is explicitly related to
the market and its actors, one that can be read in the biography of the pair
of brass leopards represented in this image.
The objects, produced at the court of Benin (and that continue to be
produced today) were an intrinsic part of the cult of ancestors and the decoration of the palace and chiefs’ homes, and in absence of written documents served to chronicle the history of the kingdom. The “Benin bronzes”
were virtually unknown in Europe at the time of the events of 1897; yet
British administrators who had regularly visited the court, notably to negotiate the 1892 trade agreement that lead to the conflicts of 1897, knew of
the ample existence of these pieces in brass and ivory.
The history and conditions of their dispersal after the events of February 1897 are as famous as they are lacunary due to the absence of
exhaustive lists of what was taken, a fact that has led to the proliferation
of estimate figures that have constantly risen since, ranging from 2,400 to
10,000. The objects were divided into official and unofficial loot or booty.
Part of this was sold in bulk, the other part left in Benin in the personal baggage of expedition members (Bodenstein 2020). Several dealers of ethnografica specialized in the resale of pieces that they acquired from individual
officers and civil members of the expedition. Here we will follow the case
of two of these objects, a pair of brass leopards, in order to understand the
kinds of lives these royal antiquities came to lead as commodities on the
Western art market.
The first available image of the objects whose trajectory we will follow
from Benin City, to Paris, New York, and all the way back to Lagos appeared
in The Illustrated London News of August 7, 1897, to report on the “Spoils of
Benin.” It features a large pair of brass leopards placed on either side of
a male bronze head. The caption reads:
These are thought to be symbolic objects connected with the hideous sacrificial rites of Benin, and are of especial interest owing to
the strong traces of Egyptian influence in their workmanship, testifying to a civilisation far older than the Portuguese colonisation of
the country three centuries ago (The Illustrated News, 1897).
134
THE GLOBAL MARKET TRAJECTORIES OF TWO BRASS LEOPARDS FROM BENIN CITY (1897–1953)
Gisela Völger explains the ties between leopards and sacrificial practice as
related to the fact that many aquamaniles used for cleansing purposes in
ritual contexts took the form of leopards (Plankensteiner 2007, 279–280).
This pair are not however aquamaniles but representations of power. The
photo with its caption is exemplary of common public discourse surrounding the objects; the issue of human sacrifice, in particular, was indeed generally used as a larger justification for the military actions taken against
the town and its inhabitants. Similar brass leopards were sold in relation
to this sacrificial narrative, and in one account of sales at the auction house
of Henry Steven’s one can read: “Three pounds bought the two leopards
between which the victim had to lay his head – at the time of the capture of
the city they were wet with human blood” (Allingham 1924, 185). In terms of
finishing and detail, the leopards illustrated here are generally considered
to be two of the finest of the bronze leopards taken in 1897 (at least twenty
such bronzes exist in collections today) and would doubtlessly have initially
been sold for a higher price than the ones quoted from the Steven’s sale.
The Illustrated News article identifies the leopards as the property of Matthew Hale of Hale & Son and they were sold for the first time by their auction
house on the 18th of August 1897 for the price of £ 53 (Hale & Son 1897, 7).
The pair was sold again in 1930 by the French art dealer Charles Ratton
for £ 700 (approx. $ 3,400) at the sale of George W. Neville’s collection at
Foster’s auction house in London (Fosters 1930, 9; see Fig. 2); Neville had
accompanied the Benin Expedition (Coombes 1994, 31). It is interesting
that the leopards went from Hale & Son to the private collection of Neville
as it is often assumed that he had himself brought the object back, yet
the case of the leopards proves that members of the expedition sometimes augmented their collection of trophies after their return to Britain.
A rare photograph of Neville’s sitting room shows the leopards on either
side of an amply decorated fireplace, with a wall plaque that was also later
bought by Ratton and that had a long and illustrious career on the art
market before being bought by the Musée de quai Branly in 2002 (Inv.
70.2002.4.1).
The leopards were part of a wave of acquisitions made by Charles
Ratton (1895–1986) and his colleague Louis Carré (1897–1977) who seized
upon the opportunity of sales provided by a downturn in the economic situation of the British upper class to acquire large numbers of Benin pieces,
which had until then remained in private hands. Georges-Henri Rivière
(1897–1985), employed at the Musée d’ethnographie du Trocadéro (the
future Musée de l’Homme) since 1928, accompanied Ratton on more than
one occasion, buying and then donating to the museum. It was Rivière
who developed the idea of inviting Ratton (Laurière 2008, 398) to organize
an exhibition that was set to be the first in a series of prestigious temporary events designed to bring new life to the Trocadéro Museum which had
been in decline for some decades.
Planned to last for two months, the exhibition “Royal Bronzes and Ivories of Benin” was prolonged due to its success and the leopards were
135
FELICITY BODENSTEIN
Figure 2: A Catalogue of the Highly Important Bronzes, Ivory, and Wood Carvings from
the Walled City of Benin, West Africa, Forming the Collection of the Late G. W. Neville,
Esq., of Weybridge, a member of the Benin Punitive Expedition, who himself removed
them after the capture of the City in 1897.
the most prominently placed pieces in the exhibition, majestically framing the exhibition entrance, echoing the manner in which their protective
and symbolic power would have been harnessed to frame a royal altar
or the entrance of an important building in Benin City. On this occasion,
they were insured for 100,000 francs each, which was equivalent at the
time to £ 1600 for both1, more than twice their recent acquisition price.
Judging by the press illustrations, they were clearly the focal points of the
1932 show, and though they stayed in Ratton’s possession until 1935, they
did not leave the Trocadéro immediately after the exhibition. He left them
on loan there for the section on West Africa and he also allowed them to
be presented at other exhibitions such as “L’art animalier rétrospectif” (A
History of Animals in Art) held at the Musée d’histoire naturelle in 1934.2
In 1935, they joined Ratton’s collection that went on a prestigious tour in
the United States where they were exhibited at the Pierre Matisse Gallery
and the Museum of Modern Art, insured by this point for £ 14,000. In 1936,
Louis Carré, a close colleague of Ratton, bought them both for the “special
1
2
All of the historical currency conversions have been made using the calculator
of: http://www.historicalstatistics.org/.
Archives du Musée d’histoire naturelle, correspondance Ratton 2 AM1 K81 d.
136
THE GLOBAL MARKET TRAJECTORIES OF TWO BRASS LEOPARDS FROM BENIN CITY (1897–1953)
price” of 80,000 francs (Paudrat 2007, 242); the equivalent of ca. £ 1000 in
1936, this price indicates that Ratton’s gains were indeed only quite marginal in this instance, suggesting that the exchange may have been part of
a larger financial arrangement between Carré and Ratton.
Carré’s archive provides quite a diverse set of documents more generally dedicated to the subject matter of leopards. Sent to him in New York by
an assistant in 1949, those documents provide a sense of how he developed
the marketing strategy for this pair in particular.3 His description of Ratton’s
leopards as “a pair of exceptional beauty” was supported by all kinds of
images relating to the representation of such felines, including an article
from the New York Herald on “Cheetah Racing”, and animal photography
of trained leopards. These images possibly served Carré’s arguments on
the particular naturalism of these figures and on the history of the interactions between leopards and humans. The accompanying text notes: “The
taste for wild beasts has always been very highly developed in the princely
courts of all times.” Its main argument was to draw the distinction between
the symbolic importance of the representation of the panther versus the
leopard, the latter being an animal that could be much more easily tamed.
Man’s power over such a wild animal is described as a measure of civilization. Carré uses this argument to distinguish Benin culture from notions of
the “primitive” (à⏵Primitivism). By comparing the importance of the leopard
in Benin culture to that of its role in all major antique civilizations, he places
Benin art on an equal footing with Persia, Greece, and Rome (à⏵Masterpiece). In particular he emphasizes the unicity of these pieces:
The twin leopards of the Louis Carré collection are the most important pieces known to have come from the Royal Palace of the city of
Benin, destroyed in 1897. […] These bronze leopards are unique in
Benin art as well as in the whole history of art. Such sculptures of
leopards have never been found elsewhere (Carré 1948).
In 1952, Carré sold them to the colonial institution in Lagos that would
later become the National Museum. The acquisitions register shows that
the purchase was made from the Louis Carré Gallery, New York for a total
of £ 7,133 for both. This was by far the most expensive acquisition made in
prevision of the creation of one of Nigeria’s first national museums, driven
mainly by the initiative of Kenneth C. Murray, Edward Harland Duckworth,
and Bernard Fagg (Hellman 2014), who created a general service of Nigerian antiquities in 1943. The establishment of the museum’s collections
was based on important efforts to collect material inside of Nigeria, but
also and in particular to buy back objects taken from Benin City in 1897.
Murray’s Draft Notes for a History of the Museum, conserved in the archives
3
Carré, Louis. 1948, typed document entitled “The Twin Benin Bronze Leopards.”
Fonds Louis Carré, DA001294/63817, Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac,
Paris.
137
FELICITY BODENSTEIN
of the National Museum in Lagos attest to the many financial negotiations
that he undertook in order to allow for these acquisitions to be made; the
price of the leopards was equivalent to more than the budget of £ 5,000
that he had initially negotiated for the construction of the whole museum.
This unrealistic figure—that fortunately rose to about £ 100,000 for the
overall cost of the museum—gives a sense of the value of the leopards in
the context of the financial constraints in developing a national collection
in Nigeria at this time. They were rapidly considered as some of the most
important pieces in the museum when it opened its doors in 1957 (Nigeria
and Federal Ministry of Research and Information 1959, 26).
Each step is accompanied by a considerable gain in commercial value.
Today the leopards are among the objects that the National Museum
in Lagos lends regularly to major international exhibitions on African
art, despite the fact that it rarely, if ever, receives such loans in return
(à⏵Heritage, à⏵Return). Benin City, and its national museum some three
hundred kilometers from Lagos, did not benefit from the wave of acquisitions made in the 1950s, as priority was given to the museum situated in
the colonial capital. The trajectory of these pieces illustrates the relationship between processes of commodification and the evolution of narratives about African art; processes that are often visualized in the readily
communicating circuits of commercial galleries and museum exhibitions.
Read in direct relationship to their successive displacements, the price history of these objects attests to the stark economic asymmetries, as well as
to the difference of their cultural meaning, between the place from which
the piece originated and the place where it is today and to the long history
of enrichment that such objects provide through their commodification.
Figures
Fig. 1: Lagos: National Museum, inv. nos. 52.13.1 and 52.13.2.
Fig. 2: Messr. Foster, Thursday May 1st, 1930, Lot 50, description, p. 9.
References
Allingham, Emily Grace. 1924. A Romance of the Rostrum. London: Witherby & Co.
Anonymous. 1897. “Spoils from Benin.” The Illustrated News, August 7: n.p.
Bodenstein, Felicity. 2020. “Une typologie des prises de butin à benin city en février
1897.” Monde(s) 17 (1): 57–77.
Carré, Louis. 1948. Typed document entitled “The Twin Benin Bronze Leopards.”
Fonds Louis Carré, DA001294/63817, Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac,
Paris.
Coombes, Annie E. 1994. Reinventing Africa: Museums, Material Culture, and Popular
Imagination in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. New Haven: Yale University Press.
138
THE GLOBAL MARKET TRAJECTORIES OF TWO BRASS LEOPARDS FROM BENIN CITY (1897–1953)
Foster & Son. 1930. A Catalogue of the Highly Important Bronzes, Ivory, and Wood
Carvings from the Walled City of Benin, West Africa, Forming the Collection of
the Late G. W. Neville, Esq., of Weybridge, to be auctioned at the Galleries, 54,
Pall Mall, Thursday May 1st, 1930. London: s.n.
Hale & Son. 1897. Catalogue of a Collection of Carved Ivory Tusks and Metal Idol, Bell,
&c., (Captured at the Fall of Benin City), And Supposed to be Some Thousands of
Years Old, to be Sold by Auction on 18th of August 1897. London.
Hellman, Amanda H. 2014. “The Grounds for Museological Experiments: Developing the Colonial Museum Project in British Nigeria.” Journal of Curatorial
Studies, 3 (1): 74–96.
Home, Robert. 1982. City of Blood Revisited: A New Look at the Benin Expedition of
1897. London: R. Collings.
Igbafe, Philip Aigbona. 1979. Benin under British Administration: The Impact of Colonial Rule on an African Kingdom, 1897–1938. New Jersey: Humanities Press.
Laurière, Christine. 2008. Paul Rivet: le savant & le politique, Paris: Publications scientifiques du Musée national d’histoire naturelle.
M’Bow, Babacar, and Ọsẹmwegie Ẹbọhọn. 2005. Benin, a Kingdom in Bronze, Fort
Lauderdale: African American Research Library and Cultural Center.
Nigeria and Federal Ministry of Research and Information. 1959. Preserving the
Past: A Short Description of the Museum of Nigerian Antiquities. Lagos: Information Division, Federal Ministry of Research and Information.
Paudrat, Jean-Louis. 2007. “Notes historiographiques sur la diffusion de l’art palatial de Bénin en France et aux États-Unis entre 1930 et 1945.” In Bénin:
Cinq siècles d’art royal, edited by Barbara Plankensteiner, 235–246. Ghent:
Snoeck.
Plankensteiner, Barbara, ed. 2007. Benin Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria,
Ghent: Snoeck.
Ratton, Charles. 1934. Manuscript Letter to Georges-Henri Rivière, Correspondance
Ratton, 2 AM1 K81 d, Archives du Musée d’histoire naturelle, Paris.
139
Figure 1: Akati Ekplékendo: Gou, ca. 1858. Iron, wood, h. 165 cm.
Paris, Pavillon des Sessions, Louvre.
Kerstin Schankweiler
Double Trophy: Gou by
Akati Ekplékendo
Abstract The unique life-size figure, discussed in this chapter, represents
the Vodun divinity Gou, the god of iron, smithing, and war of the Fon people. It was attributed to Akati Ekplékendo, an artist from Doumé (today in
the Republic of Benin) who was enslaved and brought to the royal court of
Dahomey around 1860. In 1894 it was stolen and brought to France. Today
it is exhibited in the Louvre in Paris. The Gou figure will be considered as
an example of a transcultural art history on three levels: 1. The materiality
that was used to create it; 2. Its context of production and usage; 3. Its
canonization in museums in France.
Keywords Akati Ekplékendo, Gou, 19th Century African Art, Dahomey,
Royal Arts, Transcultural Art History, Récupération
Schankweiler, Kerstin. 2021. “Double Trophy: ‘Gou’ by Akati Ekplékendo.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna
Sophia Messner, 140–147. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg:
Heidelberg University Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10416
141
KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER
This unique life-size figure represents the Vodun divinity Gou, the god
of iron, smithing, and war of the Fon people. It was attributed to Akati
Ekplékendo, an artist from Doumé (today in the Republic of Benin) who
was enslaved and brought to the royal court of Dahomey around 1860.
The Dahomey kingdom had its center in Abomey and was founded in
the seventeenth century. It existed until the end of the nineteenth century, when the French colonized it. The research of Suzanne Preston Blier
concluded that the Gou figure had been commissioned by King Glèlè
(1859–1889) in tribute to his father, King Guezo (1818–1858) (Blier 1990).
Recent research, however, is convinced that King Glèlè seized not only the
statue but also its sculptor Akati Ekplékendo from Doumé during a military
intervention around 1860. King Guezo had already unsuccessfully tried to
conquer Doumé to the northwest of his kingdom’s capital, Abomey. Later,
King Glèlè’s diviner explained that the magical power of Gou protected
Doumé, which is why the king became interested in the figure and its creator. The sovereign then sent spies to learn about the statue in order to
be able to seize it and protect himself from his own enemies (Biton 1994;
Beaujean-Baltzer 2007).
After introducing the Gou figure and describing its function within the
royal court of Dahomey, the object will be considered as an example of
a transcultural art history on three levels: 1. The materiality that was used
to create it; 2. Its context of production and usage; 3. Its canonization in
museums in France.
The life-size figure represents a striding man wearing a royal war tunic
(called kansa wu in Fon, Blier 1990, 49). It stands with oversized bare feet
on a thin plate that serves as a base for the figure. Thin legs and raised,
bent arms emerge from its voluminous garment. The figure holds a royal
ceremonial sword in its right hand and a rounded gong or a bell in the left.
The face is reduced to essential features and appears not so much warlike
as peaceful; with its eyes closed, it seems introversive. The figure wears
a type of crown on his head that consists of a slightly skewed round plate
with various objects attached to it. Hanging down from its center is a chain
with a cylindrical bell at its end. Metal objects en miniature decorate the
crown and characterize the god: weapons, tools, and iron icons (described
in detail by Adandé et al. 1999). This presentation of miniatures is reminiscent of the so-called asen that served as memorials for the deceased in Fon
culture (Blier 1990). Asen include iconic miniatures, sometimes figurative
depictions or small scenes characterizing and symbolizing the ancestors.
In family shrines, asen were often grouped (together with empowerment
figures, so-called bocio), and this form of ancestral worship was also
practiced at the royal palace. The same room where the Gou figure was
installed also included an asen in memory of the Dahomey troops killed in
battle (Blier 1990, 49).
Not much is known about the function of this figure. The sculpture can
be read as a bocio, since offerings were made in front of it before battles
to release power or to restrain forces of danger and evil. It was very likely
142
DOUBLE TROPHY: GOU BY AKATI EKPLÉKENDO
made to be moved, because it is not massive. The iron plate of its garment
is very thin and rests on an inner support structure (See Delafosse 1894
and Adandé et al. 1999 for detailed drawings). It probably was brought to
the battlefield during war and placed on a hill. It is said to have shouted
“Watch out!” whenever danger approached (which is why it was referred
to as agojie, meaning “watch out above”) (Blier 1998, 117). The bell on the
chain suggests that there was also an acoustic aspect to it, and it is even
possible that the bell was supposed to hit the figure’s garment, which itself
has a bell-like shape. This feature points to the psychological importance
of noise in battle. The performative aspect of ‘sculpture’ in the arts of Africa
is particularly interesting and important, yet often ignored in presentations in Western Museums.
Interestingly, the sculpture is forged from scrap metal of European origin: Old steel plates from ships, rails (Beaujean-Baltzer 2007), and, presumably, slave chains. It is a particularly early example of recycling in the arts.
The artist has combined a variety of techniques: forging and hammering of
metal parts as well as nailing, spiking, and riveting. The material in which
artists worked defined their social status in society, as there was a hierarchy of materials. Iron played an important role for royal iconographies.
For some of the kingdoms in central Africa, it has been proved that smiths
enjoyed the highest prestige and were so highly respected that even kings
claimed to have descended from smiths or, at least, been capable of forging
(Vansina 1984, 51). Iron mining and ironworking in Africa is documented
throughout its history, but starting in the seventeenth century, iron imports
became relevant in the coastal areas. The Gou figure may also indicate the
growing import of cheap scrap metal from Europe in the colonial era.
What is fascinating about the object is that slave chains were used to
make it. The collar of the tunic’s upper part is reminiscent of a neck ring
used in slave trade. During the heyday of the slave trade (local as well as
transatlantic), the main goal of military conflicts was to capture as many
people as possible and sell them to slave traders. The linking of slave
chains to the God of War thus seems quite fitting.
To this day, recycling in the arts plays a significant role in the Benin art
scene (Adandé et al. 1999). Contemporary Benin artists such as the Dakpogan brothers (Théodore, b. 1956 and Calixte, b. 1958) link their work
to the royal blacksmith tradition (in the city of Porto-Novo) and retain the
close connection between forging and recycling. This artistic approach
in contemporary art from Africa is called récup-art (art de la récupération),
describing the practice of re-using found and used objects (mostly from
‘foreign’ sources) in sculptures, assemblages, or installations—a practice
not confined to Benin (see Harney 2004; Kart 2013). The notion of récupération means recovery or recycling and indicates processes of appropriation (à⏵Appropriation) for one’s own purposes, with a witty, often ironic
touch added to it. It underscores the creative and functional capabilities
of objects as well as the often transcultural history or biography inscribed
into them.
143
KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER
Remarkably enough, the adaption and appropriation of ‘foreign’ materials and their reference to a (mostly oppressive) history of exchange
between Europe and West Africa already played a role in the arts of the
mid-nineteenth century.
Récupération generally signifies a cultural technique of everyday life
that is widespread in African societies and the source of an informal economy that is of eminent social importance. Often, this concerns consumer
articles that flood the African market after having been dropped from
the economic cycle of affluent industrialized countries (à⏵North / South).
These items are creatively transformed and repurposed. Used in this way,
such materials, unlike industrially recycled materials that are turned into
smooth, clean, and ‘faceless’ raw material, tell stories of their provenance,
mobility, journey, or previous use.
In retrospect, the aesthetic quality of the Gou figure is that of récupération, even though this concept was not yet articulated in the nineteenth
century. The piece has a fragmentary and assembled character. The materials used are partly left in their original form (like the chain, screws, bolts,
and nuts). The function of the reutilized objects is not limited to their
material aspect, but also includes their iconic implications. This allows
for a two-pronged interpretation: the scrap metal of European origin was
without doubt used for pragmatic and economic reasons, but at the time
its use was also relevant to warfare and the negotiation of power relations.
By appropriating this material, the kingdom could show that they had
far-reaching trade ties and were connected to commodity cycles at a time
of beginning globalization.
The fact that we know the name of the artist who created the Gou figure is rather unusual. Akati Ekplékendo was taken prisoner, brought to
Abomey, and enslaved. In the capital of the Dahomey kingdom, he worked
in the royal blacksmith workshop. Joseph Adandé points to the importance
of enslaved Yoruba artists for art production in Dahomey in the nineteenth
century.1 Given the mobility of objects and people in the pre-colonial era,
this provides a starting point for a trans-local art history of the region.
The figure was originally produced in a context of violent confrontation
and war where one group tried to protect itself and its identity by fighting
off another. The object was first decontextualized when it was brought to
Abomey as a trophy, and at the royal court it was appropriated for the first
time. Not surprisingly, it was reinterpreted as a royal symbol.
Between 1892 and 1894, the palace in Abomey was seized by French
troops and Dahomey was turned into a colony. In this context the Gou
figure was, once again, taken as a war trophy, this time by the French captain Fonssagrives who brought it to France and, in 1894, donated it to the
Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro, the first anthropological museum
in Paris (the history of the musealization of “Gou” has been thoroughly
1
Adandé presented this argument in a lecture given at the Freie Universität Berlin
on December 2, 2014.
144
DOUBLE TROPHY: GOU BY AKATI EKPLÉKENDO
Figure 2: Installation view of the exhibition African Negro Art, Museum of Modern
Art, New York, March 18, 1935 through May 19, 1935. Photographic Archive, The
Museum of Modern Art, New York, IN39.1.
reconstructed by Beaujean-Baltzer 2007.) Fonssagrives indicated that he
had found the sculpture in Ouidah, a seaside town that was one of the
most important slave harbors on the African west coast. It is likely that
King Behanzin, who came to power after Glèlè, had taken it there for
a fight against the French, but because his soldiers died in spite of it, the
figure was thought to have lost its efficiency and therefore left in Ouidah.
The Gou sculpture is closely intertwined with the history of public ethnographic collections in Paris, as it passed through three institutions with
very different concepts and collection and exhibition policies. As part of the
Trocadéro collection, it was regarded as an ethnographic object and object
of science. Yet at the same time it served to represent the French colony
of Dahomey and its conquest in the temporary exhibition “Ethnographie
des colonies françaises” (1931) at the Trocadéro. As early as the 1930s, two
major exhibitions also reinterpreted “Gou” as a work of art. It was included
in the 1930 Paris “Exposition d’art africain et d’art océanien” and in the
famous 1935 exhibition of “African Negro Art” at the Museum of Modern
Art in New York (see Fig. 2). The Paris show was put together by the surrealist poet Tristan Tzara and two art dealers, Charles Ratton and Pierre Loeb,
the former specialized in African, Oceanian, and pre-Columbian art and the
latter in modern art. This suggests that the Gou figure and other objects
were associated with the avant-garde and, indeed, also highly sought-after
on the art market. Keeping in mind that French artists of the time (à⏵Primitivism) frequently visited the Trocadéro and appropriated the aesthetics
145
KERSTIN SCHANKWEILER
of the ethnographic objects for their own artistic purposes (Picasso being
the most prominent example), we can better appreciate the role avantgarde art played in interpreting and assessing objects of this kind. “African
Negro Art” then reinforced the unequal association, as it aimed to show
the “artistic importance” of African objects for contemporary Modernist art
in Europe and America (Sweeney 1935).
In 1937, the collections of the Trocadéro museum, and “Gou” with
them, transferred to the newly established Musée de l’Homme. Given the
latter’s orientation towards physical anthropology and focus on the development of mankind, this institution added yet another layer of meaning.
In 2000, the Pavillon des Sessions (the Department of the Arts of Africa,
Asia, Oceania, and the Americas) at the Louvre opened as a satellite for the
Musée du Quai Branly (which took over the ethnographic collections of the
Musée de l’Homme but did not open until June 2006). “Gou” was selected
as one of the “masterpieces” for this presentation. Summarizing the
migration of this object from Dahomey to France, Beaujean-Baltzer writes:
“A century later, Gou entered the Louvre by accumulating the status of
god of iron, spoils of war, work of art, avant-garde work and masterpiece”
(Beaujean-Baltzer 2007) (à⏵Masterpiece). This “masterpiece” of “African art”
is indeed a product of the contact zone on both a local and global level.
Returning to the figure’s context in Dahomey, something else becomes
obvious: Even at the time of its production in the mid-nineteenth century
and while being used as a power figure, the Gou sculpture may already be
seen as a “modern” artefact or artwork in its own right. In Dahomey and Fon
culture, its production meant a departure from tradition and innovation, as
the god of iron had previously been represented by a non-figurative mound
of earth with pieces of iron sticking out of it (Adandé et al. 1999). The anthropomorphic depiction is thus a manifestation of an aesthetic modernity in
West Africa marked by transcultural exchange in the contact zone (à⏵Multiple
Modernities). The fact that this contact zone is still very much politically contested became evident in 2016 when the Republic of Benin officially claimed
repatriation of objects from Dahomey in French public collections that had
been taken during the colonial era, including the Gou figure (à⏵Return). Thus,
the object biography of this famous piece remains open-ended.
ORCID®
Kerstin Schankweiler
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8357-0492
Figures
Fig. 1: © bpk / RMN – Grand Palais / Hughes Dubois, inv. 94.32.1.
Fig. 2: © 2020. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala,
Florence.
146
DOUBLE TROPHY: GOU BY AKATI EKPLÉKENDO
References
Adandé, Joseph, Gabin Djimasa, Nicolas Garnier, Claude Savary, and Serge Tornay.
1999. Une Figure Emblématique de l’Ancien Musée de l’Homme: Le Dieu Gou du
Danhomè. Paris: Musée de l’Homme.
Beaujean-Baltzer, Gaëlle. 2007. “Du trophée à l’œuvre: parcours de cinq artefacts
du royaume d’Abomey.” Gradhiva, 6: 70–85.
Biton, Marlène. 1994. “Question de Gou.” Arts d’Afrique noire, 91: 25–34.
Delafosse, Maurice. 1894. “Une statue dahoméenne en fonte.” La Nature, 1105:
145–147.
Harney, Elizabeth. 2004. In Senghor′s Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in
Senegal, 1960–1995. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sweeney, James Johnson, ed. 1935. African Negro Art, Museum of Modern Art. New
York: Arno Press.
Kart, Susan. 2013. “From Direct Carving to Récupération: The Art of Moustapha
Dimé in Post-Independence Senegal 1974–1997.” Columbia University Academic Commons. Accessed November 20, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7916/
D8057P0P.
Preston Blier, Suzanne. 1990. “King Glele of Danhomè, Part One: Divination Portraits of a Lion King and Man of Iron.” African Arts 23 (4): 42–53, 93–94.
———. 1998. Royal Arts of Africa: The Majesty of Form. London: King.
Vansina, Jan. 1984. Art History in Africa: An Introduction to Method. London:
Longman.
147
Figure 1: Helmet mask, batcham / tsesah, Master of the Bamileke region, Cameroon,
Bamendjo, 19th c., Wood, 72 × 51 × 37 cm, diam. 19.5 cm, Museum Rietberg, RAF
721, Gift of Eduard von der Heydt. Provenance: Gustav Umlauff, Hamburg (before
1914); Sally Falk, Mannheim (1920); Karl Nierendorf, Berlin (ca. 1920–1924); Eduard
von der Heydt Collection (1924–).
Rhea Blem
Becoming a Masterpiece?
The Batcham Mask and its Display
at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich
Abstract This chapter presents a critical discussion of the display of the
so-called Batcham mask at the Museum Rietberg in Zurich in 2016, and
links this to its reception and canonization in a Euro-American context. The
mask’s masterpiece status and its decontextualized presentation are found
to obscure parts of its biography. Many open questions remain concerning
the object’s history before reaching Europe, its fabrication and intended
purposes, but also the colonial circumstances surrounding its acquisition,
its trading and subsequent entrance into the collection of Eduard von der
Heydt, the founding donor of the museum. This chapter seeks to investigate these gaps in information and attempts to recontextualize the mask
by redirecting the focus onto its ‘original’ context. Lastly, it explores possibilities for alternative approaches to discussing its history and contemporary display within a local environment.
Keywords Batcham / tsesah, Bamileke Mask, Masterpiece, Eduard von
der Heydt, Provenance, Primitivism, Museum Display, Object Biography
Blem, Rhea. 2021. “Becoming a Masterpiece? The ‘Batcham Mask’ and its Display at the
Museum Rietberg in Zurich.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria
Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 148–154. Heidelberg
Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10417
149
RHEA BLEM
At the heart of the permanent display of African art at the Museum Rietberg
in Zurich stands an object that has come to be referred to as the Batcham
mask.1 It is presented as one of the ‘highlights’ of the collection, suggesting
that a significant amount of prestige is associated with its possession.
The wooden mask is of considerable size and was designed to fit on
top of the wearer’s head. A crest of accentuated eyebrows rises steeply
upward from the forehead, forming two elongated arcs whose semicircular shape is emphasized by parallel lines that converge centrally. Their
calm, rhythmic quality is echoed by vertical lines reminiscent of baleen
bristles, which form a mouth, and ears. The eyes are oblong and large and
have small perforations in their surface. The cheeks correspond inversely
to the bulbous nostrils, which are reduced to two demi-orbs on either side
of the nose.
Positioned at a central point against a black partition wall, the Batcham
mask is presented in an aestheticized manner and isolated from the rest
of the collection. In a brief exhibition video featuring Lorenz Homberger,
former curator of the Africa and Oceania Department, the mask is hailed
as an “ingenious masterpiece of an African artist” (Museum Rietberg
2013a). Emphasis is given to its monumentality, fine workmanship, and
provenance, thereby embedding it in a value system of commodified art
(à⏵Commodification). By describing the interplay of convex and concave
surfaces as “cubist” and “modern,” this presentation participates in a rhetoric that reads a modernist primitivism (à⏵Primitivism) onto the Batcham
mask (Museum Rietberg 2013a). While the piece is visually striking, its
mode of display deprives it of any other sensory values, as it barely allows
a 360-degree view of the mask. The official photograph of the mask functions as an extension of the exhibition space, reinforcing its emphasis on
the visual. This ocularcentric focus, combined with sparse background
information, is characteristic of European cultural conventions and is
directly linked to the museum’s institutional past.
The Rietberg’s core collection consists of objects amassed by the banker
and collector Eduard von der Heydt, which he donated to the city of Zurich
in 1952; the Batcham mask was part of this founding gift. The collector
showed limited interest in the original cultural contexts of the works (Von
der Heydt 1947; Fehlemann 2002). His writings bear witness to a general
imperialist attitude marked by an “interest in collecting with the aim of
presenting a global overview rather than by a concern with social structures” (Kravagna, in Kazeem 2009, 136–137). This attitude still informs the
approach evident in the exhibition video, when it admits that regrettably
1
These observations are based on an analysis of the state of display in 2016. I am
aware of the simplifications implied in the term “African art”, which presumes
cultural homogeneity of vast areas, and of categorizing ascriptions such as
Batcham or Bamileke, which are often remnants of colonial administrative shorthand. Here, the mask will nonetheless be referred to throughout as Batcham, as
this is the name, which has established itself in the literature and the space of
the Museum Rietberg.
150
BECOMING A MASTERPIECE?
little is known about the function of the Batcham mask yet fails to further
discuss this lack of information (Museum Rietberg 2013a).2
Carl Einstein first published the mask in the 1921 edition of Negerplastik
(Harter 1969, 411), thereby contributing to the object’s reception in a primitivist context, as well as to its singularization (Kopytoff, in Appadurai 1986).
This in turn paved the way for its inclusion in the seminal 1934–1935 exhibition African Negro Art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which
pioneered the by now firmly established conventions of display (Sweeney
1935). The show marked a turning point in the life of the objects shown
there, an irrevocable change in their meaning; it “transformed [them] from
indexes of another way of life into masterpieces of world art” (Paudrat,
in Rubin 1984, 164) (à⏵Masterpiece).3 Views of the exhibit show the mask
positioned on an unlabeled cylindrical pedestal in a white cube (MoMA
Archives 2017). In placing the works in an artificial vacuum outside of time
and space, this overtly aestheticizing presentation was formative for subsequent museological practice relating to African art. Today’s minimalist
display at the Rietberg, as well as the official photograph of the mask,
reflects this pattern of decontextualization.
For all the attention given to prominent owners, dealers, collectors, and
publications linked to the mask, its mode of display today reveals comparatively little about its life before leaving Cameroon. We have little specific
information regarding the mask’s original context, and also its function
has been a subject of uncertainty in the literature. Nor has the exact age
of the piece been established; it is dated very generally as “nineteenth century,” a vagueness it shares with many contemporary pieces due to difficulties in dating wood and a lack or loss of records.
It was recently ascribed to the western Bamileke kingdoms, Bamileke
being a blanket term used for several diverse societies living in parts
of the Cameroon grasslands (Museum Rietberg 2013a). Currently titled
“Batcham Mask of a Bamendjo master,” 4 the consensus is that it was
manufactured at the latter location but probably commissioned by a Batcham chiefdom (Illner et al. 2013, 150). The mask’s obscure origin and
2
3
4
This primarily concerns the display in the year 2016. The presentation has, apart
from some minor adjustments, such as the removal of the exhibition video,
remained in this state until 2019. It seems safe to presume that plans for the
rejuvenation of the permanent exhibition are underway.
A later edition of William S. Rubin’s book on Primitivism in 20th Century Art reinstated the mask as part of the new canon of internationally renowned African
art (1984, 138).
In 1993, Jean-Paul Notué proposed the alternative title ‘tsesah’ for a similar mask
previously in the Welcome collection and later at the Fowler Museum in Los
Angeles. Nonetheless, the term ‘Batcham’ was by that time firmly established
and has continued to prevail in connection with these and similar masks in the
space of the museum until the 1990s (see Notué 1993; Biro 2018). Recently, the
Museum Rietberg has adapted its description of the mask to include ‘tsesah’.
This move indicates an awareness for these problems and shows a concerted
effort to use language that references the cultural context in which objects were
made and used. Many thanks to Michaela Oberhofer for pointing me towards
this term and for her valuable literature advice.
151
RHEA BLEM
function is indicative of the complex dynamic of economic and artistic
exchange occurring in the area, as both “these two chiefdoms, and Batcham in particular, were located at important cross-roads linking the
four corners of the Bamileke region” (Harter 1969, 416). It is possible
that the mask was manufactured in an entirely different part of the area
but brought to either Batcham or Bamendjo as a result of such inter-regional transfers (Biro 2018, 127–130). Since courts routinely exchanged
gifts, confusion regarding the birthplaces of objects could have arisen
even before their removal from the African continent (von Lintig 1994,
110).
What is certain is that the Batcham mask was firmly embedded in
a courtly environment (Illner et al. 2013). Bettina von Lintig further contextualizes the mask in comparison with a heterogeneous group of related
pieces found across the Bamileke area (Illner et al. 2013, 108–109). She
considers the fractal partitioning of the face as characteristic of “night
masks” of the highland Bangwa in the western Bamileke region (Illner
et al. 2013, 110). Together with similar examples, the mask is thought to
have played a role in certain inaugurations and royal ceremonies (Illner
et al. 2013, 144). Contrary to what its display might suggest, it was not
conceived as ‘pure sculpture’ but would have been part of a complete
multi-sensory performance embedded in a web of political and religious
symbolism.
The mask’s provenance is well documented and vaunted in both the
literature and the exhibition video, but only from its time of arrival on European shores. Major gaps in the history of the mask confront the viewer
with issues concerning colonial history and the migration of objects. Under
what circumstances did its source communities part with it? With whom
and with what other cargo did it travel and how did it eventually find its
way into the possession of a German collector?
There seems to be a tension between the void of missing background
information about the mask and the way it is staged as an “icon of world
art” (Museum Rietberg 2013a). Against this backdrop, the Batcham mask’s
presentation at the Museum Rietberg raises the question of how to move
beyond its historical meaning as a trophy (à⏵Decolonizing)?
How, then, might such a recontextualization of this object be achieved?
It seems crucial not to erase the inherited remnants of colonial discourse,
but instead to become aware of and reveal them. Viewers could be directly
confronted with the issues stemming from the circulation of non-European
objects and aesthetics. Colonial appropriation practices should be made
explicit in the display (à⏵Appropriation). In other words, the mask should
be discussed, not simply shown. This would include sketching the paths
of migration of the Batcham mask, recognizing its biography before its
arrival on European shores and disclosing the circumstances under which
the transfers took place. Furthermore, the information gap should be
acknowledged and articulated. Uncertainties or missing sources, a common issue for objects collected across the African continent around the
152
BECOMING A MASTERPIECE?
turn of the century, should be discussed as well, as they are symptomatic
of broader patterns. Once acknowledged, the ‘absence’ of sources could
reveal a great deal about the way these objects were interacted with in
the past.
On a conceptual level, this would involve an interactive exploration of
colonial histories, representational strategies of the ‘Other’ (à⏵Othering),
and an explicit questioning of past and present display practices. Even
though the ‘original’ context of the mask is bound to have developed and
changed, a dialogue could be initiated with the Bamileke source communities; this could, for instance, take the form of research collaborations with
museums in Cameroon.5 Lastly, the mask’s status in its local context must
be re-evaluated. No region of this earth escaped the effects of colonialism—Switzerland is not unconnected to imperialism and colonial history
(see Purtschert and Fischer-Tiné 2015). Perhaps a more direct discussion
of Zurich as a center of trade and finance could be initiated, along with the
acknowledgment of colonial legacies in Swiss industries.
The notion of museums as ‘contact zones,’ as “spaces of ongoing
encounter between colonizer and colonized,” implies a potential for
transformation (Clifford qtd. in Edwards 2006, 253).6 Clearly, such transformative processes are complex, long-term projects. Nonetheless, with
regard to the Museum Rietberg’s permanent exhibition and the Batcham
mask, there is certainly room for a renegotiation of display practices and
for initiating a conversation about not just the mask, but the collection as
a whole. A departure from the masterpiece rhetoric could open up new
avenues for discussing the conception, acquisition, and travel of objects
such as the Batcham mask, so as to begin to explore the complexities of
their biographies.
Figure
Fig. 1: Photo: Rainer Wolfsberger; © Museum Rietberg.
References
Biro, Yaëlle. 2018. “Le canon et ses consequences: La reception des cimiers tsesah
bamiléké.” Tribal Art Printemps 2018, xxII-2 (87): 118–131.
Edwards, Elizabeth, ed. 2006. Sensible Objects: Colonialism, Museums and Material
Culture. Oxford: Berg.
5
6
Such cooperation projects are in fact in process with the Palace Museum of
Foumban i.a. (Oberhofer in Laely et al. 2018).
More recent exhibitions, such as Perlkunst aus Afrika: Die Sammlung Mottas
(June–Oct. 2018), begin to take into account such questions and have explored
the entangled histories of the artefacts and objects displayed.
153
RHEA BLEM
Fehlemann, Sabine, ed. 2002. Asien, Afrika, Amerika und Ozeanien: Eduard von der
Heydt als Sammler Aussereuropäischer Kunst. Wuppertal: Von der HeydtMuseum, Kunst- und Museumsverein Wuppertal.
Harter, Pierre. 1969. “Four Bamileke Masks: An Attempt to Identify the Style of Individual Carvers or their Workshops.” Man. New Series, 4 (3): 410–418.
Illner, Eberhard, Michael Wilde, Heike Ising-Alms, and Esther Tisa-Francini, eds.
2013. Eduard von der Heydt: Kunstsammler, Bankier, Mäzen. Museum
Rietberg, Von-der-Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal: Prestel.
Kazeem, Belinda, Charlotte Martinz-Turek, and Nora Sternfeld, eds. 2009. Das Unbehagen im Museum: Postkoloniale Museologien. Vienna: Turia & Kant.
The Museum of Modern Art Archives. 2017. “African Negro Art. Museum of Modern
Art, New York, 1935.” https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2937/
installation_images/0?locale=en.
Oberhofer, Michaela. 2018. “Conservation and Restoration as a Challenge for
Museum Cooperation: The Case of the Palace Museum in Foumban,
Cameroon.” In Museum Cooperation between Africa and Europe, edited by
Thomas Laely and Marc Meyer, 195–212. Bielefeld: transcript.
Museum Rietberg Zürich. 2013a. “Der Bote des Königs.” June 19, 2013. https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-_WeBz7iqE.
Museum Rietberg Zürich. 2013b. “Von Buddha bis Picasso - Der Sammler Eduard von der Heydt. Material zur Ausstellung, Die Saaltexte.” http://www.
rietberg.ch/media/387878/texttafel_vdheydt_ausstellung.pdf.
Notué, Jean-Paul. 1993. Batcham. Sculptures du Cameroun: Nouvelles perspectives
anthropologique. Marseilles: Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens de Marseille.
Purtschert, Patricia, Harald Fischer-Tiné. 2015. Colonialial Switzerland: Rethinking
Colonialism from the Margins. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rubin, William, ed. 1984. ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the
Modern. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.
Sweeney, James Johnson, ed. 1935. African Negro Art. The Museum of Modern Art,
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Von der Heydt, Eduard. 1947. Kunst der Naturvölker. Bern: K. J. Wyss Erben.
Von Lintig, Bettina. 1994. Die bildende Kunst der Bangwa: Werkstatt-Traditionen und
Künstlerhandschriften. Munich: Akademischer Verlag.
154
PART VI
Iconographies
of Encounter and
Translation
Lisa Heese
The Camposanto in Pisa by Leo von
Klenze: The Encounter between a
Classicist and an Islamic Artwork
Abstract The article deals with the painting The Camposanto in Pisa, by
the classicist Leo von Klenze, which contains the Pisa Griffin—an Islamic
artwork with a cross-cultural itinerary and one of the most discussed objects of Islamic metalwork due to its uncertain provenance and function. To
understand Klenze’s perception of the unique medieval griffin, the chapter
concentrates on the manner of depiction in terms of style and composition. Thus, the painting and its analysis also give an idea of the reception
of a mysterious Islamic artwork, through a Western and neoclassicist lens
in 1858.
Keywords Encounter, Reception, Spolia, Pisa Griffin, Leo von Klenze
Heese, Lisa. 2021. “‘The Camposanto in Pisa’ by Leo von Klenze: The Encounter between
a Classicist and an Islamic Artwork.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by
Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 157–163.
Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10419
157
LISA HEESE
In 1858, the famous neoclassicist architect Leo von Klenze (1784–1864)
painted his imposing view of the Camposanto in Pisa. Showing the west
wing of the Camposanto (completed 1358, Piazza del Duomo, Pisa), the
painting provides an accurate rendering of the architecture and part of the
collection it housed, even including a visiting mother and child. Its impressive attention to detail and range of colors are characteristic of Klenze’s
painterly oeuvre. This particular painting, however, warrants a closer look,
as it is a document of the history of the reception of a unique medieval
object with a cross-cultural biography and itinerary: the Pisa Griffin.
One of a row of exhibited objects, the Pisa Griffin is depicted at the
bottom left. An object of Islamic manufacture presumably created in the
eleventh century and featuring an Arabic inscription, the bronze griffin is
striking in appearance due to its size, monumental posture, and rich decoration. The latter is divided into well-defined zones of scales, stylized feathers, and ornaments. On account of its uncertain provenance and function,
the Pisa Griffin is one of the most discussed objects of Islamic metalwork
(Dodds 1992, 216–218).
The mysterious griffin has been linked to many places of origin, including Fatimid Egypt, Fatimid North Africa, Sicily, and Iran. In the eleventh
century, Pisa rose to become a very powerful republic, wielding great maritime power and maintaining trade networks throughout the Mediterranean world. As a result, any provenance of the griffin is conceivable and
at the same time controversially discussed based on stylistic analysis or,
alternatively, on inscriptions at Pisa Cathedral. Most likely it was made
in Al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) as a decoration for a fountain and taken
by the Pisans as a spoil of war on an expedition to the Balearic Islands
(1113–1115) (Dodds 1992, 216–218). In Pisa, it was then put on display as
a trophy like so many other spolia (à⏵Spolia) and placed prominently on top
of a small column rising from the gable above the apse of Pisa Cathedral
(nowadays, it is replaced by a replica). More recent studies have called its
function as fountain decoration in question, suggesting instead that the
griffin was designed to emit noises through its mouth and hollow inside
(Contadini, Camber, and Northover 2002; Contadini 2012). Doubts have
also been raised about its identification as a war trophy; instead, a Christian interpretation by the Pisans reflecting local cultural beliefs has been
proposed (Balafrej 2012).
In 1828, after centuries on top of the cathedral, the bronze griffin
was removed and placed in the Camposanto, the fourth and last building
raised on Piazza del Duomo, in the location of an older burial ground said
to contain holy earth and used as a depository and exhibition hall. There
one could find sarcophagi, sculptures, spolia, vases, epigraphs, frescoes,
and other artworks from different periods and cultures.
Leo von Klenze prominently included the unique and mysterious griffin
sculpture in his painting of The Camposanto in Pisa, a decision that is quite
remarkable for an artist with such strong neoclassicist leanings. Working
as the court architect of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, Klenze had designed,
158
THE CAMPOSANTO IN PISA BY LEO VON KLENZE
Figure 1: Leo von Klenze, The Campsanto in Pisa, 1858, oil on canvas, 103.5 ×
130.5 cm. Die Pinakotheken, München.
159
LISA HEESE
among other buildings, the Glyptothek and Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the
New Hermitage in St. Petersburg and also developed the exhibition and display concepts of those museums (Lieb and Hufnagl 1979; Von Buttlar 1999).
In light of those classical interests, it was common at the time for architects, painters, and art collectors to take the “Grand Tour” to be exposed
to and draw inspiration from the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and
the Renaissance. Leo von Klenze visited Italy several times to study classical architecture, making countless sketches and drawings he would subsequently use in architectural designs or paintings. Around 1854, he visited the
Camposanto and its collection in Pisa (Lieb and Hufnagl 1979; Von Buttlar
1999). His detailed depiction of the wooden roof construction, the traceried
cloister arcades, and the floor and his precise rendering of the perspective in
his 1858 painting testify to his passion for architecture. His use of colors and
of the light entering through the Gothic windows on the right bespeaks his
painterly concerns. Based on his work as a curator, he was also interested in
the collection and its display; this is how the Pisa Griffin must have caught
his attention.
Hence, the painting provides a record not just of the Camposanto’s collection, but also of Klenze’s encounter with the unique medieval griffin and,
by extension, the meeting of different historical, geographical, temporal,
cross-cultural, and aesthetic categories. This essay aims to discuss those
various encounters by analyzing compositional and stylistic elements of
Klenze’s painting that are linked to his notions of an ideal exhibition space
and his aesthetic thinking, in order to illustrate how he perceived what to
him was an outlandish object (à⏵Exoticism) and how he made sense of it in
terms of his more canonical interests (à⏵Canon).
Of course, the painting does not tell us anything about Klenze’s
thoughts and feelings upon seeing the griffin for the first time. Did he
touch it and immediately make a sketch of it, or did he initially, perhaps,
fail to notice it? The painting does not reflect his immediate reaction, but
rather an extended reception, as it is a deliberate artistic realization that
involved translating the object into a new medium and integrating it into
a new composition.
What the painting does tell us is that Klenze was particularly interested
in the Pisa Griffin. An analysis of his painting style and choice of composition clearly shows that the striking bronze sculpture had made a strong
impression on the painter, so much so that he placed the griffin in a prominent position. Though shown at the lower left, Klenze uses light and proportion as compositional elements to highlight the sculpture. With the vase
just to the left of it being in the shadow, the illuminated griffin appears all
the more prominent and, as a result, bigger than the other objects. Especially relative to the space as a whole and the two figures on the right, it is
obvious that Klenze scaled up the griffin whose actual height is just about
one meter, or 3.2 feet. The bronze griffin also contrasts strongly with the
marble sculptures beyond it in terms of material and color, making the griffin the most conspicuous object in the room. Furthermore, in iconographic
160
THE CAMPOSANTO IN PISA BY LEO VON KLENZE
terms, the griffin stands out as a mythic creature among mostly Christian,
antique, and profane sculptures. Its illumination and increased size create
a monumental effect.
As a whole, Klenze’s painting of The Camposanto in Pisa alludes to several object biographies, since a number of the items on display are clearly
recognizable: In front of the back wall and in the row of exhibited objects
on the left, for instance, are marble sculptures by Pisano and Lorenzo
Bartolini, several reliefs, and vases aside from the bronze griffin. The back
wall itself features a fresco by Piero di Puccio showing Christ as a syndesmos
figure holding the cosmos which, at the same time, is his body. To the right
of it are Old Testament frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli. On the left wall we
also see marble grave slabs and epigraphs as well as additional frescoes,
some alcoves, and parts of the chain of the port of Pisa. Easily identifiable
as the northern part of the west wing, the depicted section of the Camposanto includes closely observed architectural elements. While this suggests
a sense of actuality, we realize upon closer examination that Klenze, in fact,
rearranged the objects for his painting. More precisely, he left out objects
that were actually located in this part of the west wing and added objects
from other locations in the Camposanto. Thus, the bronze griffin is shown
in a location different from its actual place of display among a number of
objects lined up in the east gallery (Baracchini 1993). The fact that Klenze
included it in his painting thus points to his particular interest in the object
and its particular function as part of the painting’s aesthetic message.
Klenze’s special interest in the bronze griffin is also evidenced by several sketches that show the sculpture from different perspectives (Munich,
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Klenzeana, Ix, 7/36 and Ix, 14/12, published
in Lieb and Hufnagl 1979, 132, figs. Z 301, Z 302). Yet those sketches differ
stylistically from the ones he did of architectural elements such as capitals,
temples, or wall decoration. Those he would copy in great detail to create
precise drawings, rather than just records of travel memories, and perhaps
use them on a later occasion in his architectural designs.
The sketches Klenze made of the griffin indicate that he was interested
less in the sculpture’s formal aspects of texture and pattern or its Arabic
inscription than in its outlandish appearance and unusual subject. The
painting, in turn, suggests that Klenze was more concerned with depicting
the entire space and the arrangement of objects in it, which contrasts the
bronze griffin with ancient and local work, most of it in marble. Clearly, his
intention was not to provide a detailed image of the griffin but to show the
impact the sculpture had in the space.
At the same time, the inclusion of the bronze griffin in the painting
serves to meet what Klenze had described as the two main requirements
for an ideal museum space. The first of those was the need to show the
development of world culture by including artworks from various periods
(Von Buttlar 1999, 121). In this regard, the Pisa Griffin stands for Islamic
and medieval handicrafts, thus providing a geographical and historical reference alongside local, ancient, and contemporary artworks. In a way, the
161
LISA HEESE
deliberate incorporation of the Pisa Griffin may even be compared to the
use of spolia in architectural structures in order to create a historical and
cultural reference or a reinterpreted symbol (à⏵Spolia).
Klenze’s second requirement was the need to create aesthetic variety, so as to offer visitors a better and more comprehensive experience
of art (Von Buttlar 1999, 121–123). Accordingly, he focuses mainly on the
arrangement and variety of the objects, in order to contrast different aesthetic ideals and, indeed, different approaches to creating material and
color contrasts and juxtaposing the familiar and the foreign or “mystic.”
The outlandish appearance of a medieval artwork like the Pisa Griffin
fit in well, as the Middle Ages were often described as foreign or “other”
(à⏵Othering) in the nineteenth-century West (Ganim 2005, 83–107). For all
his keen interest in classical antiquity, there was also a place for the Middle
Ages or a medieval ideal, including mystical aspects, in Klenze’s studies
and works.
As indicated earlier, Klenze was interested rather in representing visual
otherness and foreignness than in highlighting a specific culture or the Oriental character of an object. His presentation mode is, in fact, quite neutral,
with all objects similarly placed on pedestals in a row. The complex decoration of the walls behind the objects in the form of colorful frescoes, grave
slabs, epigraphs, and the decorative floor patterns were equally important
elements. In this way, the arrangement as a whole allowed for a variety of
views and visual experiences, creating an overwhelming impression that
would amaze the visitor and thus make him more receptive to art, which
was precisely what Klenze imagined an ideal museum ought to achieve
(Von Buttlar 1999, 122).
In Klenze’s painting as in his exhibition concept, the function of the
griffin was not to offer details regarding its biography, provenance, and
previous functions, but to present an artwork in its visual otherness. In
comparison to the other objects, only the griffin required a greenish color
in the painting caused by its metal body. Its appearance is more rigid than
that of most marble sculptures and also figures in the frescoes due to
the impressive folds in their robes. Even its essence as a mythical animal
stands out from other exhibits such as Christian sculptures, for instance
a Mary with Child (both headless), the Christian frescoes in the back, and
even profane ones such as the Pisan port chain or presented vases. Klenze
successfully used the griffin through its visual otherness—of shape, material, treatment—and unique character relative to the other objects and the
surrounding space, in order to create a powerful visual impact and aesthetic experience.
To create this idealized exhibition ensemble in his painting, Klenze
selected all objects and architectural details he found interesting and
important during his visit to the Camposanto. This approach is similar to
that of a neoclassicist architect who collects ideas and individual architectural elements in his sketchbook and subsequently incorporates those elements he deems most fitting in the design of a new building. In the same
162
THE CAMPOSANTO IN PISA BY LEO VON KLENZE
manner, Klenze moved the griffin from its original location in the east wing
to the west wing and added or omitted other objects. In this sense, the
griffin with its transcultural itinerary is joined by Klenze as the painter,
and, indeed, by the painting as a mobile storage medium in functioning as
agents of cultural transfer.
Figure
Fig. 1: © bpk / Bayrische Staatsgemäldesammlungen.
References
Balafrej, Lamia. 2012. “Saracen or Pisan? The Use and Meaning of the Pisa Griffin
on the Duomo.” Ars Orientalis, 42: 31–40.
Baracchini, Clara, ed. 1993. I marmi di Lasinio. La collezione di sculture medievali e
moderne nel Camposanto di Pisa. Exhibition Catalogue, Pisa, Museo Nazionale e Civico di San Matteo. Florence: SPES.
Contadini, Anna, Richard Camber, and Peter Northover. 2002. “Beasts that Roared.
The Pisa Griffin and the New York Lion.” In Cairo to Kabul: Afghan and Islamic
Studies presented to Ralph Pinder-Wilson, edited by Warwick Ball and Leonard
Harrow, 65–70. London: Melisende.
Contadini, Anna. 2012. “The Pisa Griffin Project.” Accessed August 18, 2017. http://
vcg.isti.cnr.it/griffin/.
Dodds, Jerrilynn Denise, ed. 1992. Al-Andalus: The Art of Islamic Spain. Exh. cat., The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 216–218. New York: Abrams.
Ganim, John M. 2005. Medievalism and Orientalism: Three Essays on Literature, Architecture and Cultural Identity. New York et al.: Palgrave Macmillan.
Lieb, Norbert, and Florian Hufnagl. 1979. Leo von Klenze: Gemälde und Zeichnungen.
Munich: Callwey.
Von Buttlar, Adrian. 1999. Leo von Klenze: Leben, Werk, Vision. Munich: Beck.
163
Figure 1: Attributable to Muhammad Hasan, A Mother and Child, Qajar dynasty,
Iran, ca. 1810–1830 (Sotheby’s, London, Sale L04626, Lot 24, 12 October 2004).
Janna Verthein
Qajar Women and
Madonnas? Mother and Child
by Muhammad Hasan
Abstract The Qajar era produced a number of paintings that mirror
the increasingly close contact Qajar Iran had with European countries
and therefore with a Christian European painting tradition. Among them
are several depictions of a woman with a child that have in the past been
identified as interpretations of the Virgin Mary. A range of factors seem to
support this claim while suggesting that this type of painting at the same
time differs from most European Madonna-type images in a way that represents notions of gender and family in Qajar society.
Keywords Gender, Iran, 19th Century, Entangled Histories, Translation
Verthein, Janna. 2021. “Qajar Women and Madonnas? ‘Mother and Child’ by Muhammad
Hasan.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin
Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 164–171. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9.
Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.
c10420
165
JANNA VERTHEIN
Several paintings from the period between 1797 and 1834 when Fath-Ali
Shah Qajar ruled in Iran show a mother and her child in a way that resembles European iconographies of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. In the 1830s,
Muhammad Hasan created an oil painting of a woman with a young girl
that fits this tradition. The motif of mother and child was popular, and,
while these paintings often resemble each other, some of them include
closer references to the motif of Mary and Jesus than others. A painting
signed by Muhammad Sadiq, for example, dated around the 1820s, shows
a mother, her child, and an angel, with an inscription identifying the former two as Mary and Jesus. Both Diba and Floor comment on the use of
the Madonna motif in Qajar painting: Floor remarks on the change of
clothing colors and lower-cut décolleté that will often make the reference
hard to recognize (1999, 139); Diba describes the painting discussed here
as a Christian Madonna reinterpreted “as a luscious court beauty” (Diba
and Ekhtiar 1999, 208).
Unless they are referencing specific historic or religious scenes, these
images tend to have descriptive titles that seem to serve no other purpose
than making them easier to identify. Most of the Madonna-like paintings
of the time are referred to as “Mother and Child,” with occasional mentions
of other depicted objects.
In Muhammad Hasan’s work, the child is standing on an elevated surface in the foreground holding an apple. The stylized facial features of both
figures with thick, dark eyebrows that arch up from the nose bridge almost
to the lines of their black hair make them look nearly identical. They have
taut red cheeks and dark lines surrounding their almond-shaped eyes—a
common way of depicting both male and female faces in the early Qajar
era. Both lower their heads slightly as they look upwards out of the image.
The woman is holding on to the child’s left arm and hip. The young girl
wears a transparent shirt, pearl earrings, and brown gloves 1. The woman’s
tunic is decorated with floral ornaments and beads and leaves her breasts
exposed. Her bead-studded headdress and pearl necklaces feature red
gemstones. She also wears a long, dark skirt with a floral pattern, and the
almost empty background shows only brown wall and floor surfaces, with
a window in the center opening to a uniformly dark blue sky.
Iranian painters had already incorporated European motifs by the eighteenth century (à⏵Appropriation), but during the Qajar dynasty, artists took
an even greater interest in foreign images. At the same time, images of
women were created in greater quantity for the decoration of palaces and
bathhouses (Floor 1999, 81), and Christian iconography became a popular
motif especially for lacquer-painted objects such as pen boxes. Assumed to
have been created in the first decades of the 1800s, Muhammad Hasan’s
painting stems from a time when the Shah and his sons extended their
1
In this image, it seems as if her hands have been dipped in brown paint. However, gloves of this type appear in a number of paintings of the time, often with
bead-trimmed openings that stand out from the wrists.
166
QAJAR WOMEN AND MADONNAS? MOTHER AND CHILD BY MUHAMMAD HASAN
patronage of the arts. The large-scale portraits commissioned by FathAli Shah demonstrated not just his wealth and power, but also served
a diplomatic purpose when given as presents to other leaders, such as
Napoleon I (Raby 1999, 11–14). In the production of artworks that could
add to the power and prestige of the Qajar court, focus shifted towards the
study of European painting, and at several points during the reign of FathAli Shah, the royal family sent groups of students to Europe and Russia to
learn about foreign painting techniques (Balaghi 2001, 165). Concurrently,
European artists would be invited to Persia to create portraits of court officials and work with Qajar painters; Muhammad Hasan thus met French
painter Jules Laurens during the reign of Muhammad Shah Qajar (Diba
and Ekhtiar 1999, 221–222). Although little is known about the exact way
in which this exchange affected Qajar painters—accounts tend to focus on
the introduction of technology and photography, the latter being introduced to Qajar Iran in 1839 (Scheiwiller 2016, ch. 1)—the constant supply
of new information undoubtedly helped catalyze the Qajar style.
While the increasingly close contact to Europe suggests that these
Madonna-like paintings were directly inspired by European sources, it is
also possible that they emerged from the contact with Mughal collections.2
Although Najmabadi (Diba and Ekhtiar 1999, 82) notes that the Mughal
collections focus on more erotic depictions of Mary, the way these images
were treated by groups and individuals suggests that, overall, they were
perceived first and foremost as religious.
As mentioned, paintings of the Virgin Mary and child were also being
produced in the Mughal empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with many of them resembling European representations. It is entirely
possible that, as a result of wars waged by the Safavids or Nadir Shah,
images from Mughal collections found their way to Iran and, thus, came
to influence Qajar painters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
as was the case with other Mughal artifacts 3. That said, the Qajar images
stray far from the traditional religious character of the Virgin and Child
that continued to prevail in the Madonna representations in the Mughal
empire, where they originally served as religious legitimation for emperor
Akbar in the sixteenth century (Vollmer 2015, 9–10).
2
3
The Mughal emperor Jahangir had a religious interest in the Madonna. He was
reported to have brought back images of the Virgin Mary from his travels and
to have asked others to bring him specific images that he would have copied
by painters and keep in his rooms. Several miniatures show Jahangir holding
images of the Madonna (Findly 1993, 215). Among Hindus, the Madonna was
already a popular religious figure and many followers of Hinduism would pray to
her. Because of her role in the Quran, she was also familiar to Muslims. People of
different religions would visit and offer prayer to images of the Madonna placed
in churches throughout the empire (Findly 1993, 215).
One of the most famous war trophies from that time would be the Peacock
Throne taken by Nadir Shah (Canby 1993, 117). While not used by the Qajars,
its appearance is at least similar to the Sun Throne, commissioned and used by
Fath-Ali Shah Qajar.
167
JANNA VERTHEIN
Regarding the more revealing attire in these Qajar paintings, one could
argue that images of the Virgin Mary in European art often have a sexual
connotation as well, and that this sexuality is simply more overt in these
painting by Persian artists, who may have sensed and simply exaggerated
that particular aspect in their creations. Najmabadi (Diba and Ekhtiar 1999,
77) suggests that Persian painters’ contacts with European women, as well
as their exposure to Orientalized European portrayals of Persian women,
may have been responsible for the sexualization of the female breast as
seen in Qajar paintings. Tanavoli (2015, 12–16) writes about the Farangi
woman—an impression of European women held by Iranian men that was
in part formed by the import of nude paintings and photographs, starting around 1600—and also about the interested reception of European
women’s clothing with unveiled hair and faces during the 19th century.
His description supports the notion that images of European women in
Iran played a role in an increasingly sexualized public image of women’s
bodies.
At the same time, the Qajar Madonna-like paintings were not particularly well received among European viewers of Persian art at the time. Considering these works ungraceful, critics claimed this to be one of the more
unfortunate effects of the European influence on Persian painting (Diba
and Ekhtiar 1999, 78).
The gaze at the viewer, which was introduced into Persian painting
in the seventeenth century by Muhammad Zaman (Najmabadi 2001, 95),
gives the image an inviting nature. The outward gaze became particularly popular among Qajar painters (Najmabadi 2001, 96), which has led
Najmabadi to theorize about a new meaning Persian painters attributed
to their Madonnas, connecting the motif to family structures in Qajar Iran:
Najmabadi suggests that, as a result of being excluded from the intimate
“family space” at a young age and thus forced to grow up without much
affection, men tended to idealize this lost world and long to be a part of
an intimate emotional environment again that would allow them to have
tender, loving relationships with their mothers (Diba and Ekhtiar 1999, 81).
The gaze at the male viewer thus serves as an invitation to be part of this
world once more.
The fact that these Qajar works overwhelmingly feature female children further supports the notion that male society longed for inclusion
into a female familial sphere. Another painting titled “A Family Group” (see
Fig. 2) even shows a male observer looking at a mother and child through
a window, creating a stark separation between the male and female worlds.
While similar facial features of both mother and daughter in these images
are common, the strong resemblance of the two figures in Muhammad
Hasan’s painting suggests they might not be so much portraits as a representation of the female part of society.
When discussing European elements in Qajar painting, it is important to mention the shift in the perception of gender and beauty that is
reflected in paintings. For example, several paintings from the early Qajar
168
QAJAR WOMEN AND MADONNAS? MOTHER AND CHILD BY MUHAMMAD HASAN
Figure 2: Artist unknown, A Family Group, Iran, ca. 1810, Oil on Canvas, 15.49 ×
10.16 cm, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ouseley Album 297, No. 8.
169
JANNA VERTHEIN
period show both young men and women with red cheeks and big eyes,
evincing a similar—albeit not identical, as Scheiwiller (2016, ch. 1) points
out—standard of beauty for both men and women. Moreover, paintings
depicting young men alone—most famously scenes involving Joseph—
focused entirely on male beauty, portraying men as objects of decoration.
Najmabadi (2001, 92) analyzes the shift from images showing both men
and women with (made-up) feminine features to beauty becoming a trait
exclusive to women. Portraits of Qajar leaders of the second half of the
nineteenth century follow a more European idea of masculinity and avoid
small waists or long eyelashes. Over time, men disappeared from images
intended primarily for decoration and aesthetic delight. This has been
linked to the decreasing acceptance of homosexuality and homoerotic
images due to growing European intolerance (Najmabadi 2001, 98–99).
The images of mothers and daughters can therefore be seen as part of the
increasingly female depiction of beauty (à⏵Gender).
The painting by Muhammad Hasan is in many ways representative of
the beginning cultural shift in nineteenth-century Iran, influenced to a great
extent by increasing contact to other regions. As the result possibly of both
closer study of European art and exposure to Mughal collections during
wartime, it also becomes an example of entangled history (à⏵Entangled
Histories) connected to the spreading of Madonna-type images. When
considering the motif as it travelled to the Mughal empire, it is appropriate
to speak of translation (à⏵Translation). Yet in the case of Qajar Iran, where
the mother and child were given facial features and clothing that matched
contemporary Persian standards of beauty, the Christian subject was not
just translated, but also endowed with new meaning. The way the image
hints at a female world inaccessible to men would not have been obvious
to non-Persian viewers who noticed above all the overt sexual nature of the
image. Thus, the Qajar take on the Madonna motif is a deliberate appropriation of the iconographic formula with the goal of conveying a different
message.
Figures
Fig. 1: © Photo courtesy of Sotheby’s, 2020.
Fig. 2: The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Ouseley 297, no. 8.
References
Balaghi, Shiva. 2001. “Print Culture in Late Qajar Iran: The Cartoons of ‘Kashkūl.’”
Iranian Studies 34 (1): 165–181.
Canby, Sheila R. 1993. Persian Painting. London: British Museum Press.
Findly, Ellison Banks. 1993. Nur Jahan: Empress of Mughal India. New York: Oxford
University Press.
170
QAJAR WOMEN AND MADONNAS? MOTHER AND CHILD BY MUHAMMAD HASAN
Floor, Willem. 1999. “Art (Naqqashi) and Artists (Naqqashan) in Qajar Persia.”
Muqarnas 16: 125–154.
Diba, Layla S., and Maryam Ekhtiar, eds. 1999. Royal Persian Painting: The Qajar
Epoch 1785–1925. New York: I.B. Tauris.
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. 2001. “Gendered Transformations: Beauty, Love, and Sexuality in Qajar Iran.” Iranian Studies 34 (1): 89–102.
Raby, Julian. 1999. Qajar Portraits. London: Azimuth Editions in association with the
Iran Heritage Foundation.
Scheiwiller, Staci Gem. 2016. Liminalities of Gender and Sexuality in NineteenthCentury Iranian Photography: Desirous Bodies. New York: Routledge.
Tanavoli, Parviz. 2015. European Women in Persian Houses: Western Images in Safavid
and Qajar Iran. London: I.B. Tauris.
Vollmer, Franz-Josef. 2015. Angels and Madonnas in Islam: Mughal and other Oriental
miniatures in the Vollmer Collection. Berlin: Lehmann.
171
Figure 1: Spiridon Ventouras: Portrait of Ali Pasha, 1818. Oil on canvas, 71 × 58 cm.
Private collection, Athens.
Emily Neumeier
Portrait of Ali Pasha:
Cultural Mobility on the
Periphery of Empire
Abstract This study examines an early nineteenth-century portrait of the
Ottoman provincial governor Ali Pasha, who ruled a border region that
is now northern Greece and southern Albania for almost forty years. The
governor commissioned this oil-on-canvas painting from the Christian artist Spiridon Ventouras, a Greek-speaking Christian hailing from the Ionian
Islands, which lay just beyond the borders of the empire. While Western
European-style portraits are known to have been produced for several Ottoman sultans throughout the centuries, until that point such a painting
initiated by a Muslim notable beyond the sphere of the imperial court in
Istanbul appears to have been unheard of. Ali Pasha’s portrait stands as
a unique expression of self-presentation on the periphery of empire, not
only in the act of commissioning the work itself but also in the depiction
of the governor decked out in an array of finery that serve to evidence his
political and economic status. Furthermore, this painting participates in a
wider pan-Adriatic aesthetic that transcends both imperial and confessional boundaries, calling into question a paradigm of mobility that assumes
an encounter or exchange between two fixed cultures.
Keywords Ottoman Empire, Greece, Ali Pasha, Portraiture, Cultural Mobility, Periphery
Neumeier, Emily. 2021. “Portrait of Ali Pasha: Cultural Mobility on the Periphery of Empire.”
In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin
Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 172–178. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9.
Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.
c10421
173
EMILY NEUMEIER
In 1818, the Ottoman governor Tepedelenli Ali Pasha summoned the
painter Spiridon Ventouras to his court in Preveza, a port city on the Ionian Sea today located in Greece. At the time, Ventouras was residing on
the island of Lefkada, whose main town directly faces Preveza across
a small bay. After making his way to the vizier’s waterfront palace, the
artist was granted an audience with Ali Pasha and allowed to make preparatory sketches (Themeli-Katifori 1960, 206). Four months later, the
encounter between painter and pasha resulted in an oil-on-canvas portrait
that is approximately life-size. Surrounded by an intricate gilded frame,
which could quite plausibly be original, the governor confronts the viewer
with a commanding gaze, his lips drawn taut and eyebrow half-cocked.
Shown as a seated half-figure, Ali Pasha poses against a dark ground,
his luxurious fur mantle and velvet cap almost dissolving into the black
behind him. Ventouras has managed to capture the governor’s characteristic swagger, which I argue played no small role in Ali Pasha’s attaining
a prominent socio-political position within the empire and even a level of
international celebrity. Weighed down with an impressive collection of finery and precious objects, the man depicted here sits calm and confident
in the spotlight.
There are many examples of Western-style canvas portraits ordered
by the Ottoman sultans, from the famous fifteenth-century depiction of
Mehmed II attributed to Gentile Bellini to several paintings produced for
Mahmud II only a decade or two after Ali Pasha’s portrait was completed
(Kangal and Işın 2000). These portraits, however, seem to have remained
the singular prerogative of the imperial ruler, and do not reflect a wider
trend of images commissioned by Ottoman elites. Although there has
been much recent work done on the exchanges between European and
Ottoman artists at the Sublime Porte, the fact that Ali Pasha—a provincial
governor who came to power outside of the more traditional circles of the
imperial court—invited Ventouras to his domain and ordered such a painting appears to be a rather extraordinary case within the field of Ottoman
visual culture.
Taking the portrait of Ali Pasha as its point of departure, this essay investigates questions of circulation (à⏵Circulation) and mobility—the movement
of both persons and objects from one geographic location to another—in
early modern art. I aim to put pressure on assumptions frequently underlying discussions of cross-cultural exchange, particularly the overwhelming
focus on royal court production and the view of cultures as distinct and
separate entities. Towards this goal, I take up Stephen Greenblatt’s call to
resist what he describes as the “compartmentalization of mobility,” that is,
a tunnel vision in which significant moments of mobility are strictly limited to particular times and places, while, “in all other contexts, [scholars]
remain focused on fixity” (2010, 3). In order to locate these new contexts for
mobility, I propose to focus on cultural zones found on the periphery (à⏵Periphery) of empire, where one might find trajectories, triangulations, and
entangled histories (à⏵Entangled Histories) that suggest a mode of analysis
174
PORTRAIT OF ALI PASHA: CULTURAL MOBILITY ON THE PERIPHERY OF EMPIRE
moving beyond a “clash of cultures.” More to the point, when scholars discuss mobility and transcultural exchange in the context of Ottoman art and
architecture, they often speak about the movement of foreign artists and
objects at the highest level of Ottoman society, i.e. the imperial court in
Istanbul. In contrast, this portrait of a provincial governor is the product of
what could be considered “micro-movements” across imperial boundaries,
which indicate the existence of a common regional taste, rather than the
interface between two fixed cultures.
The unusual or perhaps even transgressive act of Ali Pasha sitting for
his portrait executed in a style that some Ottoman viewers might have
described as alafranga (or “in the European fashion”) can best be explained
by the border context from which this painting emerged. Ali Pasha and his
sons served as provincial governors and controlled the region of Epirus—
what is now northwest Greece and southern Albania—for almost forty
years, from 1784 until Ali Pasha’s death in 1822, when he was ultimately
accused of treason and assassinated by order of Sultan Mahmud II. In
the early nineteenth century, Ali Pasha’s de facto capital city of Ioannina
(Ott. Yanya) came into its own as a cosmopolitan hub situated on the
western frontier of the Ottoman Empire. Under the governor’s rule, this
town hosted a vibrant multi-confessional elite of merchants, intellectuals,
scribes, military officials, and religious leaders. Many of these individuals,
especially the Christian traders and academics, had been educated abroad
in other nearby urban centers—primarily Venice and Vienna—and continued to maintain connections that transcended imperial boundaries.
Ali Pasha’s portrait invites an investigation of how these trans-imperial
connections contributed to the formation of taste in the Ottoman borderlands. In the painting, the governor is attired in a rich costume, with
a vest and black velvet cap embellished with dense gold embroidery, a specialty of the craftsmen in Epirus that was exported to western and central
Europe. On his right hand, Ali Pasha also wears a ring, its dark color suggesting either an emerald or sapphire, or perhaps a seal that he would
use to officiate documents. This hand rests on a pistol, an object that was
often imported from France or Britain and then subsequently embellished
by local craftsmen with an outer casing of rich gold or silver filigree work.
Evidence for Ali Pasha’s material wealth in the form of textiles, jewelry,
and fine weapons can also be found in an abundance of archival documents
in both Athens and Istanbul. When the governor died in 1822, a number
of inventories were drawn up in Ottoman Turkish to account for all of the
movable property found in the multiple palaces that Ali Pasha owned in
Ioannina—a comprehensive view of a pre-eminent household’s material
culture. Two registers in particular (BOA D.BŞM.MHF.d. 13344 and 13346)
reveal a taste for European import items such as gilded table clocks, jeweled pocket watches, guns, mirrors, and cut-glassware. The registers also
list objects flowing from eastern trade connections, such as sable furs from
Russia, shawls from Lahore, and large ceramic vessels from Myanmar.
These Ottoman property registers thus establish the image of Ioannina as
175
EMILY NEUMEIER
a place with a robust mercantile economy. In the same way, the portrait of
Ali Pasha also serves as a kind of inventory, documenting objects of mobility that were evidently considered markers of status.
Rather than turning to Istanbul for cues in fashion, Ali Pasha did not
have to look much further than his own court, as well as his neighbors on
the Ionian Islands. If Ali Pasha’s territory was located on the north-western frontier of the Ottoman mainland, then directly on the other side of
that political border were the Ionian Islands—including Lefkada, the home
of the painter Ventouras. When Ali Pasha first came to power, the Ionian
Islands had long been held by the Venetians, but after Napoleon’s invasion
in 1798 this area became a revolving door of occupying French, Russian,
and British forces. This jockeying for a foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean was at least in part motivated by what European diplomats characterized as the “Eastern Question,” i.e. the anticipated disintegration of the
Ottoman Empire. The vizier thus entered a fraught geopolitical arena, with
international powers bitterly squabbling over territory quite literally on his
doorstep, and immediately sought how to turn the situation to his own
advantage.
Taking into consideration this highly charged political dynamic, we
now turn to what is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this portrait:
the large medal pinned to Ali Pasha’s vest, boasting an enormous cut diamond in its center, surrounded by fifteen smaller diamonds set into a black
enamel casing. This same medal is described by the British traveler Thomas
Smart Hughes, who was granted an audience with Ali Pasha in Ioannina in
1814. Hughes remarked that “The dress of the vizir [...] appeared costly but
never gaudy; [...] he has bought a diamond from the ex-King of Sweden at
the price of 13,000 l., which, with a number of others, he has had formed
into a star, in imitation of one which he saw upon the coat of Sir Frederick
Adam: this he now wears upon his breast, and calls it ‘his order’” (1820, Volume II, 58). Sir Frederick Adam was a military officer who would eventually
be appointed as British High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, and from
Hughes’ account it can be understood that he had at least one meeting
with the governor. At such a high-stakes encounter—the British had great
interest in Ali Pasha and his ability to curb the French in the region—there
is no doubt that Adam would have come in full regalia, including medals
awarded by the British crown. Thus, within this painting there is represented on the very person of the vizier the exchange of both objects and
fashions across a razor-thin imperial border.
Finally, the act of commissioning a portrait itself serves as a notable
example of Ali Pasha’s engagement with regional taste, which could be
thought of as a shared Italianate-Adriatic zone of visual culture. Despite
the numerous portraits of Ali Pasha that circulated in European books in
the first decades of the nineteenth century, this painting remains the only
known instance of the governor himself initiating such a likeness. Because
Ventouras was from the Ionian Islands, this painter who was brought in to
create Ali Pasha’s portrait could also be considered part of a community in
176
PORTRAIT OF ALI PASHA: CULTURAL MOBILITY ON THE PERIPHERY OF EMPIRE
the Venetian “borderlands.” The majority of the population on the Ionian
Islands were Orthodox Christians, but the longstanding Venetian influence
in this region meant that its inhabitants participated in a wider Adriatic
cultural zone, many being fully bilingual in Italian and Greek as well as
traveling to Venice (which had the first major Greek printing press) for both
intellectual and mercantile opportunities. Like many young men on the
Ionian Islands, Ventouras was sent to Venice for his education, where he
studied painting for ten years before he returned home in 1795 (ThemeliKatifori 1960, 203).
Once back in Lefkada, Ventouras not only became well known as an
accomplished painter of icons for local Orthodox churches, but also gained
a reputation as a portrait artist, capturing the likenesses of local officials
and clergymen alike. Ventouras’ renown evidently extended across the
narrow strait that divided Lefkada from the Ottoman Empire, to Ali Pasha’s
court in Ioannina. In 1818, the governor asked the Ottoman consul in
Lefkada, Marinos Lazaris, to make arrangements for Ventouras to cross
the strait and come to the port of Preveza. After this meeting, the finished
painting was finally transported in the summer of 1818 to be presented to
the governor at one of his palaces in Ioannina.
The fact that Ioannina was a flourishing cultural center in the eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries is no secret to Greek historians who have
devoted particular energy to situating Ioannina within the broader context
of what is commonly referred to as the “Greek Enlightenment.” This line of
scholarship, however, tends to focus exclusively on the Christian communities in Ioannina, and explains the consumption of luxury goods and the
patronage of artists as a phenomenon occurring in spite of the Ottoman
“occupation” of the region. Yet, I would like to suggest a revised view of
the Ottoman period, acknowledging the agency of the governor as a partner of the Christian elites (à⏵Agency), facilitating and encouraging these
trans-imperial connections by opening the cities of Vlora and Preveza as
free ports as well as rebuilding the main road networks that connect these
towns with the provincial seat in Ioannina.
Objects such as Ali Pasha’s canvas portrait or the piles of imported
luxury items described in Ottoman registers cannot be fully explained by
an East / West (à⏵East / West) discourse of mobility, which paradigmatically
considers cross-cultural transfers only at the highest political levels, the
various courts of imperial rulers. While the Ottoman capital in Istanbul
stands as an important center for trans-regional cultural exchange, the
patterns of cultural fashioning and consumption in Ioannina during the
time of Ali Pasha are perhaps better understood as a shared regional tradition that existed on both sides of imperial borders straddling the Adriatic.
Ali Pasha summoning Ventouras from Lefkada to Preveza, even though
technically a trans-imperial exchange, in reality only required a 45-minute
journey by rowboat. There is no question that these geopolitical borders
were well known and observed by the various actors on the ground—and,
if one looks through diplomatic archives, these boundaries were often
177
EMILY NEUMEIER
vehemently contested and fought over. Nevertheless, what I have aimed
to demonstrate is that scholars should be wary of relying too heavily on
the monolithic designations these boundaries suggest when discussing
moments of cultural production in areas on the periphery. In the case of
Ali Pasha, the governor was not necessarily interested in having a portrait
done in the “Western” or “alafranga” style, but rather the regional style,
the style in which every important figure in the immediate area, whether
a colonial officer on the Ionian Islands or a local archbishop, participated.
This border zone accommodated a diversity of individuals of multiple confessions, language backgrounds, and ethnicities. In a similar manner, the
portrait of Ali Pasha serves as a visual capsule, recording not only the likeness of the governor but also the confluence of both objects and moments
of encounter at his court—a portrait of a pasha, but also of the periphery
itself.
Figure
Fig. 1: Private collection, Athens.
References
Prime Ministry Ottoman Archive (Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, BOA), Istanbul.
D.BŞM.MHF.d. 13344 (1237 AH/1821-22 CE) and D.BŞM.MHF.d. 13346 (1237
AH/1821-22 CE).
Greenblatt, Stephen. 2010. “Cultural Mobility: An Introduction.” In Cultural Mobility:
A Manifesto, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, 1–23. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hughes, Thomas Smart. 1820. Travels in Sicily, Greece and Albania. 2 Vols. London.
Kangal, Selmin, and P. Mary Işın. 2000. The Sultan’s Portrait: Picturing the House of
Osman. Istanbul: İşbank.
Themeli-Katifori, Despina. 1960. “O Spiridon Ventouras ki i antidikia tou me ton AliPasa.” Eptanisiaki Protochronia 1: 203–215.
178
PART VII
Perceptions between
Image and Text
Sria Chatterjee
The Arts of Science in the Contact
Zone: A Satirical Picture
Abstract This chapter focusses on a print by the artist Gaganendranath
Tagore done in 1922, which features the biophysicist Jagadish Chandra
Bose and his experiments in plant science. Considering the overlapping
networks of art, science, and nationalist politics within a particular sphere
in early twentieth-century British India, the chapter explores the connections between human and non-human contact zones as well as questions
around religion and science and the politics of colonial knowledge between the metropole and the colony.
Keywords Art and Science, Expanded Contact Zone, Plants, Caricature,
Nationalism, Politics
Chatterjee, Sria. 2021. “The Arts of Science in the Contact Zone: A Satirical Picture.”
In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Kerstin
Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 181–187. Heidelberg Studies on Transculturality 9.
Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing. DOI: https://doi.org/110.17885/heiup.766.
c10423
181
SRIA CHATTERJEE
The object I focus on in this short essay is a black and white print by
Gaganendranath Tagore (1867–1938) from a portfolio of “satirical pictures” published in 1921 by Thacker and Spink titled Reform Screams.
While the portfolio serves to establish a context of political feeling
and social reform in pre-independence India through satire, the print
I have chosen allows for access into a contact zone that is not only geographic but also one that lies between human and non-human worlds
(à⏵Expanded Contact Zone). In this image, Gaganendranath depicts the
Indian scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937) who pioneered the
investigation of radio waves and experiments in plant science. Bose is
particularly remembered for his experiments that proved that both
organic and inorganic matter respond to external stimuli. Titled Inanimate Scream, Gaganendranath’s picture provokes questions related to
religion and science and the politics of colonial knowledge between the
metropole and the colony. Through the web of relations and displacements (both geographic and disciplinary) the object unspools, this essay
explores the relevance and future of the concept of the contact zone in
contemporary art history.
The central figure in this black and white print is seated in the mountains, seemingly elevated and held up by the range of cliffs around him.
From his hand, a spark like an inverted thunderbolt spreads tiny waves
across the landscape. The figure with its outline of curly locks and sparse
facial features sports an obvious third eye on his forehead. Around him,
the trees and plants are alive. Two skinny plants, drawn as active anthropomorphic creatures in mid-protest, march behind him. With big shouting mouths, they wear bands around their waists with the words “Strike”
in English and a speech blurb of sorts that asks for “chanda,” a monetary subscription for a cause. In the foreground, smaller plants writhe
and move. On the far left, a little plant moves away from the mighty
lotus beside it, whose flat leaves proclaim “vande mataram,” the title of
a poem in praise of the motherland composed by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay in the 1870s, which went on to become a politically active
slogan in the struggle for Indian independence, having been sung at
the Indian National Congress by Rabindranath Tagore in 1896. On the
other side of the lotus, the Desmodium, also known as the Telegraph
plant, seems to move its leaves in a synchronized dance to a call to
“agitate,” and on the far right, the Mimosa plant (also known in Bengali
as lajjabati lata or the “shy plant”) twists away from itself to a chant of
“shame shame.”
So, what is really going on in the busy frame of this image and how does
it spill out into the political and scientific context of early twentieth century Bengal? Providing a concise context for the work of Gaganendranath
Tagore and his milieu, this object allows me to explore the relationships
between art, science, and political irony. The often-wary reception of Bose’s
work both in India (by Indians who sneered at his practice in Western science and choice of working in Britain) and in the West (by the scientific
182
THE ARTS OF SCIENCE IN THE CONTACT ZONE: A SATIRICAL PICTURE
Figure 1: Gaganedranath Tagore: Reform Screams, Satirical Pictures. 1921. Thacker
and Spink.
183
SRIA CHATTERJEE
community wary of his affinity to Indian philosophy), Bose’s contested
positions in both worlds were ripe for double meanings and irony in the
caricature form.
Gaganendranath Tagore was born into the illustrious Tagore family in 1867. His brother Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951) and uncle
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) were amply involved in the intellectual
and creative fervor that characterized the early years of the Indian freedom movement in elite Bengali circles. The condition of being colonial in
these circles was a particularly complex one. The intellectual elite behind
the processes of Indian modernism were caught, between embodying
the very fruits of colonial education, knowledge systems, and fiscal relationships based on land revenue that profited the landed gentry, on the
one hand, and the burgeoning struggle for India’s independence and
independent identity, on the other. I argue that Gaganedranath’s caricatures are a site not only for these formal, social, and political tensions,
but also a creative strategy that may be understood as a self-reflective
coping mechanism in a world in flux. His caricatures range from the
harshest social critique of Bengali society highlighting the contradictory and exploitative ways of the “westernized,” educated Bengali male,
to violent political events, and humorous, yet, more sober takes on
Gaganendranath’s illustrious contemporaries. It is in the last category
that my object falls. Having moved away from the lampooning quality
of the grotesque figures of his earlier portfolios such as those in Adbhut Lok (The Realm of the Absurd 1917), this series of caricatures holds
the self at ironical distance, laughing good-naturedly and yet with a certain trepidation at the intensely embedded structures of the individual
educated Bengali scientist and intellectual in colonial forms of knowing and being. As Sanjukta Sunderason aptly puts it: “colonial caricature
prompted self-ironical laughter that erupted through a ‘fertile relationship of contradiction’ with what the historian Ranajit Guha calls the
‘braided temporalities of the colonial city, which remained irretrievably
split between the time of the colonized and the colonizer’” (Sunderason
2016, 4).
The Bichitra club (active between 1916 and 1920) met on the southernmost verandah of the Tagore family mansion in Jorasakho. It became
a semi-organized society of sorts for the Tagores, especially Abanindranath and Gaganendranath and their friends and students, where
experimentation in the creative arts was the primary goal. It stood for
a capricious intellectualism where the distinctions between art, design,
home, and stage were constantly being challenged. Gaganendranath’s
cartoons came out of the Bichitra Club moment and are reminiscent of his
early black and white ink sketches of 1907–1911. While Gaganendranath’s
pre-1917 watercolors and his post-1921 Cubist works have been regarded
as his consistent and major contributions to Indian modernism (à⏵Multiple Modernities), his caricatures primarily circulated (à⏵Circulation) as
portfolio prints and were sometimes reproduced in journals such as the
184
THE ARTS OF SCIENCE IN THE CONTACT ZONE: A SATIRICAL PICTURE
Modern Review and Prabasi (“Expatriate”) (Sunderason 2016, 10). The intimate circle of important friends of the Tagore household included, among
others, the scientist Dr. Jagadish Chandra Bose, the chemist Sir Prafulla
Chandra Ray, the educator Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, and Sir Surendranath
Banerjee, one of India’s earliest political leaders during the British Raj,
all of whom were to become not-so-subtle subjects of Gaganendranath’s
sketches.
J. C. Bose was a close friend of Rabindranath’s and visited him often in
Calcutta, at the Tagore estate in Selidah and then in Santiniketan (Tagore,
1981). In Bose’s professional life, Rabindranath helped secure funding for
Bose’s continued scientific research in Britain from the Maharaja (Prince)
of Tripura, a state in northeastern India. Educated at St. Xavier’s College in Calcutta, Bose went on to England to earn several degrees in the
sciences from Cambridge and the University of London. His professors
at Cambridge remained supportive of his research and sponsored him
to the Royal and Linnean Societies. Bose’s research in microwave physics
was readily accepted and used by his European contemporaries (Patrick
Geddes 1920). In fact, it was Bose’s Mercury Coherer that was used by
Gugliemo Marconi, the Italian scientist and inventor of the modern telephone, to receive the radio signal in his first transatlantic radio communication experiment (Shepherd 2009, 106). Yet his plant researches were
met with hostility by the mechanistic materialist philosophy of science that
prevailed in Victorian Britain. The prominent electrophysiologists at the
time were reluctant to accept Bose’s conclusions that all plants possess
a nervous system, a form of intelligence, and a capacity for remembering and learning (Shepherd 2012, 196). Bose’s ideas attracted neovitalists
who saw the future of biology in metaphysics, such as the biologist and
urban planner Patrick Geddes, who lived and worked in India. In the correspondence exchanged between Bose and Tagore, it is evident that, for
Bose, his research in science, especially his experiments in plant physiology, was not divorced from but in conversation with ideas of life and living mechanisms in Indian philosophy. Arguing that all matter had life-like
properties, Bose claimed that “at the source of both the inner and outer
lives is the same Mahashakti who powers the living and the non-living,
the atom and the universe” (Bose, quoted in Nandy 1995, 29). The epitaph to Bose’s first scientific monograph, Response in the Living and NonLiving (1902), reads: “The real is one: wise men call it variously.” In quoting
a well-known statement from the Rig Veda, Bose implied that he believed
his electrographic discovery that the animate and the inanimate world are
one was an affirmation of the unity of life that the Vedas proposed (Brown
2016, 104).
Bose’s scientific stance was soon to become a political one. Legitimizing science not simply as a knowledge system created and ratified
only by the West, but as a discipline perfectly compatible with and
perhaps bound to Eastern philosophy, his work set into motion a new
kind of nationalism embraced and disseminated by political figures
185
SRIA CHATTERJEE
such as Rabindranath and the monk Vivekananda. In a letter written to
Rabindranath in 1901, Bose acknowledges his commitment to the freedom struggle and demonstrates the links between biology, philosophies
of science, and colonial politics. “I am alive with the life force of the
mother Earth”, he writes, “I have prospered with the help of the love of
my countrymen. For ages the sacrificial fire of India’s enlightenment has
been kept burning, millions of Indians are protecting it with their lives,
a small spark of which has reached this country [Britain] (through me)”
(Sen 1994, 92).
Gaganendranath’s caricature of Bose seated in the mountains with
a third seeing eye conflates him with the Hindu deity Shiva who resides
in the Kailash mountain range. Considered a continuation of the Vedic
deity Indra, who was associated with lightning and thunder, Shiva’s third
eye and trident standing in for the forces of creation and destruction
reinforce Gaganendranath’s reference to the god-like capacities of the
scientist, innovator, and holder of knowledge in the higher realms that
remain inaccessible to the lay person, while placing Bose in the almost
comic position of playing god. This element of theater comes alive more
urgently in the rhythmic and coordinated response of the plants to Bose’s
trident / electricity transmitter. Functioning as an obvious link to Bose’s
research and inventions in electricity, the waves emanating from the trident animate and hold the visual plane together with a kind of eerie electromagnetic energy. The plants dance as if under the spell of an external
force, and while their moves are supplemented with seemingly political
slogans, their inability to really act fulfils the pathos and self-irony that
likens the plant subjects to colonized Indian subjects. There is a revolution waiting to happen on multiple fronts and yet it is stalled in a state
of semi-autonomy. Gaganendranath’s attention to detail also signals his
interest in Bose’s research. While the lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) activates
a reference to Indian myth and culture, the Desmodium and Mimosa
plants come straight out of Bose’s research. The Desmodium Gyrans (now
Codariocalyx motorius, known in Bengali as Bon charal ) has a trifoliate
leaf, whose two small lateral leaflets make spontaneous gyrations of regular periods, causing the plant to “dance” when presented with external
stimulus or, indeed, spontaneously due to turgor increase and decrease in
its own cells (Shepherd 2012). Another plant capable of rapid movement,
the Mimosa Pudica responds to touch, sudden temperature change, the
start or end of a constant current, and induction shock. Having performed
various experiments with the Desmodium and Mimosa to record plant
movement and physiological changes, Bose’s main conclusions were that
plants have a well-defined nervous system, receptors for stimuli, conductors (nerves) which electrically code and propagate the stimulus, and
effectors, or terminal motor organs (Shepherd 2005, 610–611). By bestowing life and decision-making abilities upon the vegetal muteness of plants,
it was as if Bose had brought to light the suspended condition of speech
and non-speech in the colonized subject.
186
THE ARTS OF SCIENCE IN THE CONTACT ZONE: A SATIRICAL PICTURE
Mary Louise Pratt writes that the concept of the “contact zone” is “an
attempt to invoke the spatial and temporal co-presence of subjects previously separated by geographic and historic disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect” (Pratt 1992, 8). If, for Pratt, a “contact” perspective is
about the ways in which “subjects are constituted in and by their relations
with each other” (Pratt 1992, 8), I argue for an expansion of the way in
which subjecthood is understood to explore the relations between human
and non-human subjects. In Gaganendranath’s caricature, the constitution
of the subjects takes place in a messy tangle of relations that complicate
imperial relations and geographic trajectories with epistemological practices entrenched in colonial systems. The act of speech in the contact zone
therefore becomes one that must consider the formations of subjecthood
in an active zone of contact that dissects ideology and epistemic formations, taking both human and non-human subjecthoods seriously.
Figure
Fig. 1: Photo: Sria Chatterjee.
References
Brown, C. Mackenzie. 2016. “Jagadish Chandra Bose and Vedantic Science.” In Science and Religion: East and West, edited by Yiftach Fehige, 104–122. London:
Routledge.
Guha, Ranajit. 2008. “A colonial city and its time(s).” The Indian Economic & Social
History Review 45 (3): 329–351.
Nandy, Ashis. 1995. Alternative Sciences: Creativity and Authenticity in Two Indian Scientists. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London:
Routledge.
Sen, Dibakar. 1994. Patrabali Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose (Bengali). Calcutta:
Bose Institute.
Shepherd, Virginia A. 2012. “At the Roots of Plant Neurobiology.” In Plant Electrophysiology, edited by Alexander G. Volkov, 3–43. Berlin: Springer.
———. 2009. Remembering Sir J. C. Bose. Singapore: World Scientific.
———. 2005. “From semi-conductors to the rhythms of sensitive plants: The
research of J. C. Bose.” Cellular and molecular biology, 51: 607–619.
Sunderason, Sanjukta. 2016. “Arts of Contradiction: Gaganendranath Tagore and
the Caricatural Aesthetic of Colonial India.” South Asian Studies: Journal of
the Society for South Asian Studies (incorporating the Society for Afghan Studies), 32: 129–143.
Tagore, Gaganendranath. 1921. Reform Screams: A Pictorial Review at the Close of the
Year 1921. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co.
Tagore, Rabindranath. 1981. On the Edges of Time. 2nd ed. Calcutta: Visva-Bharati.
187
Figure 1: Three Behar Amateur Lithographic Scrapbooks, published on the Behar
Amateur Lithographic Press, Patna, between ca. 1828 and ca. 1830. Of various
sizes, internal compositions, and artists, but predominantly the work of Sir Charles
D’Oyly (1781–1845). Yale Center for British Art: T 448.5 (Folio A); Folio A 2011 110
Copy 1; Folio A 2011 110 Copy 2.
Tom Young
Art and Sociability in Colonial
India: The Behar Amateur
Lithographic Scrapbooks
Abstract This chapter examines a series of lithographic scrapbooks,
published between 1828 and 1830 by the Behar School of Athens—an amateur art society founded in the Indian city of Patna. The majority of prints in
these albums were produced by the society’s president, Sir Charles D’Oyly
(1781–1845). However, they also contain works signed by two local Indian
artists: Jairam Das and Seodial. This chapter explores how the inclusion of
these artists conformed with a discourse of “improvement” adopted by the
Athenians, but contradicted the persistent denial of colonial civil society by
both British MPs and East India Company officials. In exploring this contradiction, it argues that art is not only produced in “contact zones,” but has
the potential to instantiate them.
Keywords East India Company, Amateurism, Lithography, Sir Charles
D’Oyly, Colonial Sociability
Young, Tom. 2021. “Art and Sociability in Colonial India: The ‘Behar Amateur Lithographic
Scrapbooks.’” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg,
Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 188–195. Heidelberg Studies on
Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10424
189
TOM YOUNG
Between 1828 and 1830, a remarkable series of lithographic albums were
published on a private press in the city of Patna—the provincial capital of
Bihar, and an important center for opium and indigo production in the
East India Company’s Bengal Presidency. Time and circumstance have
scattered these albums across the globe (⏵Circulation): They now lie in
the storage rooms of Indian museums; in the British Library’s former India
Office Collections; in the Yale Center for British Art; and, I suspect, in more
private collections than those that I have so far been able to discover.1
While uniformly entitled the Behar Amateur Lithographic Scrapbook, each
album contains an idiosyncratic assortment of around thirty lithographs
depicting Orientalist fantasies of India. Ancient mosques and temples
crumble under the tangled canopy of banyan trees (see Fig. 2); portraits
of proud, jewel-bedecked Rajas are bound beside coy ‘native beauties’;
age-worn boats meander down the lush banks of the river Ganga. One
print captures a tiger hunt roaming through the dense Indian jungle, rifles
bristling from the safety of an elephant’s howdah; in another, the evening
shadows lengthen over a pastoral scene of Bihari villagers, mud huts, and
Gilpin-esque cattle.
These romanticized scenes were published by the Behar School of
Athens, an amateur art society founded in Patna on July 1, 1824, “for the
promotion of the Arts […] and merriment of all descriptions” (Proceedings
ca. 1824–1826, 1). The lithographs were produced on a private press established in the house of the society’s president and Patna’s Opium Agent, Sir
Charles D’Oyly (1781–1845), and are predominantly his work and that of his
wife Elizabeth, with a number of contributions by the society’s vice president Christopher Webb Smith.2 A voluminous manuscript detailing the
various activities of the society, entitled The Proceedings of the Behar School
of Athens, reveals that the Athenians took their foundational claim to “promote the arts” remarkably seriously. The members cultivated an explicitly professionalized self-image, emulating the successful strategies that
metropolitan art institutions had used to raise artistic standards in Britain.
The manuscript includes extensive details about the society’s impressive
1
2
I have been able to trace several editions in the BL: five manuscripts with little
provenance (X445/1; X445/2; W35/3; X445/3; and a manuscript entitled Selection
from the Early Experiments of the Bahar Amateur Lithographic Press); several albums
associated with James Munro Macnabb, husband of Lady D’Oyly’s cousin Jane
Mary (X1168 A&B; X1169; W6938; and P.2481, a large manuscript with assorted
prints); a collection associated with Lady D’Oyly (W.35); and a large manuscript
entitled Indian Scraps with several prints associated with the Behar Lithographic
Press (X.294). For these, see Losty 1989. A loose collection of prints is also in
the BL collection (P1819-1822). I have additionally located several albums in
collections around the world: one in a private collection in England; another in
a private collection in Patna; several editions at the Yale Center for British Art;
a version in Patna Museum, Patna; and a copy in the Victoria Memorial, Kolkata.
No monograph has been devoted to D’Oyly, despite his talents being recognized
in several biographical articles. See Losty 1989. Crucially, no scholar has comprehensively engaged with the most important resource related to the artist, the
339-page Proceedings of the Behar School of Athens (ca. 1824–1826).
190
ART AND SOCIABILITY IN COLONIAL INDIA: THE BEHAR AMATEUR LITHOGRAPHIC SCRAPBOOKS
Figure 2: Sir Charles D’Oyly: Near Hadjepore, printed c.1828–1830, lithographic print,
published in: The Behar Amateur Lithographic Scrapbook, (Patna: Behar Amateur
Lithographic Press, c.1828–1830).
collection of “Old Master” paintings, often stressing how such collections
allowed Anglo-Indians to copy from “masterpieces” (⏵Masterpiece) and
therefore practice the pedagogic methods traditionally taught in European
art schools. It also mythologized the professional artist George Chinnery
(1774–1852), the society’s patron, who in several panegyrics was framed as
the “Sir Joshua of the East,” capable of raising the standard of Anglo-Indian
painting in the same way that Sir Joshua Reynolds had raised the standard
of Britain’s own national school through its institutionalization at the Royal
Academy (Proceedings ca. 1824–1826, 255).
Comparing themselves to metropolitan institutions lent credibility
to the Athenians’ claims to “call forth dormant abilities” (Proceedings ca.
1824–1826, 69), but it also aggrandized their dilettantism in the same
way that discourses about “improvement” had legitimized the social value
of metropolitan institutions—through the idea that a nation’s “school of
art” (⏵Nation) reflected its prestige and power, alongside determining
the morality or “politeness” of its public. In light of this, I think we should
understand the Scrapbooks as an attempt to physically manifest the Athenians’ claims to have pioneered “the extension of intuitive talent and the
cultivation of the Art in the East” (Proceedings ca. 1824–1826, 18). By distributing the albums, the Athenians publicly demonstrated the “polite and
useful” talents they had fostered in Patna, thereby casting their activities
as both beneficial to Anglo-Indian civil society, and, more abstractly, as
a reflection of “national prestige.”
If this was the case, however, then the “improvement” discourse
adopted by the Athenians contradicted one of the fundamental ideologies
legitimizing British colonialism. For, officially, a public was never supposed
to develop in Company India, even less a sense of nationhood. Still wary
about the loss of the Thirteen Colonies, both MPs and the Company’s
Court of Directors were well aware that any acknowledgement of a public
or civil society in India meant tacitly accepting claims for greater civil liberties, such as constitutional rule or political representation. Such claims
were anathema, and instead the peculiar authoritarianism of British rule in
191
TOM YOUNG
India was underwritten by the conceit of “enlightened despotism”—widely
considered a necessary evil for governing India’s “barbarous or semi-barbarous” inhabitants (Mill 1856, 322–323). Art’s ability to “civilize” society
in India, potentially even to cultivate “civilized” Indians, compromised the
supposed necessity of the East India Company’s unrepresentative, “despotic” rule.
This ideological disjuncture might not have been so stark if the society’s ambitions had been strictly limited to white, British officials, but the
Scrapbooks show that this was not the case. Several of the prints bear signatures written in the Persian Nasta’liq script, revealing the names of two
local Indian artists: Jairam Das, and his elder brother Seodial (see Fig. 3).
The fact that both of these artists were included as signed contributors like
any of the other “official” Athenians seems remarkable during a period in
which Indian artists were widely believed incapable of drawing ad naturam.
If the Scrapbooks were intended to manifest the Athenians’ foundational
ambition to “cultivate the arts of the East”—indexically exhibiting the polite
and useful skills that they had fostered amongst Patna’s local public—then
they clearly demonstrated that local Indians like Jairam Das and Seodial
could be incorporated within this “politer” society. Crucially, as the ability
to naturalistically depict the countryside became increasingly associated
with British “national character,” such prejudices became highly politicized.
British politics, like British landscape painting, was seen to imitate “natural principles.” Unable to draw from nature, Indians were accordingly
demeaned as lacking the aptitude for “rational” politics.3 Yet D’Oyly had
explicitly challenged these racist stereotypes in the Proceedings, writing as
a fictionalized visitor to his house in Patna, who, upon meeting Jairam Das
and Seodial, reported:
Of the talents of these young men I had frequently heard; the eldest as a copyist of miniatures, and the youngest of taking original
likenesses. Of the truth of the imitative limner’s proficiency, I made
no doubt, but I confess, I did not so entirely give credence to the
assurances of the younger brother, but, in one moment, he showed
me the folly of unbelief, for he held in his hand an unfinished miniature of a young lady [...] whose lovely face was portrayed with so
much life & spirit that I immediately exclaimed “upon my soul, that
is excellent” (Proceedings ca. 1824–1826, 44).
Seen in relation to the political valences of naturalism during this period,
D’Oyly’s presentation of Jairam Das—the youngest Indian artist—as an
imaginative or creative agent, working freely from nature and unfettered
from the servitude of copying other images, appears undeniably political. Indeed, after seeing his portrait miniature, D’Oyly’s character even
3
The infamous culmination of these stereotypes can be found in John Ruskin’s
“Two Paths” lecture, published in Ruskin 1859.
192
ART AND SOCIABILITY IN COLONIAL INDIA: THE BEHAR AMATEUR LITHOGRAPHIC SCRAPBOOKS
Figure 3: Jairam Das: Portrait of an Indian Man, c.1828–1830, lithographic print,
published in: The Behar Amateur Lithographic Scrapbook, (Patna: Behar Amateur
Lithographic Press, c.1828–1830).
calls him “my new-made native friend” (Proceedings ca. 1824–1826, 44).
“Improved” through art—potentially even “politically rational”—Jairam Das
seems to have been given an ambigous place within the sociability of the
Behar School of Athens, and this sociability is materialized and publicized
in the physical contents of the Scrapbooks.
Crucially, historians have defined the 1820s as a distinct “moment”
of Liberal reform in India, a period in which the rights and nature of an
Anglo-Indian public became an increasingly pressing concern (Bayly
2012). Notably, D’Oyly enjoyed personal connections to several important
“reformers.” He had been close friends with the Radical journalist James
193
TOM YOUNG
Silk Buckingham (1786–1855), whose portrait hung in his drawing room at
Patna. Buckingham had reviewed D’Oyly’s artistic publications in his Oriental Herald, recommending them to a “public” of “the tasteful and liberal
among our Countrymen in the East” (Buckingham 1826, 316). Through his
second wife, D’Oyly was related to the Liberal-leaning Governor-General
Francis Rawdon-Hastings (1754–1826) who, as a series of scrapbooks and
watercolor albums in the British Library reveal, was himself part of a wide
social network with whom D’Oyly and the Athenians exchanged drawings,
which included Colonel James Young—a friend of the Bengali reformer
Rammohan Roy (1772–1833) and a notable Radical in his own right.4 If the
Athenians’ Scrapbooks thus publically asserted their institutional efficacy in
“civilizing” a public in India, then it is possible that this public would have
been conceived in the same way as these political reformers conceived it:
as uniting Europeans and “civilized” Indians (like Jairam Das) into a cohesive social body able to self-determine, which deserved, and potentially
even gained parliamentary representation in Britain. This is not to say, of
course, that the Athenians were not involved in the colonization and economic exploitation of the subcontinent—they were. But I want to suggest
that the Scrapbooks reveal the way individuals living “on the spot” in India
could use art and the discourses associated with it to put forward a unique
view of the country’s future, one in which an Anglo-Indian civil society that
challenged the logic of “enlightened despotism” could achieve—to quote
a letter that D’Oyly sent to his godfather Warren Hastings—“an independence of spirit” (D’Oyly 1813).
To conclude this analysis on a broader theoretical point, I think that
the Behar Amateur Lithographic Scrapbooks demonstrate two things about
“transculturation” and the capacity of art historians to escape the analytical frame of the nation-state. The first is that art is not only produced in
“contact zones” (Pratt 1991) but has the potential to instantiate them. Art
objects formed the material basis for a number of social practices and
affected these practices through their affordances: the specificities of
their facture, genre conventions, or modes of reception. The collaborative Scrapbooks should therefore be understood as the material ground
for a social practice through which colonized and colonizing individuals
engaged with each other, generating the conceptual space in which ideas
about who should be enfranchised within colonial civil society could be put
into question. Secondly, I think it is only in reconstructing individuals’ lives
and lost social practices at the level of personal experience like this that
we can add texture and nuance to the “big narratives” a transnational art
history should strive to answer. In the instance sketched here, a remarkable archive demonstrates that a network of individuals living in North
India responded to their unusual lives in the “contact zone” by adopting
metropolitan discourses that actually challenged domestic conceptions of
4
These scrapbooks and watercolor albums include: WD 4043; Add. Or. 4302-6;
WD 4402; WD 4401; P2984; P2481.
194
ART AND SOCIABILITY IN COLONIAL INDIA: THE BEHAR AMATEUR LITHOGRAPHIC SCRAPBOOKS
“national” sovereignty. The Scrapbooks, therefore, provide a counterpoint
to various scholarly accounts of nineteenth-century art’s implication in
the rise and consolidation of the nation-state, alongside a useful historical
precedent for studying the current rise of transnational corporations or
multi-state actors developing alternative forms of cultural sovereignty. As
the issue of “regaining” sovereignty recently became one of the cruxes of
the United Kingdom’s EU membership referendum, it is worth remembering that objects like the Scrapbooks reveal how the idea of national sovereignty was contested even as the British Nation-State crystalized into
a recognizably modern form.
Figures
Fig. 1–3:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
References
Anonymous. Ca. 1824–ca. 1826. Proceedings of the Behar School of Athens, [private
collection], n.p.
Bayly, Christopher Alan. 2012. Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Buckingham, James. 1826. “Sir Charles D’Oyly’s Antiquities of Dacca.” The Oriental
Herald and Colonial Review XI: 310–315.
D’Oyly, Charles. 1813. Letter from Charles D’Oyly to Warren Hastings, dated 31st July,
1813. Add. MS 29188, f.185. London: British Library.
Losty, Jeremiah. 1989. “Sir Charles D’Oyly’s Lithographic Press and his Indian Assistants.” In India: A Pageant of Prints, edited by Pauline Rohatgi and Pheroza
Godrej, 135–160. Bombay: Marg Publications.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1991. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession: 33–40.
Ruskin, John. 1859. The Two Paths: Being Lectures on Art, and its Application to Decoration and Manufacture, Delivered in 1858–1859. New York: Wiley.
195
Figure 1: Elias Canetti: The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit. 2012. [1967].
London: Penguin Books, p. 17. Translation: Marion Boyars Publishers 1978.
Isabella Krayer
Between the Visual and
the Aural: Elias Canetti’s
The Voices of Marrakesh
Abstract This chapter is concerned with the deconstruction of the visual, and by extension visuality, as a hegemonial concept and takes Elias
Canetti’s The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit (1967) as its subject. Already in its title, Canetti emphasizes hearing rather than seeing. The book,
which is divided into fourteen short-story-like chapters, both fragmentarily
and phenomenologically describes Canetti’s experiences and encounters
in Marrakesh from the perspective of a foreign visitor. Ultimately, The Voices of Marrakesh is concerned with language itself, as it poetically displays
and enacts the culturality of the senses through a complex web of encounters.
Keywords Elias Canetti, The Voices of Marrakesh, Deconstructing Visuality, Aurality, Fragmentary Perception
Krayer, Isabella. 2021. “Between the Visual and the Aural: Elias Canetti’s ‘The Voices of
Marrakesh.’” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria Troelenberg,
Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 196–202. Heidelberg Studies on
Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10425
197
ISABELLA KRAYER
In 1954, Elias Canetti (1905–1994) accompanied an English film crew on
a three-week trip to Marrakesh, where the latter were producing a fictional drama called Another Sky (Görbert 2012, 95). Thirteen years later,
in 1967, Canetti published one of his best-selling books, The Voices of
Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit,1 recounting in fourteen short-story-like
chapters what he had experienced while discovering the city on his own.
The book is characterized by a strong interrelation between the visual
and the aural. In terms of its autobiographical character, The Voices of
Marrakesh is consistent with Canetti’s oeuvre as a whole; more generally though, it describes a European traveler’s encounter with a foreign
culture, and because Morocco was still a French colony at the time,2 this
automatically places the book in a colonial context.3 However, not just
the historical circumstances speak of colonial issues, as the book also
belongs to the genre of travel writing that has been extensively examined
and conceptualized by Mary Louise Pratt (2008). According to Pratt, colonial European travel writing, while meant to bring distant places closer
to the European readers as an experience, de facto produced asymmetrical power structures, “creat[ing] the imperial order for Europeans ‘at
home’” (2008, 3). Moreover, such travel writing recounts the experiences
of a paradigmatic figure, pointedly dubbed by Pratt as the “seeing-man”:
“He whose imperial eyes passively look out and possess” (2008, 9). Seeing
and writing are thus intertwined with each other, meaning that what is
described is not neutral observation, but a socio-culturally constructed
visuality (à⏵Visuality).
Pointing towards the concept of an expanded contact zone (à⏵Expanded
Contact Zone), this object distinguishes itself from the others in this volume
as it transcends the more traditional notions of the object as material and
visual—especially within the discipline of art history. The narrative, which
takes the form of a phenomenological exploration, is here approached
from a perspective of cultural analysis that aims to unhinge established
relations in order to point towards alternative relationalities and methodologies. Bridging the apparent disparity of this object, it is the notion of
visuality that serves as the starting point for our discussion of The Voices of
Marrakesh. The very title of the book emphasizes hearing rather than seeing, and throughout its chapters the visual and the aural are continuously
foregrounded and juxtaposed, pointing to an awareness of the cultural pitfalls of sight while simultaneously offering a counter model. The Voices of
Marrakesh incorporates, thematizes and explores the status of objecthood
on a more abstract level, enacting both its own and its object’s cultural and
historical entanglement.
1
2
3
It was first published in German as Die Stimmen von Marrakesh: Aufzeichnungen
nach einer Reise and appeared in English in 1978.
Morocco would regain its independence just a year after the events described in
the book.
For an extensive overview, see Görbert 2009 and 2012; for a discussion considering issues of interculturality, see Durzak 2013, and Fetz 2009.
198
BETWEEN THE VISUAL AND THE AURAL: ELIAS CANETTI’S THE VOICES OF MARRAKESH
Visuality is closely linked to power structures. Especially in colonial contexts, the visualization of a colony through, say, travel writing is an “imaginary, rather than perceptual” process which entails the manifestation
of “the authority of the visualizer” located in the alleged cultural center
(Mirzoeff 2011, 2). This can be glimpsed in the chapter “The Dahan Family”,
when Canetti meets the aunt of Élie, a young man he encountered: “She
put me in mind at first glance of the kind of Oriental women Delacroix
painted. She had the same elongated and yet full face, the same eyes, the
same straight, slightly overlong nose” (1978 [1967], 67–68). This reference
to the painter Delacroix testifies to the workings of imperial visualization,
revealing Canetti’s own vision as constructed. Delacroix, whose paintings
are generally thought to be accurate depictions of what he saw, in fact
often painted from memory and pursued a literary aesthetic ideal (Noon
2015, 27). North Africa was thus regarded as a source for narrative material that implicitly produced a cultural hierarchy, one ultimately taking the
form of the imaginary (à⏵Orientalism). Canetti acknowledges this by referring to an instance of such an aesthetic ideal.
A kind of assimilatory reversal of this notion occurs in the second chapter when Canetti visits the souks: “Their activity is public, displaying itself
the same way as the finished goods” (1978, 19–20, emphasis original). The
narrator is amazed by all the goods the market offers and describes how
the trading itself becomes an object on display. He continues by drawing
a comparison: “In a society that conceals so much, that keeps the interior of its houses, the figures and faces of its women, and even its places
of worship jealously hidden from foreigners, this greater openness with
regard to what is manufactured and sold is doubly seductive” (1978, 20).
Canetti highlights the visibility of the open and explains how it is in fact
the visible itself that is enticing. What is more, he is wary of the fact that
what he sees is a (self-) representational staging of goods for visitors: It is
imaginary. What happens at the market is thus a broadly defined visuality:
“[…] the ways in which both what is seen and how it is seen are culturally
constructed” (Rose 2012, 2). Canetti questions the visible he is offered, for
he realizes its artificiality as visuality.
In offering itself, the open thus stands in stark contrast to the hidden
in the city of Marrakesh. While “neither doors nor windows” obscure the
visitor’s gaze in the streets, “[t]he houses are like walls” (Canetti 1978, 20,
35). What is inside is isolated and hidden. The availability and perceptibility
of the city is therefore discontinuous and fragmentary (à⏵Fragment). The
Voices of Marrakesh mirrors this in its structure, for each of the fourteen
narrative threads is a fragment, a totality in itself but characterized by
a discontinuous relationship to the whole. It is not meant to represent the
whole, but rather a facet of what Canetti has encountered there, revealing
him as the perceiver. Sibel Bozdoğan (1988, 41) calls such an approach
an “experiential sequence” (à⏵Affect). Referring to Le Corbusier’s Voyage
d’Orient, she explains that “[h]is primary preoccupation is less the Orient
than the harmony of place and time and the understanding of his own
199
ISABELLA KRAYER
self in it” (1988, 38). This also applies to The Voices of Marrakesh, as Canetti
thinks about the city rather than picturing it. Through the discontinuous,
he considers both his relation to the city and the manner of representing
it. Thus, the spatio-temporal discontinuity that constitutes the city meshes
with visuality, as the impossibility to perceive a totality is acknowledged.
While Bozdoğan (1988) refers to a visual source, Canetti takes this
notion a step further and away from the visual. This is already suggested
by his verbal description of Marrakesh, which effectively creates a tension
between verbalization and visualization. By making voices central to the
title of his book, moreover, Canetti points to sound as offering an alternative, immediate, and subject-related mode of perception, thereby implying
a critique of the predominance of the visual. Because sight does not require
“incorporation [of] or a physical contact” to its object, it is considered to be
the most objective sense; linked to rationality, it involves a hierarchization
of the perceiver and the perceived (Hertel 2016, 184). By contrast, Hannah
B. Higgins (2017, 218) puts forward the notion that sound is not so much
associated with “translation or interpretation” as itself a thing to be perceived. This idea is conveyed when Canetti encounters the blind (“The Cries
of the Blind”): “I wanted to lose none of the force of those foreign-sounding
cries. I wanted sounds to affect me as much as lay in their power, unmitigated by deficient and artificial knowledge on my part” (1978, 23). Here, he
realizes the immediacy of perception potentially inherent in hearing that
is affective rather than illuminative. Yet, even though he refuses to understand the Arabic or Berber languages, “the word ‘Allah’ remain[s]” (1978,
23), providing him with his most pervasive experience:
They begin with God, they end with God, they repeat God’s name ten
thousand times a day. […] The calls are like acoustical arabesques
around God, but how much more impressive than optical ones. […]
Repetition of the same cry characterizes the crier. You commit him
to memory, you know him, from now on he is there; and he is there
in a sharply defined capacity: in his cry. You will learn no more from
him; he shields himself, his cry being also his border. […] But the cry
is also a multiplication; the rapid, regular repetition makes of him
a group (1978, 24).
It is in this encounter that the tensions between vision, knowledge, and language become evident (à⏵Expanded Contact Zone). The blind are deprived
of their vision and reduce themselves to the aural and the transcendental; and they do so in an organic, infinitely expandable manner that both
defines and augments them. Their cries are perceived as an approximation to God taking the abstract form of an ornament. The directness of
the aural thus allows for absorption and experience, for interpretation,
however, only after the fact. In describing the above, Canetti exemplifies
how the blind men’s aggrandizement of God becomes an abstraction transcending meaning.
200
BETWEEN THE VISUAL AND THE AURAL: ELIAS CANETTI’S THE VOICES OF MARRAKESH
In Die Provinz des Menschen (first published in German in 1973 and in English as The Human Province in 1978), Canetti notes after his return from Marrakesh that “Since my trip, a number of words have been charged with so
much new meaning that I can’t utter them without provoking major turmoil
inside myself” (Canetti 1993, 199). He speaks of meaning language cannot
grasp, for the experiences in Marrakesh have unhinged familiar meanings
and conventions. As a representational medium, then, language is reevaluated, and the mode of perception is questioned insofar as the dominance
of the visual is destabilized. In this regard, The Voices of Marrakesh anticipates postcolonial writing in being marked by a sensory focus that counters
the visual and disrupts literary genre conventions (Hertel 2016, 192). Voices
belong to individuals; they are polyphonic and perceived not as detached
but as immediate. It is this immediacy that reveals—albeit often from
within—the pitfalls of a visuality which, tellingly, emerged precisely in order
to overcome great distances. The focus on the other senses as exhibited in
The Voices of Marrakesh thus points towards a decentering of visuality with
the promise of creating a balance in which the subject and its relation to
its surroundings is foregrounded, in order to allow meaning to proliferate.
Figure
Fig. 1: Photo: Isabella Krayer.
References
Bozdoğan, Sibel. 1988. “Journey to the East: Ways of Looking at the Orient and the
Question of Representation.” Journal of Architectural Education. 41 (4): 38–45.
Canetti, Elias. 1978 [1973]. The Human Province. New York: Seabury Press.
———. 1978 [1967]. The Voices of Marrakesh: A Record of a Visit. London: Marion
Boyars.
Durzak, Manfred. 2013. Literatur im interkulturellen Kontext. Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann.
Fetz, Bernhard. 2009. Das unmögliche Ganze: Zur literarischen Kritik der Kultur.
Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
Görbert, Johannes. 2009. Poetik und Kulturdiagnostik: Zu Elias Canettis ‘Die Stimmen
von Marrakesch’, Schriftenreihe der Elias Canetti Gesellschaft, vol. 6.
St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag.
———. 2012. “Im Kreuzfeuer der Kritik. Elias Canettis Die Stimmen von Marrakesch
als Prüfstein für (post-)kolonialistische Grundfragen.” In Akten des XII: Internationalen Germanistikkongresses, Warschau 2010: Vielheit und Einheit der
Germanistik weltweit, edited by Franciszek Grucza and Jianhua Zhu, 95–104.
Frankfurt a. M.: Lang.
Hertel, Ralf. 2016. “The Senses in Literature: From Modernist Shock of Sensation
to Postcolonial and Virtual Voices.” In A Cultural History of the Senses in
201
ISABELLA KRAYER
the Modern Age, edited by David Howes, 173–194. London: Bloomsbury
Academic.
Higgins, Hannah B. 2017. “The Eyes Have Ears: Sound in W.J.T. Mitchell’s Iconology
as Political Philosophy.” In W.J.T. Mitchell’s Image Theory, edited by Krešimir
Purgar, 213–234. London: Routledge.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2011. The Right to Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Noon, Patrick. 2015. “What is Delacroix?” In Delacroix and the Rise of Modern Art,
edited by Patrick Noon and Christopher Riopelle, 13–35. London: National
Gallery Company.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 2008. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. 2nd and
rev. ed. London: Routledge.
Rose, Gillian. 2012. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual
Materials. 3rd ed. London: SAGE Publications.
202
Key-Terms
Affect
In recent years, the “affective turn” in
the humanities and social sciences has
involved a focus on affects and emotions in scholarly analysis. Theoretical
approaches and definitions in the fields
of emotion research and affect studies
are, of course, many and diverse (see
Gregg and Seigworth 2010). In general,
a new awareness of affect seems to have
gained in relevance in the twentieth
century under the influence of global
mediatization and exchange, mobility,
and migration.1 While affectivity and
emotionality, to date, have not played
a major role in art history, a growing
body of work combining affect studies
with postcolonial studies—for example
the writings of Sarah Ahmed—inspires
a transcultural perspective in art historical research and renders affect and
emotion relevant as categories.
Objects in the contact zone are obviously linked to affective and emotional
processes, practices, and politics, as
can be paradigmatically shown in the
field of photography, a central medium
of modern transculturality. Recent
research in photography studies points
to the importance of both the affective
turn and the material turn to exploring the history of the photographic
image. Those “turns” have contributed
significantly to larger debates about
the understanding of photographs as
three-dimensional tactile and visual
objects in their own right, as bearers
of embodied and lived experience and
emotions as well as of knowledge, in
addition to the representational quality of the photographic image, i.e. its
notion of indexical, experiential, and
evidential truth (Geismar and Morton
2015). Tactile values of photographs are
emphasized with reference to photography’s literal origin of “light-writing,”
which generates the polarity of vision
and touch in their ability to activate
and perform relations between human
beings and communities (Olin 2012).
At the same time, the affective
dynamics of digital photography and
its global distribution through social
media also became a subject for
research (Andén-Papadopoulos 2014;
Schankweiler 2016). Here, the focus
is not on tactile values but on online
image practices (liking, sharing, and
commenting). Photographs, or images
in general, seem to play a crucial role
in the “affective economies” (Ahmed
2004) of the present age and for networks of social relations. Relationships,
affects, and emotions lend images
their importance and meaning. Due
to their widespread circulation across
cultures and nations, transcultural
aspects are obviously inscribed into
photographs—be it the digital image
of today or the photographic object in,
say, colonial times (Poole 1997). The
relationship of photography and affect
“indicates a matrix of the subjectivities
of experience, embodiment and emotion of all parties of the anthropological encounter—both observer and
observed, as they intersect” (Edwards
2015)—especially with regard to the
social lives of photographs in cross-cultural and non-Western contexts and
the asymmetrical power relations in
colonial settings where photographic
objects serve as a medium of social
interactions and cross-cultural or,
indeed, colonial encounters (Edwards
2015).
Anna Sophia Messner
Kerstin Schankweiler
ENDNOTE
1 See the work of the CRC 1171 “Affective Societies” at the Freie Universität Berlin.
REFERENCES
Ahmed, Sara. 2004. “Affective Economies.” Social Text 22 (2): 117–139.
Andén-Papadopoulos, Kari. 2014. “Citizen Camera-Witnessing: Embodied
Political Dissent in the Age of Mediated Mass Self-Communication.”
New Media Society, 16 (5): 753–769.
Edwards, Elizabeth. 2015. “Anthropology and Photography: A Long
History of Knowledge and Affect.”
Photographies, 8 (3): 235–252.
2021. “Key-Terms.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria
Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 205–251. Heidelberg
Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10426
205
KEY-TERMS
Geismar, Haidy, and Christopher
Morton. 2015. “Introduction.” Photographies, 8 (3): 231–233.
Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory J.
Seigworth, eds. 2010. The Affect
Theory Reader. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Olin, Margaret. 2012. “Introduction:
Tactile Looking.” In Touching
Photographs, edited by Margaret
Olin, 1–20. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Poole, Deborah. 1997. Vision, Race, and
Modernity: A Visual Economy of the
Andean Image World. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Schankweiler, Kerstin. 2016. “Affektive
Dynamiken von Bildern in Zeiten
von Social Media. Bildzeugenschaften aus Ägypten 2010–2013”, kritische berichte 44 (1): 72–85.
Agency
The definition of agency has become
a key site of methodological contention within the humanities and social
sciences. Traditionally reserved for
human actors, theorists have sought to
broaden the term’s parameters, thereby
challenging the dominance of the ‘Liberal Humanist Subject’ in academic
scholarship, and circumventing the
racial and sexual prejudices that have
historically informed the idea of agenthood in ‘Western’ philosophy.
In art history, the notion of nonhuman agents has been influential
since the publication of Alfred Gell’s Art
and Agency: An Anthropological Theory
(1998). In this work, Gell devalued the
importance of aesthetics and semiosis, and privileged instead the manner
in which art objects function causally
within society. His account is premised
on four key terms—or structural positions—that configure what he defined
as the “art nexus”: The artist; the index
(work of art); the prototype (the ‘real’
object represented); and the recipient
(beholder). Each of these positions can
206
function as an “agent,” or a causal actor,
as well as the object on which an agent
acts, which Gell calls the “patient.” The
various combination of these structural
positions affords multiple “art-like situations.” Gell’s aim was to avoid appealing
to systems of cultural convention when
interpreting art objects, and to achieve
an understanding of art “as a system of
action, intended to change the world
rather than encode symbolic propositions about it” (Gell 1998, 6).
Gell’s approach complemented a
range of art-historical studies focused
on the ways that people have historically
engaged with inanimate objects as if
they were living beings (Freedberg 1989;
Belting 1990; Mitchell 2004; van Eck
2015). Nevertheless, such scholars have
frequently stressed how the ‘experience’
of the aesthetic is crucial to understanding how objects have exercised agency
over beholders, whilst equally asserting
the importance of historically specific
cultural conventions in shaping aesthetic
affect—thus contradicting Gell’s insistent
calls to minimize the importance of these
very issues (Layton 2003; Osborne and
Tanner 2007). Most significantly, Gell’s
approach essentially precludes several
of the discipline’s more traditional concerns, particularly the histories of stylistic
and iconographic change. Art historians
who have sought to apply Gell’s methodology have frequently struggled to avoid
exploring the ways “cultural frameworks”
inform how art objects were produced or
received. Most applications of Gell’s theory thus reorient art-historical analysis
towards the political nature of art and
the power dynamics it mediated within
social structures, rather than fundamentally realigning the ontological or epistemological bases on which traditional art
history is conducted.
The last two decades of art-historical
scholarship have also been influenced
by a radical rethinking of agency within
posthumanist and new materialist scholarship. The term ‘critical posthumanism’
denotes a collection of approaches that
emphasize the agency and responsiveness of non-human actors, both natural and artificial. The field has been
dominated by Bruno Latour, whose
ALLELOPOIESIS
actor-network theory deconstructed the
logic of the “Humanist agent” by examining the agency of various non-human
“actants” (Latour 2005). Similar concerns
are shared by new materialists such as
Rosi Braidotti and Jane Bennett, who
have drawn upon the philosophies of
Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Deleuze and
Gauttari in order to attribute “agentic capacities” not only to non-human
actors, but to inanimate matter more
generally—conceptualizing nature as
possessing an “autopoietic,” agentive
life force, despite its lack of “soul” or
“mind” (Braidotti 2013; Bennett 2010). As
the title of Latour’s actor-network theory
implies, critical posthumanist and new
materialist approaches largely conceive
of agency as “distributed” within a network or “assemblage” (Latour 2005).
The ‘liberal humanist subject’ is deconstructed by asserting the supposed
fallacy of ‘autonomous’ action, and
emphasising instead the ‘collaborative’
constitution of agency.
This redefinition of agency has
significant potential for transcultural
studies of art. “Distributed” accounts
of agency undermine the rationale for
examining an artist’s primary intentions,
and instead lend theoretical weight to
studies focused on the various meanings an art object can accrue within multiple social relationships. Consequently,
an object’s ‘meaning,’ as well as its
capacity to affect society, can be conceptualized as distributed across time and
space—produced as it travels within, or
between, “contact zones” (Pratt 1991;
⏵
à Expanded Contact Zone). In this paradigm, ‘reading’ an object becomes a matter of recognising the multiple “agentic
capacities” that have come to bear on
a work of art’s inception, production,
and reception, thereby uncovering what
Arjun Appadurai has termed the object’s
“social life” (Appadurai 1986).
Tom Young
REFERENCES
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986. The Social
Life of Things: Commodities in
Cultural Perspective. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Belting, Hans. 1994. Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before
the Era of Art. London: University of
Chicago Press.
Bennett, Jane. 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The Posthuman.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
van Eck, Caroline. 2015. Art, Agency, and
Living Presence: From the Animated
Image to the Excessive Object. Berlin:
De Gruyter.
Freedberg, David. 1989. The Power of
Images: Studies in the History and
Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An
Anthropological Theory. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling
the Social: An Introduction to ActorNetwork-Theory. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Layton, Robert. 2003. “Art and Agency:
A Reassessment.” The Journal of the
Royal Anthropological Institute, 9 (3),
(September, 2003), 447–464.
Mitchell, W. J. T. 2005. What do Pictures
Want? The Lives and Loves of Images.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Osborne, Robin, and Jeremy Tanner,
eds. 2001. Art’s Agency and Art History. Oxford: Blackwell.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1991. “Arts of the
Contact Zone.” Profession: 33–40.
Allelopoiesis
The term “allelopoiesis” was introduced by the Berlin-based research
group “Transformationen der Antike”
(SFB 644, active between 2005 and
2016). The neologism combines the
Greek words allelon (mutual, reciprocal) and poiesis (produce, create) and
denotes the interdependent relationship between ancient and post-ancient
cultures (Helmrath, Hausteiner, and
Jensen 2017). The term was coined
as part of an attempt at widening the
207
KEY-TERMS
concept and study of “reception.” To
this end, allelopoiesis is meant to shift
the emphasis from the horizon of the
reception sphere to the reciprocal relationship between ancient and postancient eras. The term is an expression
of the ways that the active and selective
engagement with ancient ideas and
sources has shaped the very definition
of “antiquity.” Hartmut Böhme (2011)
uses the concept in his discussion of the
mutual influence between Freud and
Aristotle. Aristotle, Böhme admits, was
not a psychoanalyst, but after Freud,
psychoanalytical models have become
so prevalent in literary analysis that any
reading of Aristotle will recognize the
philosopher’s arguments as following
a psychoanalytical framework. Aristotle’s writing influenced Freud, but the
post-Freudian Aristotle has become
increasingly psychoanalytical.
The term “allelopoiesis” reflects an
effort within cultural studies, increasingly prevalent since the 2010s, to introduce terms that stress non-hierarchical
and non-linear relations of influence. A
comparable term is the Swedish concept of “antikbruk,” meaning “use of
antiquity” (Siapkas and Iordanoglou
2011, 9–42; Siapkas 2017). Like allelopoiesis, antikbruk refers to the modern
interests that shape approaches to
the—mostly material—past. Allelopoiesis and antikbruk are terms by means
of which academic discussions can
avoid being constrained by questions of
correct responses to ancient originals.
Instead, they provide a vocabulary with
which to discuss post-ancient investments and ideologies that have shaped
our notion of antiquity.
In line with this, the term “allelopoiesis” could also offer a way to consider
the influence of classical scholarship on
post-colonial studies. The very notion
that culture is something that can be
studied was shaped by early European
scholarly approaches to antiquity. The
possibility of a receiving culture shaping the perception of the culture it
observes or responds to is of particular
relevance to cultural studies. The term
also provides a way to describe the process through which modern (Western)
208
cultures have used the foil of cultural or
historical “others” to define themselves
(àà⏵Othering).
Frederika Tevebring
REFERENCES
Böhme, Hartmut. 2011. “Die Antike
‘nach’ Freud. ” In Freud und die
Antike, edited by Claudia Benthien,
Hartmut Böhme, and Inge Stephan,
423–459. Göttingen: Wallstein.
Helmrath, Johannes, Eva Marlene
Hausteiner, and Ulf Jensen. 2017.
Antike als Transformation, Konzepte
zur Beschreibung kulturellen Wandels. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Siapkas, Johannes, and Dimitrios
Iordanoglou. 2011. G(l)ömda
historier: Klassiska normer och
antik kritik. Uppsala: Centrum för
genusvetenskap.
Siapkas, Johannes. 2017. Antikvetenskapens teoretiska landskap Volym I:
Från Laokoon till Troja. Lund, Nordic
Academic Press [forthcoming in
English translation].
Appropriation
The term “appropriation” refers to
modes of taking possession, of making something one’s own; as such, it is
a relational term indicating that something is taken from one group or person
and comes to belong to or be the property of another. Appropriation can be
physical, intellectual, or symbolic, and
can be considered an essential aspect
of the dynamics of transcultural interactions and the tension between “own”
and “foreign.”
Its value as a concept is related to
the broad range of phenomena it can
refer to, from outright stealing to the
most complex issues of artistic and
epistemic authorship and transcultural exchange. Generally understood
in opposition to assimilation, it can be
seen as “a process whereby dominant
groups may be criticized and challenged
APPROPRIATION
when they borrow the cultural forms
associated with subordinate groups”
(Ziff and Rao 1997, 7). It can thus be
used to indicate brutal exploitation and
hegemonic dominance. This political
usage has tended to consider appropriation as a way of reinforcing existing power structures and, thus, to deal
with cultures and artistic realizations as
closed systems. This has led to a preference for such terms as “hybridization”
or “transculturation” in the description
of cultural dynamics, but with the loss
of emphasis on power asymmetries.
Yet, the term “appropriation” in our
understanding, because it focuses on
power relations, can also point to their
potential reevaluation. In this sense,
appropriation describes both a practice
and a strategy that contributes to creating new or subverting pre-existing
power dynamics. Arnd Schneider
observes that one key advantage of the
term, especially in transcultural analyses, is its capacity to situate us at the
level of collective and individual actions:
“The focus on appropriation, as an individual strategy and practice, is required
in order to recalibrate theories of globalization and hybridization, which do
not sufficiently focus on individual practices” (Schneider 2006, 19). Robert S.
Nelson established appropriation as
a critical term for art history (Nelson
2003) and stressed its usefulness, especially when compared to traditional art
historical (“power-neutral”) terms like
“influence” or “borrowings”: “Taken positively or pejoratively, appropriation is
not passive, objective, or disinterested,
but active, subjective, and motivated”
(Nelson 2003, 162).
For this discussion, we explicitly
connect the notion of appropriation
to material objects—as a concept
for transcultural art history, material
appropriation can be seen to represent many levels of social and cultural
relations. Hans Peter Hahn identifies
different elements in the process of
the appropriation of things (acquisition / adoption, material and cultural
transformation, (re)qualification, incorporation, tradition making [Hahn 2005,
103]) and describes it as a spectrum
of actions that can be taken, ranging
from mere usage to complete metamorphosis. As such, appropriation has
been part of an avant-garde repertoire
of artistic strategies at least since the
beginning of the twentieth century. In
the 1980s, “appropriation art” became
a style in its own right within American conceptual art, one focusing on
working with copies and quotations,
sampling or paraphrasing existing art
works to reflect on concepts such as
originality, innovation, and authenticity,
and questioning value systems such as
the canon of art history. In transcultural
contexts, appropriation practices similarly allow for the confrontation of different value systems and the subversive
questioning of cultural standards in the
global art system.
Physical displacement as part of collecting and display practices represents
another set of appropriation processes
(or practices) and a research field of
transcultural art history. It is essential to understanding the dynamics,
desires, and politics of art collecting and
ownership, be it private or public, and
particularly the formation of “universal”
collections that have brought together
material objects from different cultures.
Since the 1980s, an ever-recurrent
debate on “Whose culture?” (Appiah
2009) has questioned the legitimacy of
the holdings of major archaeological
and anthropological collections, producing both positive and negative narratives of appropriation. The notion of
such museums as sites for transcultural
exchange and encounter has been proposed in contrast to the metaphor of the
“cannibal museum” (Gonseth, Hainard,
and Kaehr 2002). These debates imply
that ownership is no longer considered
a neutral state and issues of physical
appropriation have merged with the
notion of cultural appropriation.
The notion of appropriation is a
key term for transcultural art history
and its examination of objects in the
contact zone, because it articulates difference. The decontextualization and
recontextualization inherent to appropriation practices opens up new meanings whose analysis helps to identify
209
KEY-TERMS
changes in relational dynamics across
social, cultural, and political spheres.
Felicity Bodenstein
Kerstin Schankweiler
REFERENCES
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 2009. “Whose
Culture Is It?” In Whose Culture? The
Promise of Museums and the Debate
over Antiquities, edited by James B.
Cuno, 71–86. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Gonseth, Marc-Olivier, Jacques Hainard,
and Ronald Kaehr. 2002. Le musée
cannibal. Neuchâtel: Musée
d’ethnographie.
Hahn, Hans Peter. 2005. Materielle Kultur: Eine Einführung. Berlin: Reimer.
Nelson, Robert S. 2003. “Appropriation.”
In Critical Terms for Art History, 2nd
ed., edited by Robert S. Nelson and
Richard Shiff, 160–173. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Schneider, Arnd. 2003. “On ‘Appropriation.’ A Critical Reappraisal of
the Concept and its Application in
Global Art Practices.” Social Anthropology 11 (2): 215–229.
———. 2006. Appropriation as Practice:
Art and Identity in Argentina. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ziff, Bruce H., and Pratima V. Rao. 1997.
Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural
Appropriation. New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press.
Canon
In philology, the history of literature, and theology, the concept of the
“canon” goes back to late antiquity.
It describes a certain set or body of
texts that is regarded as normative or
defining. In parallel, art criticism and
art history developed a body of artists
and works that are considered very
influential and the “backbone” or “core”
of art. The canon thus creates a selfaffirming notion of “greatness” or of
certain formal and social norms linked
210
to the question of what is art and who is
to be considered an artist. Accordingly,
the concept of the canon is intrinsically
tied to the empirical database of art
history as well as to the value assignments of the discipline. More recently,
art history has developed a more critical and dynamic take on the canon,
emphasizing that it has never been
truly stable and defined, but shaped
by transnational, transcultural, or historical dynamics (Locher 2012). This
critical approach was already adumbrated in postcolonial positions that
drew attention to the exclusive implications of Eurocentric canon formation
(Mitter 2013 [1977]). Around the same
time, feminist art history began to criticize androcentric categories resulting
from the often self-affirmative circular
reasoning of canon concepts (see e.g.
Nochlin 1988; Troelenberg 2017). This
went hand in hand with critical feminist
artistic interventions that pointed out
racial and gender inequality in the art
and museum world (see, for example,
https://www.guerrillagirls.com/).
In the visual arts, there is not only
this notion of the canon as an empirical body or data set, but also a different, though closely related concept.
The term “canonical” can also imply
a sense of measure, proportion, and
interrelation. In the history of art and
architecture, it was used especially
during the Renaissance with reference to the work of the ancient Greek
sculptor Polykleitos and has ever since
been applied with a focus on a mimetic
approach to the human body, its relation to both the natural world and the
built environment as well as in theories
of ideal proportion and imitation. Particularly before the advent of abstraction, this sense of measure has served
as one of the benchmarks of “great art”
within the empirical canon. Because
mimesis and imitation have been a
primary concern in Western art traditions, but less so in non-European cultures, this notion of a canon has often
been identified as an anti-modern
and / or Eurocentric category, not just
with regard to the subject but also to
the manner of representation. One
CIRCULATION
reaction to this has been the formation
of alternative or complementary canons (e.g. Iskin 2017; see also à⏵M
ultiple
Modernities). Considered in purely
methodological terms, the concept of
the canon can thus be a very dynamic
one, as it tells us something about the
relation of parts to the whole or to one
another. Hence it is not surprising that,
as an epistemic concept, it entered the
fields of musicology, logics, and ethics
where it was now no longer understood
as a merely technical, but as a conceptual “guideline” that is responsive to
historical change. Accordingly, canon
critique doesn’t necessarily imply the
revision or abolishment of historical
canons, but rather a potential openness
to expansion in empirical, formal, and
methodological terms. A critical assessment of canons and canonical thinking
can be a very viable function of a discipline now shaped by a post-structuralist, post-modern, and post-colonial
history of ideas: Issues such as the relation of parts to the whole, the question
of measure, of variety and unity, or
variety within unity, are immanent to
the concept of the canon. At the same
time, they resonate with some of the
most vividly debated demarcation lines
of cross-cultural art history.
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
REFERENCES
Iskin, Ruth E. 2017. Re-envisioning the
Contemporary Art Canon: Perspectives in a Global World. London:
Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
Locher, Hubert. 2012. “The Idea of
the Canon and Canon Formation
in Art History.” In Art History and
Visual Studies in Europe, edited by
Matthew Rampley, Thierry Lenain,
Hubert Locher, Andrea Pinotti,
Charlotte Schoell-Glass, and Kitty
Zijlmans, 29–40. Leiden: Brill.
Mitter, Partha. 2013 [1977]. Much
Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art. New
Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Nochlin, Linda. 1988. “Why Have There
Been No Great Woman Artists?”
In Linda Nochlin, Women, Art, and
Power and Other Essays, 145–178.
Boulder: Westview Press.
Troelenberg, Eva-Maria. 2017.
“Post-Greatness, oder: Zur Epigenetik der Kunstwissenschaft.“ In
Faktor X – das Chromosom der Kunst,
edited by Albert Coers and Alex
de Vries, 74–80. Berlin: Revolver
Publishing.
Circulation
The term “circulation” signifies the
movement (cyclical, circular, or otherwise) of objects, images, ideas,
materials, and people across cultural,
temporal, and spatial borders. Circulatory patterns and the objects that
occupy them, therefore, connect seemingly disparate social, political, cultural,
and religious spheres as well as vast
territories of land. As such, circulation
establishes and facilitates cross-cultural
contact zones. It is critical to understand the multiple dimensions of materiality involved in such exchange as well
as how materials move through time
and across space. In this way, the state
of transit—how, where, when, and why
things circulated and not only that they
did—emerges as fundamental when
considering objects in the contact zone.
Moreover, this element of portability, as
Jennifer Roberts suggests, is integral to
the historical, social, and spatial context
in which these works circulated (2014).
Such emphasis on passage and mobility within the framework of the contact
zone—particularly for photographic
material that is most often printed,
pocketed, and reproduced repeatedly—
encourages a reading of these objects
as legible (or illegible) in various cultural settings and puts them in dialogue
with each other allowing for exchange
across land, space, and time. Arjun
Appadurai’s model provides an important and useful “new perspective on the
circulation of commodities in social life
[…] [that] focuses on the things that are
exchanged, rather than simply on the
211
KEY-TERMS
forms or functions of the exchange”
(Appadurai 2016, 3; Gell 1998).
Particularly in the field of Islamic
art history, scholars have addressed
patterns and pathways of portability as
early as the Medieval period. This historic assessment of global networks,
particularly through gift and diplomatic
exchange across the body of the Mediterranean, sheds light on the transnational movement of objects, ideas, and
imagery (Fetvacı 2013; Hoffman 2007;
Necipoğlu 2000; Rothman 2014). Later,
circulation shifted with the changing
nature of mobility in the eighteenth and
nineteenth century due to industrialization, the rise in capitalism, and the
grand scale of trade and traffic (Bahrani,
Çelik and Eldem 2011; Ersoy 2015; Fraser
2017; Hamadeh 2008; Micklewright
2003; Roberts 2015). This is especially
true for printed media developed during
this modern period. For photography,
lithography, the illustrated press, and
the postcard, the migratory experience
is central to their nature as mechanically produced objects. By looking at
the migration of images and ideas both
inside and outside of capital centers, we
can ask questions about a shared visual
language (or languages) and thus form a
more broad-based analysis of collective
(although not monolithic) experience.
This “decentered” approach to circulation presupposes connections and
relationships beyond national borders
or capital centers, and in turn, builds
bridges to other areas of art historical
inquiry and theoretical investigation.
In the digital era, the notion of circulation (online, in social networks etc.) has
become highly topical and moves away
from an object and material-centered
approach to travel and migration.
Erin Hyde Nolan
REFERENCES
Appadurai, Arjun. 2016. The Social Life
of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bahrani, Zainab, Zeynep Çelik, and
Edhem Eldem. 2011. Scramble for
the Past: A Story of Archaeology in
212
the Ottoman Empire, 1753–1914.
Istanbul: SALT.
Ersoy, Ahmet. 2015. Architecture and the
Late Ottoman Historical Imaginary:
Reconfiguring the Architectural Past
in a Modernizing Empire. Burlington:
Ashgate.
Fetvacı, Emine. 2013. “From Print to
Trace: An Otto- man Imperial Portrait Book and Its Western European Models.” The Art Bulletin 95 (2):
243–268.
Gell, Alfred. 1998. Art and Agency: An
Anthropological Theory. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Fraser, Elisabeth A. 2017. Mediterranean
Encounters: Artists between Europe
and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839.
University Park: The Pennsylvania
State University Press.
Hamadeh, Shirine. 2008. The City’s
Pleasures: Istanbul in the Eighteenth
Century. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.
Hoffman, Eva R. 2007. “Pathways of
Portability: Islamic and Christian Interchange from the Tenth
to the Twelfth Century.” In Late
Antique and Medieval Art of the
Mediterranean World, edited by
Eva R. Hoffman, 317–349. Malden:
Blackwell Publishing.
Micklewright, Nancy. 2003. A Victorian
Traveler in the Middle East: The Photography and Travel Writing of Annie
Lady Brassey. Aldershot: Ashgate.
Necipoğlu, Gülru. 2000. “Word and
Image: The Serial Portraits of
Ottoman Sultans in Comparative
Perspective.” In The Sultan’s Portrait:
Picturing the House of Osman, edited
by Selmin Kangal, 22–61. Istanbul:
İşbank.
Roberts, Jennifer L. 2014. Transporting
Visions: The Movement of Images in
Early America. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Roberts, Mary. 2015. Istanbul Exchanges:
Ottomans, Orientalists, and Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Rothman, E. N. 2014. Brokering Empire:
Trans-imperial Subjects between
Venice and Istanbul. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
COMMODIFICATION
Commodification
Commodification refers to the process by which an (art) object comes to
acquire the status of commodity, one
that allows it to be exchanged for a
price that is negotiated by a variety of
actors. It can be considered in opposition to relational processes such as
gifting; commodities themselves can
be defined by contrast to inalienable
objects and gifts, categories in turn
defined by the fact that they are outside of circuits of commercial exchange
and serve interpersonal relationships
or civic purposes. Following the supply
and demand of the market, commodification processes typically involve a
decontextualization or disembedding
of objects as well as their appropriation (àà⏵Appropriation) in new contexts,
deeply affecting the meanings and the
interpretations that determine the values attributed to such (art) objects.
Though rooted in Marxist conceptions of the commodity, the expansion
of the noun to define a process is quite
recent, and as an operational term in
cultural studies and art history, commodification
gained
considerable
attention from the volume of essays,
The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Appadurai
1986), that was largely responsible
for establishing the study of commercial object value beyond Marxist
issues of production and work value.
Art in particular, but also luxury goods
have proven extremely important for
anthropologists and sociologists in
developing a better understanding of
the constructed nature of capitalist
value-making processes. The economy based on the increase of an art
or heritage object’s value was recently
defined by Boltanski and Esquerre
as “enrichment”: A collection process that does not produce anything
new but rather “enriches” things that
already exist, principally by associating them with narratives that tend to
affirm their singularity (Boltanski and
Esquerre 2017, 11).
Objects that circulate in the international art and antiquities markets lead
imminently transcultural lives that can
be observed in the practices and strategies that seek to augment their value
by responding to the tastes and imaginaries of potential buyers often farremoved from their place of production.
These include aesthetic and epistemic
revalorizations or, indeed, transformations of their materiality, for example
through restorations that change their
physical aspect.
The discretion with which commodification processes and related
commercial gains are dealt with in art
history, archaeology, or anthropology
can be seen as generally characteristic of the working of the art market
itself (Bourdieu 1977, 4). In the last two
decades, however, art market studies
have thrived, and a growing body of
work has begun to deal with the history of trade in rare and prestigious
art objects as an integral part of the
global turn (Dacosta Kaufmann, Dossin
et al. 2016; De Marchi and Van Miegroet
2006; Phillips and Steiner 1999).
Another aspect of the commodification of art and culture that has
received increasing attention is related
not so much to the displacement and
the trajectories of traded objects as
to the movement of persons in the
growing tourist industry (KirshenblattGimblett 1997; Errington 1998) and
how it produces conditions not just for
new forms of transcultural exchange
but also for cultural essentialism
(Comaroff and Comaroff 2009). It has
become increasingly clear that issues
of cultural representation, exoticization, and authenticity cannot be understood without taking into account the
strategic role of such phenomena in
commercial strategies (MacCannell
2013).
Felicity Bodenstein
REFERENCES
Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. The Social Life
of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
213
KEY-TERMS
Boltanski, Luc, and Arnaud Esquerre.
2017. Enrichissement: Une critique de
la marchandise. Paris: Gallimard.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. “La production de la croyance.” Actes de la
recherche en sciences sociales 13
(1): 3–43.
Comaroff, John L., and Jean Comaroff.
2009. Ethnicity, Inc. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dacosta Kaufmann, Thomas,
Catherine Dossin, and Béatrice
Joyeux-Prunel, eds. 2016. Circulations in the Global History of Art.
London: Routledge.
De Marchi, Neil and Hans J. Van
Miegroet. 2006. Mapping Markets
for Paintings in Europe 1450–1750.
Turnhout: Brepols.
Errington, Shelly. 1998. The Death of
Authentic Primitive Art and Other
Tales of Progress. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1998.
Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums and Heritage. Berkeley: University of California Press.
MacCannell, Dean. 2013. The Tourist:
A New Theory of the Leisure Class.
Los Angeles: University of California
Press.
Phillips, Ruth B., and Steiner, Christopher
B. 1999. Unpacking Culture: Art and
Commodity in Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds. Los Angeles: University
of California Press.
Constellation
The meaning of the term “constellation”
is derived from its use in astronomy: The
observation of the stars has resulted in
the description of interrelations and
patterns that are not necessarily inherent in the cosmos, but rather defined
by the viewpoint from earth at a certain
position and moment. Since the age of
Enlightenment, philosophical debates
have underlined the potential irrationality or subjectivity of any interpretation
of the stars. This becomes an important
214
aspect for the conceptual use of the
term, as it speaks to the “contingency
of the empirical” (McFarland 2011, with
reference to Adorno, 475–476). In this
vein, Kant uses the image of Sternbilder,
or constellations, when expounding
objective vs. subjective epistemics of
orientation. Since every act of orientation needs a fixed point (the North
Star), the concept of “constellation,”
on the face of it, implies a strong hierarchical order, a defined and directed
viewpoint. Yet, thinking in constellations is also characterized by a dynamic
temporal and spatial dimension, as it
operates with the notion of change in
the sense of a cyclical, repetitive order.
Suggested as a term analogous to “collection,” “arrangement,” or “ensemble”
(McFarland 2011, 473), constellation
proves to be a fertile metaphor for the
study and analysis of material culture
and its epistemic rules of perception
(see also Krauß, 2011).
Adopted by thinkers such as
Benjamin, Adorno, and the ensuing
postmodern discourse, the concept of
constellation finds its continuation in the
twentieth-century history of ideas where
it serves to spell out relations between
parameters such as social determination, the unconscious, and memory. In
this sense, the concept is closely related
to Benjamin’s notion Denkbild (“image
of thought”) or Warburg’s notion of
Bildgedächtnis (“image memory”) (see
Schuller, 2011). Applied to the field of
visual and art historical studies, it thus
can be used to describe artistic manifestations in relation not only to each
other, but also to the world and across
time, yet without necessarily implying any predestination or teleological
determinism.
Accordingly, the temporal and spatial dimension implicit in the historical
understanding of the term “constellation” becomes increasingly dynamic
and, indeed, “messy” and multidirectional in its modern interpretation. The
reference to constellations nowadays
tends to suggest an expansion into
the field of cultural difference or intercultural dynamics.
Okwui Enwezor
has described the paradigm of a
CULTURAL MOBILITY
“postcolonial constellation” (Enwezor
2003) consisting of dichotomies and
relations that transcend the realms of
subjectivity and creativity that have
shaped definitions of art and its autonomy in Western discourse through to
modernity. Based on this paradigm,
he examines exhibitions and curators
as substrates of an outright “age of
constellation” (Enwezor 2003, 58–59).
While Enwezor concedes that artists,
curators, and institutions and their
particular viewpoints always shape the
constellation of any exhibition, he also
underlines that these viewpoints must
be understood and spelled out as intertwined, multiple agencies. The concept
of a “postcolonial constellation” therefore provides the potential to restrict
the power of overarching hierarchical
viewpoints and perspectives. As such,
it can supersede the panoptic, directed
gaze that has informed visual culture
since the nineteenth century (Enwezor
2003, 75; see also Mitchell 1989),
while ultimately serving as a central
paradigm for an age of cross-cultural
communication.
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
REFERENCES
Enwezor, Okwui. 2003. “The Postcolonial Constellation: Contemporary
Art in a State of Permanent Transition.” Research in African Literatures
34 (4): 57–82.
Krauß, Andrea. 2011. “Constellations:
A Brief Introduction.” MLN German
Issue: Constellations / Konstellationen
126 (3): 439–445.
McFarland, James. 2011. “Sailing by the
Stars: Constellations in the Space of
Thought.” MLN German Issue: Constellations / Konstellationen 126 (3):
471–485.
Mitchell, Timothy. 1989. “The World as
Exhibition.” Comparative Studies in
Society and History 31 (2): 217–236.
Schuller, Marianne. 2011. “Darstellung
des Ungedachten. Zum konstellativen Verfahren in Aby Warburgs
Mnemosyne-Atlas.” MLN German
Issue: Constellations / Konstellationen
126 (3): 581–589.
Cultural Mobility
This term was initially coined (Sorokin
1959) and continues to be used by
scholars in the mainstream social sciences to refer to the role that culture
plays in upward or downward social
mobility. This model presumes a vertical hierarchy of class positions and
that individuals can be located within
or move between these social strata
according to, among other factors, their
capacity to consume cultural goods
such as education and outward signs
of wealth like expensive clothing or
luxury travel. Notably, according to the
sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1979), the
concept of cultural mobility could be
considered something of an oxymoron,
as he maintained that factors of taste—
the aesthetic preferences that produce
a cultural sphere—are taught and internalized at a very early age, rendering
true social mobility difficult and ensuring the durability of the upper classes
through its cultural dominance.
More recently, and perhaps more
relevant for the purposes of this volume, the literary historian Stephen
Greenblatt (2010) has co-opted the
phrase to situate cultural studies
squarely within the “mobility turn” that
has been gaining purchase across the
humanities and social sciences over the
last decade. Greenblatt is thus responding directly to the wider emergence of
what John Urry (2007), among others,
describes as the “mobilities paradigm”:
An interdisciplinary movement that
places emphasis on networks, transportation, flows, and migration. This
focus on people, objects, or ideas on the
move—a natural development in the
postmodern age of globalization—is
intended to correct a long-standing tendency within academe to assume insularity or fixity when describing models
of social structures.
Despite the title of his edited volume, Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto,
Greenblatt does not attempt to develop
the concept of “cultural mobility” as a
robust theoretical term in and of itself,
215
KEY-TERMS
but rather prefers to prescribe a number of objectives for future scholars of
mobility studies with regard to culture.
Most significantly, he calls for the identification of new contact zones “where
cultural goods are exchanged” and the
attendant group of mobilizers—“agents,
go-betweens, translators, or intermediaries”—who facilitate these processes
of exchange (Greenblatt 2010, 251).
Yet Greenblatt advises that scholars
must also be prepared to account for
the indisputable appeal of the local,
sedentary, and autochthonous in these
new contact zones. Additionally, within
the mobilities paradigm, one should
balance the concepts of contingency
versus fate, addressing the “intense
illusion that mobility in one particular
direction or another is predestined”
(Greenblatt 2010, 16).
Emily Neumeier
REFERENCES
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. Le distinction:
critique sociale du jugement. Paris:
Éditions de Minuit.
Greenblatt, Stephen, ed. 2010. Cultural
Mobility: A Manifesto. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Sorokin, Pitirim A. 1959. Social and
Cultural Mobility. Glencoe, IL: Free
Press.
Urry, John. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Cultural Transfer
Michel Espagne coined the term “cultural transfer” in the 1980s. Within this
framework, Espagne offers to rethink
the relationship between the center and
the periphery, incoming and outgoing
parties, and the relationship between
influence and power (Espagne and
Werner 1988).
The most basic definition would be
to conceptualize cultural transfer as
the global mobility of words, concepts,
images, persons, money, weapons,
216
and other things. Such a pragmatic
understanding, indebted to Stephen
Greenblatt’s notion of “cultural mobility,” is offered as a starting point for
interdisciplinary debate on transfer processes (Greenblatt 2009, 2). However,
cultural transfer does not mean transfer between static and essentialized
“cultures” or the transfer of objects and
ideas as they already are, but their reinterpretation, rethinking, and re-signification. Thus, Peter Burke significantly
extended the term “cultural transfer”
with the concept of “transculturation”
emphasizing this exchange in transcultural processes (Burke 2000). It is not
a one-way influence, but a reciprocal
transfer and appropriation, which generates a new “hybrid” culture.
Central to cultural transfer research
is that it refrains from using the concepts
of “nation” and “state” and, instead,
employs the term “cultural zones” to
stress that those entities do not exist in
a purely homogenous form. Each cultural zone is the result of a merging of
different interwoven cultural elements.
Cultural transfer is thus closely linked
to the “entangled histories” approach
(à⏵Entangled Histories). In studying cultural transfers, it is important to identify
enclaves of exchange and their agents
(Werner and Zimmermann 2006).
Hence, the most promising use for
the concept of cultural transfer is in subverting the positivist notion of national
entities and identities. While cultural
transfer studies initially were preoccupied with describing interconnections
between Central European nations,
the concept has since been applied to
more dynamic (global, local, continental, areal, etc.) cultural formations. Postcolonial and gender-related approaches
help to acknowledge interactions in
transcultural dynamics and question
the contexts and power constellations
in which such interactions took place
(Mitterbauer 2011).
In the process of transfer and
migration from one cultural situation to another, objects fall into a new
context and take on new meaning.
Accordingly, the transfer of aesthetic
forms, knowledge, and ideas can be
DECOLONIZING
understood as an act of acculturation,
appropriation, and cultural exchange,
resulting in a new hybrid aesthetic. The
notion of “migratory aesthetics” (Bal
and Hernandez-Navarro 2011) opens a
framework to investigate aesthetic and
socio-political dimensions of migratory
cultural products and objects that are
active in social, political, and institutional spaces and networks.
The focus on these dynamics
emphasizes the movements, relations,
translations, and entanglements in the
production of art and artefacts as well
as in the formation of art histories. The
concept of cultural transfer offers a process-oriented approach and a cultural
framework for the discipline to apprehend this process and integrate it into
the analysis of objects and concepts.
Sonja Hull
Pia Wiesner
REFERENCES
Bal, Mieke, and Miguel Á HernandezNavarro, eds. 2011. Art and Visibility in Migratory Culture: Conflict,
Resistance, and Agency. Amsterdam:
Rodopi.
Burke, Peter. 2009. Cultural Hybridity.
Cambridge: Polity Press (first published 2000 as Kultureller Austausch.
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp).
Espagne, Michel, and Michael Werner.
1988. Transferts. Les relations interculturelles dans l’espace franco-allemand. Paris: Editions Recherche sur
les Civilisations.
Greenblatt, Stephen. 2009. Cultural
Mobility: A Manifesto. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Mitterbauer, Helga. 2011. “Postkoloniale Konzepte in der Erforschung
kultureller Transferprozesse.“
In Überbringen – Überformen –
Überblenden. Theorietransfer im
20. Jahrhundert, edited by Dietlind
Hüchtker and Alfrun Kliems, 75–92.
Cologne: Böhlau.
Werner, Michael, and Bénédicte
Zimmermann. 2006. “Histoire
Croisée and the Challenge of
Reflexivity.” History and Theory 45
(1): 30–50.
Decolonizing
The Oxford English Dictionary defines
decolonization as the “withdrawal from
its former colonies of a colonial power;
the acquisition of political or economic
independence by such colonies.” The
key words in that definition are “withdrawal” and “acquisition,” terms that
connote sober financial transactions
carried out by mutual agreement. While
the term came into being to describe a
historical process in the twentieth century (Jansen and Osterhammel 2017)
that, contrary to clean text book and
dictionary formulations, was a messy,
often violent process “[pitting] imperial
rulers against colonial subjects” and
often “anticolonial nationalists against
one another” (Kennedy 2016, 2), “decolonizing” as a verb has since been used
as an active process in academic scholarship. Attempts to decolonize a field
include the critique and deconstruction
of the dominance of colonial and imperial epistemological structures within a
field, for instance, art history. Making the
important distinction between the decolonial and postcolonial, Walter Mignolo
constructs decoloniality as an analytic,
endowing it also with programmatic
power by moving “away and beyond the
post-colonial,” because “post-colonialism
criticism and theory is a project of scholarly transformation within the academy”
(Mignolo 2007, 452). Thus, theorist of
art and archaeology, Yannis Hamilakis
argues that “the decolonization of Greek
archaeology is its divorce from both the
colonial ideology and practice and the
national imagination.” How does the
process of decolonization work in this
case? It “requires,” Hamilakis writes, “the
emergence of a range of counter-modernist archaeologies, a process that paradoxically necessitates a reconnection
with some of the elements of these prenational archaeologies” (Hamilakis 2008,
2). While Hamilakis attempts to produce
a new methodological framework for
archaeology, Hannah Feldman’s recent
study on art and representation in twentieth-century France provides another
217
KEY-TERMS
useful way to understand decolonizing
as a process. Reframing the decades that
have until recently been characterized as
“post-war,” that is, a continuing state of
conflict, by highlighting “the significance
of subaltern political agendas on establishing modern French visual and spatial
cultures” (Feldman 2014), her project
illustrates the relationship between temporal categories constructed within art
history and what it means to mobilize
“decolonizing” as a verb in the construction of art historical narrative.
Sria Chatterjee
REFERENCES
Feldman, Hannah. 2014. From a Nation
Torn: Decolonizing Art and Representation in France, 1945–1962.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hamilakis, Yannis. 2008. “Decolonizing
Greek Archaeology: Indigenous
Archaeologies, Modernist Archaeology and the Post-colonial Critique.”
In A Singular Antiquity: Archaeology
and Hellenic Identity in TwentiethCentury Greece, edited by Dimitris
Damaskos and Dimitris Plantzos,
273–284. Athens: Benaki Museum.
Jansen, Jan C., and Jürgen Osterhammel.
2017. Decolonization: A Short History.
Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Kennedy, Dane Keith. 2016. Decolonization: A Very Short Introduction.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mignolo, Walter D. 2007. “Delinking:
The Rhetoric of Modernity, the
Logic of Coloniality and the Grammar of De-coloniality.” Cultural
Studies 21: 449–514. https://doi.
org/10.1080/09502380601162647.
Detail
The detail is a category whose status
has varied throughout history. Lexical
definitions highlight both its subordinate nature as a minute part of a greater
whole and its dynamic character (e.g.
218
expressions such as “going into detail”;
OED 1., 4.a.). This use shows an inherent polarity of significance and insignificance. Indeed, in classicism the detail
stood in stark contrast to the “Ideal” as
being void of any “particularities,” carrying a somewhat negative connotation
(Schor 2007, xlii). Further testifying to
the notion’s inherent tension, the detail
can be traced discursively in the history
of photography, where the concept lies
at the core of the dispute around the
medium’s status as an art or science
(see e.g. Daston and Galison, 2006,
125–137; Denton 2002).
Since the nineteenth century, it has
gained increasing independence with
regards to its relation to a whole (Olbrich
et al. 1989, “Detail”). It has become a
point of departure for free associations
and interpretation, thereby acquiring
the ability to point beyond itself towards
the abstract and a larger context. One
genre in which this becomes evident
is the essay (Sandywell 2011, 272). In
visual discourse, Alois Riegl’s book Stilfragen (1893) employs the same strategy of putting details in larger contexts,
arguing that one object can be representative for the Kunstwollen or “will to
art” of an entire culture (Troelenberg
2011, 227). Thus, a downside, especially
within visual discourse, is that the detail
is reduced to the status of example,
and this seems to ring particularly true
within a cross-cultural paradigm. After
Edward Said (1978, 712) coined the subcategory of the “Oriental detail” to highlight the exhaustive attention awarded
to it as part of an “Oriental essence” in
Orientalist scholarship, Linda Nochlin
subsequently famously introduced this
notion into art history in her essay “The
Imaginary Orient,” where she critiques
the obsession of Orientalist painting with adding such “authenticating
details” (Nochlin 1983, 122). The “Oriental detail” emerges here as a critical term
that, though springing from the imagination, still lays claim to veracity. This
tension is a general quality of the detail,
as it points to the relation between the
individual and the directed gaze, ultimately revealing the efficacy of what
might be called a “generalizing detail.”
EAST / WEST
A more affirmative take is offered by
Naomi Schor in her book Reading in
Detail (Schor 2007 [1987]), where she
historically traces the emergence of the
detail since classicism and methodologically inscribes it with the feminine as a
contraposition to the phallocentric ideal,
in order to assert the detail’s importance
and—once again—growing independence in post-modernist culture; a view
shared by Mieke Bal (2006, 13–17) who
posits that feminist discourse applied to
a detail is capable of circumventing the
generalizing mechanism.
Nochlin and Schor’s more or less
contemporary characterizations stand
in tension to each other and exemplify
the detail’s historical, geographical, and
inherent ambiguities and ambivalences.
Its status as part of a whole and connection to ideologies is what ultimately renders the detail a problematic category.
Even when construed as independent,
it is always sustained by other agencies.
At the same time, it is this very quality
that lends the detail a potentially constructive and powerful discursivity.
Isabella Krayer
REFERENCES
Bal, Mieke. 2006. Kulturanalyse.
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Daston, Lorraine and Peter Galison.
2007. Objectivity. New York: Zone
Books.
Denton, Margaret. 2002. “Francis Wey
and the Discourse of Photography
as Art in France in the Early 1850s:
‘Rien n’est beau que le vrai; mais il
faut le choisir.’” Art History 25 (5):
622–648.
“Detail.” In Oxford English Dictionary
(OED). Accessed September 13,
2017. http://www.oed.com/view/
Entry/51168?rskey=wKElnW&
result=1#eid.
Nochlin, Linda. 1983. “The Imaginary
Orient.” Art in America 71 (5):
119–131, 187–191.
Olbrich, Harald. 1989. “Detail.” In Lexikon der Kunst: Architektur, bildende
Kunst, angewandte Kunst, Industrieformgestaltung, Kunsttheorie.
Leipzig: VEB E.A. Seemann Verlag.
Schor, Naomi. 2007 [1987]. Reading in
Detail: Aesthetics and the Feminine.
London: 1987. Reprint, London:
Routledge (quotes here are from
the Routledge edition).
Said, Edward. 1987. Orientalism.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Sandywell, Barry. 2011. Dictionary of
Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon
of Terms. Farnham: Ashgate.
Troelenberg, Eva-Maria. 2011. Eine
Ausstellung wird besichtigt. Die
Münchner “Ausstellung von Meisterwerken muhammedanischer Kunst”
1910 in kultur- und wissenschaftsgeschichtlicher Perspektive. Frankfurt
a. M.: Peter Lang.
East / West
The terms “East” and “West” have historically been used to differentiate
between the geographic expanse of
Europe (writ large) and the Near, Middle,
and Far East. This ambiguous and spatially amorphous terminology remains
rooted in nineteenth-century Orientalist
rhetoric, colonial ideology, and European expansionism (Shalem 2012). With
his seminal book, Orientalism (1978),
Edward Said introduced a critical assessment of East / West relations, proposing
an unequal power dynamic between
the European and non-European lands
(à⏵Orientalism) (Burke and Prochaska,
2008). In the years since, many publications have worked to complicate and
problematize the binary structure of
Said’s approach to Orientalism, including
the notion of provincializing Europe and,
more recently, the concept of shared
cosmopolitan exchange across geographical space regardless of regional
boundaries (Bozdoğan and Necipoğlu,
2007; Chakrabarty 2000; Hackforth-Jones
and Roberts 2005; Fraser 2017; Makdisi,
2002). Postcolonial and transcultural
studies have established a polycentric
map that charts multidirectional flows
of cultural exchange (à⏵
à Circulation).
This transcends deep-rooted, polarizing
219
KEY-TERMS
language and works to revise issues of
terminology. It emphasizes the movement of images and ideologies across
time and space, rather than just from
place to place, thus transcending both
national borders and the assignment of
artists into national schools (à⏵
à Nation).
By questioning fixed labels and utilizing geographically specific terminology, we can reorient the conversation
away from the myth of a world that is
divided longitudinally into supracontinental blocks of “East” and “West”
(Lewis and Wigen 1997). One solution—
as is debated by scholars in the field of
Middle Eastern studies—is perhaps to
name the city we are talking about—
Isfahan, for example, instead of East,
or Paris rather than West. Thus, when
we shift the way we speak and write,
we expand not only the semantics of
art history but also the epistemological
binaries that limit reciprocal exchange,
while at the same time enhancing how
knowledge is formed through cross-cultural contact by moving beyond the spatial and cultural constructs of the Orient
and Occident, East and West. This shift
allows for the discussion of objects to
be more than simply “Eastern” or “Western,” revealing their material journeys
and migratory histories to be multi-dimensional, multi-cultural, cosmopolitan, and politically complex narratives,
and thus untethering these loaded
terms from their Eurocentric and Orientalist heritage.
Erin Hyde Nolan
REFERENCES
Bozdogan, Sibel and Gülru Necipoğlu.
“Entangled Discourses: Scrutinizing
Orientalist and Nationalist Legacies
in the Architectural Historiography
of the ‘Lands of Rum.’” Muqarnas
vol. 24 (2007).
Burke, Edmund, and David Prochaska.
2008. Genealogies of Orientalism:
History, Theory, Politics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 2012. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought
and Historical Difference. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
220
Fraser, Elisabeth A. 2017. Mediterranean
Encounters: Artists between Europe
and the Ottoman Empire, 1774–1839.
University Park: The Pennsylvania
State University Press.
Hackforth-Jones, Jocelyn, and Mary
Roberts. 2005. Edges of Empire: Orientalism and Visual Culture. Malden:
Blackwell Publishing.
Lewis, Martha W, and Kären Wigen.
The Myth of Continents: A Critique of
Metageography. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1997.
Makdisi, Ussama. 2002. “Ottoman Orientalism.” American Historical Review
107: 768–796.
Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New
York: Pantheon Books.
Shalem, Avinoam. “What Do We Mean
When We Say ‘Islamic art’? A Plea
for a Critical Rewriting of the History of the Arts of Islam.” Journal of
Historiography 6 (2012): 1–18.
Empathy
The uses and definitions of “empathy”
are often vague and variegated, which
is evidenced by the craze over the term
in both popular and academic realms in
recent decades. Today’s most common
understanding of empathy links closely
with its etymological cousin and English
precedent “sympathy,” which was put
forth by David Hume and Adam Smith
in the eighteenth century as a kind of
fellow feeling, enabling comprehension of another person’s thoughts and
thereby a more ethical response to
them. “Empathy” itself was first translated into English from the German Einfühlung in 1909 (Curtis 2009, 11, n. 2),
a term that involves a more all-encompassing, corporeal response. This is
due in part to Einfühlung’s substantial
role in nineteenth century aesthetic
discourse. Whether relating to the perception of objects, images, and spaces
or to the understanding of other people, “empathy” surfaces as a recurring experiential and epistemological
ENTANGLED HISTORIES
instrument within art historical and
transcultural studies.
Einfühlung’s roots reach back to the
late eighteenth century. For Herder,
the verb denoted a possibility to understand, “feel-into,” bygone cultures, while
early German Romantics like Novalis
came to regard it as a kind of spiritual
merging with the natural world (Currie
2011, 83). Nineteenth-century philosophers, psychologists, and physiologists
then analyzed the act of perceiving
objects and spaces, its bodily involvement and, later, its subjective emotionality, in light of Einfühlung (Mallgrave
and Ikonomou 1994). As the nascent
art historical field was substantiating
itself as a more “scientific,” academic
discipline, a generation of art historians were drawn to Einfühlung studies,
including those that employed laboratory results to explain the experience
of art. Similarly, the legacy of late nineteenth-century aesthetics inspired phenomenological and hermeneutic usages
of empathy, thereby shifting its meaning
towards “interpersonal understanding.”
The most prominent example of an art
historian reacting to notions of empathy
is Wilhelm Worringer’s Abstraktion und
Einfühlung (1907).
The discovery of mirror neurons
in the 1990s catalyzed a resurgence of
studies that incorporated empathy into
their analytical vocabulary. The scientific
findings suggested that humans and
non-human animals were soft-wired to
experience the mental state of others,
and thus our species was, above all,
pro-social. Moreover, empathy came to
be seen as a concept capable of bridging
the sciences and humanities, inspiring
many forays into aesthetic experience
both by art historians and neuroscientists (e.g. Onians 2008). This ultimately
cast empathy as a central figure within
debates over interdisciplinarity in general and affect studies in particular.
While empathy and mirror-neuron
discourse in relation to images received
critique for its positivist epistemology,
an “anti-” or “against”-empathy camp
has also recently resisted the popularly
promoted aspects of empathy as a kind
of moral guide and cure-all for human
conflict. Within transcultural studies,
Carolyn Pedwell then evaluated empathy from various angles, including as
a reductive “affective technology for
‘knowing the other’,” which can work to
benefit the interests of globalized corporations and neoliberal agendas (Pedwell
2014, 8). Empathy thus emerges as an
ambivalent yet critical term in analyzing
the contact both between individuals
and the objects they encounter.
Westrey Page
REFERENCES
Currie, Gregory. 2011. “Empathy for
Objects.” In Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives,
edited by Amy Coplan and Peter
Goldie, 82–95. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Curtis, Robin, and Gertrud Koch, eds.
2009. Einfühlung: Zur Geschichte
und Gegenwart eines ästhetischen
Konzepts. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink.
Mallgrave, Harry Francis, and
Eleftherios Ikonomou, eds. 1994.
Empathy, Form and Space: Problems
in German Aesthetics, 1873–1893.
Santa Monica: Getty Research
Institute.
Onians, John. 2008. Neuroarthistory:
From Aristotle and Pliny to Baxandall
and Zeki. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Pedwell, Carolyn. 2014. Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of
Empathy. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Worringer, Wilhelm. 1907. “Abstraktion
und Einfühlung: ein Beitrag zur Stilpsychologie.” PhD diss., Universität
Bern.
Entangled Histories
When Frantz Fanon stated that “Europe
is literally the creation of the Third
World” (1963, 102) and when Walter
Mignolo titled his book about the colonization of the so-called New World The
221
KEY-TERMS
Darker Side of the Renaissance (1995),
both pointed to the fact that the history
of Europe or the West can only be understood as a relational one. To accommodate this from a methodological point
of view, several suggestions have been
made from the late 1990s on. Historian
Sanjay Subrahmanyam began to write
“connected histories” about the cultural,
economic, and political interrelations
between Eurasian empires of the early
modern age (1997). Shortly afterwards,
social anthropologist Shalini Randeria
argued the case for what she calls
“entangled history” or “entangled histories” (1999 and 2002, respectively), shifting her attention to the modern era and
a global field. In collaboration with historian Sebastian Conrad, Randeria broadened and refined her concept (Conrad
and Randeria 2002). Together with cultural anthropologist Regina Römhild,
she adapted it to contemporary conditions (Randeria and Römhild 2013).
Around the same time as Conrad and
Randeria, historian Michael Werner and
sociologist Bénédicte Zimmermann presented their idea of an Histoire croisée,
which raises similar questions based on
a critique of notions like internationaler
Vergleich (international comparison) and
Transfergeschichte (history of transfer)
(Werner and Zimmermann 2002).
In her 1999 essay, Randeria lists
four reasons for adopting her concept
of entangled history. First, presuming
multiple modernities enables us to discuss different notions of modernism in
Europe and outside; it allows us to compare different non-Western cultures or
societies and focus on bilateral as well
as multilateral configurations (à⏵Multiple Modernities). Second, considering
more than one modernity and accepting colonialism as a vital part of the—
material and ideological—construction
of Europe generates the need for historical re-considerations. Third, a pluralistic attempt offers the opportunity
to account for the heterogeneity within
non-Western societies and shed light
on the presence of Europe in non-Western cultural contexts. Fourth, more
attention must be paid to questions
like: Who is talking? What language is
222
being used? What categories are being
applied? After all, defining and employing the instruments of discourse is an
essential factor of cultural hegemony
(Randeria 1999, 93–94). In their introduction to the anthology Jenseits des
Eurozentrismus (Beyond Eurocentrism),
Conrad and Randeria add other aspects
such as the importance of discussing
the—often quasi-colonial—interactions
within Europe. They stress that entangled histories do not just concentrate
on commonalities or reveal processes of
sharing, but also investigate the marking of distinctions and notions or acts of
separation. This means that “interaction”
should not be misunderstood as implying benevolence or equality, because
most of those interactions (even within
Europe) have been structured in asymmetrical, hierarchic, or violent ways.
More generally, the focus of the authors
is less on the history of entanglement
and more on history as entanglement,
as the interacting entities are a product
of their interdependencies (Conrad and
Randeria 2002).
Matthias Weiß
REFERENCES
Conrad, Sebastian, and Shalini
Randeria. 2002. “Einleitung: Geteilte
Geschichten – Europa in einer
postkolonialen Welt.” In Jenseits
des Eurozentrismus: Postkoloniale
Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und
Kulturwissenschaften, edited by
Sebastian Conrad and Shalini
Randeria, 9–49. Frankfurt a. M.:
Campus.
Fanon, Frantz. 1963. The Wretched of the
Earth. New York: Grove Press.
Mignolo, Walter D. 1995. The Darker
Side of the Renaissance: Literacy,
Territoriality, and Colonization. Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Randeria, Shalini. 1999. “Geteilte
Geschichte und verwobene
Moderne.” In Zukunftsentwürfe:
Ideen für eine Kultur der
Veränderung, edited by Jörn Rüsen,
Hanna Leitgeb, and Norbert
Jegelka, 87–96. Frankfurt a. M.:
Campus.
EUROPERIE
———. 2002. “Entangled Histories and
Uneven Modernities: Civil Society,
Caste Solidarities and Legal Pluralism in Post-Colonial India.” In
Unraveling Ties: From Social Cohesion to New Practices of Connectedness, edited by Yehuda Elkana,
Ivan Krasstev, Elisio Macamoa,
and Shalini Randeria, 284–311.
Frankfurt a. M.: Campus.
Randeria, Shalini, and Regina Römhild.
2013. “Das postkoloniale Europa:
Verflochtene Genealogien der
Gegenwart – Einleitung zur erweiterten Neuauflage (2013).” In
Jenseits des Eurozentrismus: Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichtsund Kulturwissenschaften, edited by
Sebastian Conrad, Shalini Randeria,
and Regina Römhild, 9–31.
Frankfurt a. M.: Campus.
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. 1997. “Connected Histories: Notes towards a
Reconfiguration of Early Modern
Eurasia.” Modern Asian Studies, 31
(3): 735–762.
Werner, Michael, and Bénédicte
Zimmermann. 2002. “Vergleich,
Transfer, Verflechtung: Der Ansatz
der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen.”
Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 28:
607–636.
Europerie
Considering similar terms like “européennerie” (Thomas 2009, 115), “europeanoiserie” (Kleutghen 2012, 83), and
“euroiserie” (Hay 2015, x), “europerie”
seems to be not only the easiest to pronounce, it is also by far the oldest one.
It was coined in 1937 by Bruno Kisch
who primarily used it to describe Chinese export porcelain that was decorated according to European tastes, as
well as Europeanizing objects that were
produced for the home market and
favored by domestic customers for their
exotic appeal (⏵Exoticism) (Kisch 1937,
274–276).
Ignoring this latter aspect, Erich
Köllmann (1954, 446) did not regard
Kisch’s neologism as a suitable counter
term to the much more common “chinoiserie”—an expression that recently has
been challenged from a post-colonial
perspective (Weststeijn 2016, 13). Still,
there are a number of reasons to stick
to the noun “chinoiserie” and its derivations. First, the word, which is French in
origin, has to be respected as a historical one that came into use at the peak
of the phenomenon itself, in the mideighteenth century (Köllmann 1954,
439). Second, it emerged around 1750, a
time when Europe and China still met at
eye level. Third, although the terminology was not consistent during the second half of the eighteenth century, the
French did make a distinction between
artefacts imported “from China,” for
which they used the phrase de la Chine,
and European works in “Chinese fashion,” which they described as faҫon
de la Chine, à la chinoise, or lachinage
(Köllmann 1954, 439–440). The same
holds true for the organization of the
Kupferstich-Kabinett (print room) of the
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden,
where more than two thousand woodprints from China and other Asian
countries were kept separate from the
chinoiseries and labelled as “La Chine”
and “La Chine Europeenne,” respectively
(Bischoff 2017, 23). The naming as well
as the collecting or storing practices
indicate that there was—at least in
some environments—an awareness of
the fact that chinoiseries were the result
of a mediated gaze or of appropriation
(à⏵Appropriation). In other words, just
as the chinoiserie tells us something not
about China, but about the way Europe
saw China at a specific moment in their
long-running entangled histories, the
europerie tells us something about
China’s awareness and imaginations of
Europe at a certain time (à⏵Entangled
Histories).
As Kisch explained and later authors
like Hay, Kleutghen, Thomas and others have further elaborated (using the
variety of terms mentioned above),
europeries and chinoiseries function
complementarily—which means that,
223
KEY-TERMS
in both cases, analysis has to take
into account aesthetic and economic
aspects as well as technical, social, and
political issues. Expanding our view, the
term “europerie” may also have potential to serve as a counter term to “turquerie” and “japonaiserie”. And it is up
to future research to, perhaps, apply
and adapt it to the exchanges between
Europe and other regions or cultural
contexts like Persia, the West African
kingdoms (including Dahomey and the
Benin Empire), or the Aztec culture in
the early modern age and beyond.
Matthias Weiß
REFERENCES
Bischoff, Cordula. 2017. “‘… allerhand
Sinesische Vorstellungen’. Zur
Rezeption von Asiatika in der
Grafiksammlung Augusts des
Starken.” In Wechselblicke: Zwischen
China und Europa 1669–1907 /
Exchanging Gazes. Between China
and Europe 1669–1907, edited
by Matthias Weiß, Eva-Maria
Troelenberg, and Joachim Brand,
22–41. Petersberg: Michael Imhof.
Hay, Jonathan. 2015. “Introduction.” In
Qing Encounters: Artistic Exchanges
Between China and the West, edited
by Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and
Ning Ding, vii–xix. Los Angeles:
Getty Research Institute.
Kisch, Bruno. 1937. “Europerien auf
China-Porzellan.” Artibus Asiae, VI
(3 / 4): 272–282.
Kleutghen, Kristina. 2012. “Staging
Europe: Theatricality and Painting
at the Chinese Imperial Court.”
Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture
42: 81–102.
Köllmann, Erich. 1954. “Chinoiserie.”
In Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte, vol. III, edited by Ernst
Gall, and Ludwig H. Heydenreich,
439–481. Stuttgart: Alfred
Druckenmüller.
Thomas, Greg M. 2009. “Yuanming
Yuan / Versailles: Intercultural Interactions between Chinese and European Palace Cultures.” Art History,
32 (1): 115–143.
224
Weststeijn, Thijs. 2016. “Introduction:
Global Art History and the Netherlands.” In Netherlandish Art in Its
Global Context, edited by Thijs
Weststeijn, Eric Jorink, and Frits
Scholten, 7–26, Leiden: Brill.
Exoticism
Exoticism can be understood as one
of a constellation of discourses by
which Europeans have engaged with
and represented racial and cultural differences. Related artistic movements
include primitivism (à⏵Primitivism) and
the more specific and geographically
bound movement, Orientalism (à⏵Orientalism). The term “exotic” was first used
in Europe in the fifteenth century to
denote things—imported foreign flora
and fauna, not people (Célestin 1996,
217). The term “exoticism” was coined in
the early nineteenth century to describe
both European experiences with foreign people and the translations and
representations of those encounters
back home.
Art historian Carol Sweeney argues
that the primitive and the exotic are
the two primary generic categories
into which the vast majority of encounters, colonial or otherwise, between
Europeans and those they deemed
“others” can be divided (à⏵Othering).
Temporally, the exotic and the primitive both reflexively stand in for the
past in relationship to a European
present that is seen as developing and
changing while the time of the “other”
stands still (Fabian 1983, 1). Sweeney,
however, makes the distinction that
the “primitive” was more often associated with ideas of a pre-rational savage, while discourses of the “exotic”
were more concerned with “difference
as emblematic of a paradisal ‘elsewhere’, a geographical otherness characterized by plentitude and harmony”
(2004, 8–13). Broadly speaking, these
different categories of the “other” have
also often been split along geographic
ExOTICISM
lines. As Hal Foster writes, it is typically
a case of “malefic Africa versus paradisal Oceana” (1985, 53). The Middle
and Far East, Polynesia, and Islamic
North Africa have been most often
categorized as exotic, whereas subSaharan Africa and its diasporas in the
Caribbean and the Americas have been
treated as primitive. Peter Mason,
alternatively, describes exoticism as
diverging from Orientalism insofar as
it depends on the decontextualization
and recontextualization of its object
and is therefore “indifferent to ethnographic or geographic precision and
tends to serve imaginative rather than
concretely political ends” (1998, 3).
While it is questionable whether Orientalism is always concerned with an
accurate representation of its subject
and whether exoticism can be disassociated from the politics of colonialism, this differentiation points to how
exoticism is most strongly associated
with a nineteenth century European
engagement with the “other” in terms
of romantic fantasies and as a source
for formal and thematic motifs.
Within art history, exoticism has
been most often used to describe
movements within the decorative arts.
The term denotes both radical cultural
or racial difference and the process by
which this otherness is experienced
by a traveler and translated, collected,
displayed, represented, or otherwise
domesticated for consumption back
home. Exoticism developed hand in
hand with the rise of international exhibitions in the West in the nineteenth
century. During this period, “exotic”
objects were also held up as a model of
art uncorrupted by industrial capitalism
(Oshinsky 2004).
In the 1950s, as postcolonial thinkers and political activists diagnosed
European representations of otherness
as a tool of colonial power, exoticism
became a key point of their critique
(Forsdick 2001, 28). In the essay “Racism and Culture,” Frantz Fanon argues
that exoticism was used as a means
to simplify, objectify, and neutralize
colonized cultures. He criticizes the
denial of coevality between European
countries and their “others” as an
explicit strategy in support of colonial
power (Fanon 1967). These interventions have deeply shaped postcolonial
critiques of exoticism. More recently,
exoticism has been positioned in opposition to other models for cultural
encounter such as hybridity (à⏵Hybridity) and related processes like creolization and diaspora, which are premised
on the production of new transcultural
forms rather than exoticist encounters
that depend on notions of essentialized cultural difference (Bhabha 1994,
56).
Alison Boyd
REFERENCE
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of
Culture. New York: Routledge.
Célestin, Roger. 1996. From Cannibals to
Radicals: Figures and Limits of Exoticism. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the
Other: How Anthropology Makes Its
Object. New York: Columbia University Press.
Forsdick, Charles. 2001. “Travelling
Concepts: Postcolonial Approaches
to Exoticism.” Paragraph, Francophone Texts and Postcolonial Theory
24 (3): 12–29.
Fanon, Frantz. 1967. Toward the African
Revolution: Political Essays. Translated by Haakon Chevalier. New
York: Grove Press.
Foster, Hal. 1985. “The ‘Primitive’ Unconscious of Modern Art.” October (34):
45–70.
Mason, Peter. 1998. Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Oshinsky, Sara J. 2004. “Exoticism in the
Decorative Arts.” Heilbrunn Timeline
of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/
hd/exot/hd_exot.htm.
Sweeney, Carole. 2004. From Fetish to
Subject: Race, Modernism, and Primitivism, 1919–1935. Westport, CT:
Praeger.
225
KEY-TERMS
Expanded Contact Zone
Mary Louise Pratt defines “contact
zones” as “social spaces where cultures
meet, clash, and grapple with each
other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as
colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths
as they are lived out in many parts of
the world today” (Pratt 1991, 34). She
writes that the term “contact zone” is
“an attempt to invoke the spatial and
temporal co-presence of subjects previously separated by geographic and
historic disjunctures, and whose trajectories now intersect” (Pratt 1991, 8).
If for Pratt, a “contact” perspective is
about the ways in which “subjects are
constituted in and by their relations with
each other” (Pratt 1991, 8; see also Pratt
2008), it is useful to think of recent work
that has broadened the scope of academic scholarship to take both human
and non-human subjects seriously. The
expanded contact zone takes Pratt’s
formulation further to consider how
the co-presence of humans with other
biological creatures as well as hybrid,
digital, and technological life forms
plays out in a contact context. Donna
Haraway, for instance, has, throughout
her career, highlighted the role non-humans play in shaping technoscience
and reshaping our notions of subjectivity, gender, kinship, and species-being.
She claims that these non-humans are
not passive recipients of human agency
but socially active partners (Haraway
1997). The relationship between human
beings and technologies is not one of
exploitation but of mutual adaptation
(Haraway 2007). The intersection of the
trajectories of forms of human and nonhuman life has engaged a wide range of
contemporary scholarship in anthropology, the environmental humanities, and
increasingly in art history studies.
The expanded contact zone also
allows for a deeper and wider scope
with which to understand asymmetrical power relations at crucial meeting
points between encounters of biological and techno-capital processes and
226
subjects. Anna Tsing’s work on the matsutake mushroom, for example, provides an incisive account of the relation
between capitalist destruction and collaborative survival within multi-species
landscapes (Tsing 2015). In the realm of
art and museum studies, the art exhibit
“The Multispecies Salon,” that traveled
from San Francisco to New Orleans
to New York City, attempted to ask,
through artworks and anthropological
modes of inquiry, what happens when
natural and cultural worlds intermingle
and collide (Kirksey 2014). New modes
of inquiry into such encounters have
given the contact zone new life, while
at the same time providing a longer historical scholarly trajectory in which to
examine these evolving relationships.
Sria Chatterjee
REFERENCES
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 1997. Modest–Witness@Second–Millennium.
FemaleMan–Meets–OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. London:
Psychology Press.
———. 2007. When Species Meet.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kirksey, Eben. 2014. The Multispecies
Salon. Durham, NC: Duke University
Press.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 1991. “Arts of the
Contact Zone.” Profession: 33–40.
———. 2008. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. London:
Routledge.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2015. The
Mushroom at the End of the World:
On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist
Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Fragment
Traditionally, the fragment is the remnant of a decomposed whole, the
result of fragmentation and closely
intertwined with time. As such, it has
FRAGMENT
a history and symbolizes ephemerality (Tronzo 2009). Ruins, in this sense,
are fragments par excellence and many
texts indeed use the two terms interchangeably (e.g. Schnapp 2014; Böhme
1989). Paradigmatically, the fragment
points to death, lost cultures, and
memory, to a violent “tearing apart”
and destruction (Glauch 2013, 53). It is
what is presently left: archaeological,
material, and thus collectable. Since
the second half of the eighteenth century, philology has become increasingly
interested in the fragments of ancient
societies as a way to understand them
(Most 2009, 15). In a more abstract
sense, the term “fragment” can also
denote a text. The German Romanticist Friedrich Schlegel, for example,
famously introduced the textual—that
is, “created” (Tronzo 2009)—fragment
as a literary form complete in and of
itself (Most 2009, 15–16), thus in a way
foreboding the (post-)modernist focus
on the fragmentary, particularly with
regard to aesthetics, notable examples
being Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project
and, in the visual arts, Analytic Cubism.
Benjamin (1988 [1933]) also discussed
how the fragment became entrenched
into the discipline’s methodological
foundations, for instance through the
writings of Alois Riegl. The fragment
contains and entails cultural and historical meaning that can be scaled up
to “broader contexts” (Lang 2006, 151).
Materiality and meaning, through time
then, become inextricably intertwined.
Hence, the fragment emerged as a
trope or metaphor of (Post-)Modernity
in various fields in the humanities (for
art history see, for example, Nochlin
1994).
The notion of the fragment thus
rests on two pillars: a bygone past and
abstract thought, with the aspiration
to both completion and division. The
problematic nature of the fragment as
a means to extrapolate history lies in
its claim to represent a totality. Especially with regard to the notion of eurocentrism, this understanding has been
strongly disputed. In this respect, the
fragment is often spoken of in terms
of discontinuity, for example with
reference to the de facto “discontinuous
history of imperial meaning-making”
(Pratt 2008, 7). The created fragment,
in turn, acknowledges its discontinuity
and embraces it on the grounds that
the perception of a whole is impossible
(Balfour 2009). As a category, then, the
fragment encourages a reevaluation
of modes of perception in the sense
that all fragments, even remnants, are
created.
Isabella Krayer
REFERENCES
Balfour, Jan. 2009. “‘The Whole is
Untrue’: On the Necessity of the
Fragment (after Adorno).” In The
Fragment: An Incomplete History,
edited by William Tronzo, 82–91.
Los Angeles: Getty Research
Institute.
Benjamin, Walter. 1988 [1933]. “Rigorous Study of Art.” In October 47
(1988), 84–90.
Böhme, Hartmut. 1989. “Die Ästhetik der Ruinen.” In Der Schein des
Schönen, edited Dietmar Kamper
and Christoph Wulf, 287–304.
Göttingen: Steidl.
Glauch, Sonja. 2013. “Wie ‘macht’ man
Fragmente? Schrift und Stimme
als Träger des Fragmentarischen.”
In Fragmentarität als Problem der
Kultur- und Textwissenschaften,
edited Kay Malcher, Stephan Müller,
Katharina Philipowski, and Antje
Sablotny, 51–68. Munich: Wilhelm
Fink.
Lang, Karen. 2006. Chaos and Cosmos.
On the Image in Aesthetics and Art
History. Ithaca: Cornell University
Press.
Most, Glenn W. 2009. “On Fragments.”
In The Fragment: An Incomplete
History, edited by William Tronzo,
8–20. Los Angeles: Getty Research
Institute.
Nochlin, Linda. 1994. The Body in Pieces:
The Fragment as a Metaphor of
Modernity. London: Thames and
Hudson.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 2008. Imperial Eyes:
Travel Writing and Transculturation.
London: Routledge.
227
KEY-TERMS
Schnapp, Alain. 2014. Was ist eine
Ruine? Entwurf einer vergleichenden
Perspektive. Göttingen: Wallstein.
Tronzo, William. 2009. “Introduction.” In
The Fragment: An Incomplete History,
edited by William Tronzo, 1–7. Los
Angeles: Getty Research Institute.
Gender
Transcultural studies have served as a
productive interlocutor for gender studies in efforts to examine the contingency
of the terms by which gender, race, ethnicity, and class are studied and debated
as closely interwoven and relational categories. Still, many theorists of postcolonialism have for a long time ignored
the gendered dynamics of imperialism
(McClintock 1995). The lingering effect of
Orientalism’s Western male gaze in producing stereotypes of eastern women
is well documented (e.g. Ahmed 1982),
but at the same time Said’s model of
Orientalism has also been criticized for
its binary notion of power structures
which hardly allows for the kind of multilayered or differentiated viewpoints that
describe aspects of gender and difference (à⏵Orientalism). McClintock argues
that “Sexuality as a trope for other
power relations was certainly an abiding
aspect of imperial power” (1995, 14), as
colonial women experienced the power
structures of imperialism very differently
than colonial men.
Scholars such as Lowe (1994), moreover, have shifted the discussion to a
focus on Orientalism’s heterogeneity
and the many voices and varying power
structures it involves. These transcultural perspectives on women and Orientalism have drawn attention to the
active role of women both in determining the image of the other and in renegotiating gender roles in the empire
through the encounter with the colonized other.
Reina Lewis has emphasized the
importance of theorizing and studying
the history of the terms “race,” “ethnicity,”
228
and “gender.” A critique that takes the
contingency of these terms into account
would, she argues, avoid models of
binary opposition in feminist discourse,
for instance of bad imperialism and
good feminism (Lewis 1996). In Gendering Orientalism, Lewis offers the critique
that most cultural historiographies of
imperialism analyze Oriental depictions
of women, while completely ignoring the
perspectives of women themselves. Her
work shows that women indeed took
part in Orientalist cultural production
and that the dynamics of the imperial
discourse influenced their work. Since
women did not have direct access to
male positions of Western superiority,
their work resulted in representations of
cultural difference that are distinct from
those usually focused on in Orientalist
scholarship. While Lewis’ work focuses
on the role of women and the category
of gender in the context of Orientalism,
her argument can readily be extended
to other situations of cross-cultural
contact. Analyzing the production and
reception of representation by women
is particularly crucial as it develops an
additional layer of ideological interrelation of both race and gender in the colonial discourse (Lewis 1996).
In a related argument, art historian
Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff emphasizes the importance of distinguishing
between the variety of gendered perspectives in colonial discourses and
visual representations, as this further
reveals a wide range of viewpoints.
She points to the importance of avoiding binary oppositions of a female vs.
male gaze and, instead suggests analyzing the visual production of women
as individual aesthetic decisions made
at certain points in history (SchmidtLinsenhoff 2010).
The projects of McClintock, Lowe’s,
Lewis, and Schmidt-Linsenhoff are
indebted to and exemplify an intersectional approach that shifts the focus
to the intertwined processes by which
notions of gender, race, ethnicity, and
class are produced and instrumentalized in intercultural encounters. These
interdisciplinary discussions also shed
light on feminism’s origins in a Western,
HERITAGE
liberal context and on questions of the
term’s status or usefulness as a benchmark in transcultural discussions (cf.
e.g. Weber 2001). Starting in the 1970s,
women of color, in particular, have
therefore criticized the eurocentrism
of feminism and demanded the “recognition of racial difference and diversity
among women” (McClintock 1997, 7). In
the context of both transcultural studies and gender studies, the approaches
outlined above involve asking how gender and race were negotiated within
transcultural encounters.
Frederika Tevebring
Anna Sophia Messner
REFERENCES
Ahmed, Leila. 1982. “Western Ethnocentrism and Perceptions of the
Harem.” Feminist Studies 8 (3):
521–534.
Lewis, Reina. 1996. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity and Representation. London: Routledge.
Lowe, Lisa. 1994. Critical Terrains: French
and British Orientalisms. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
McClintock, Anne. 1995. Imperial
Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality
in the Colonial Contest. New York:
Routledge.
Schmidt-Linsenhoff, Viktoria. 2010.
Ästhetik der Differenz: Postkoloniale
Perspektiven vom 16. bis 21. Jahrhundert: 15 Fallstudien. Marburg: Jonas.
Weber, Charlotte. 2001. “Unveiling
Scheherazade: Feminist Orientalism in the International Alliance of
Women, 1911–1950.” Feminist Studies 27 (1): 125–157.
Heritage
In the contemporary period, heritage
has been normatively read and understood through the framework provided
by the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO) as the “legacy” of material
objects, natural landscapes, and ecosystems, and, more recently, intangible
attributes inherited from past generations, whose safeguarding is considered paramount for present and future
generations (UNESCO, 25 C / 4 1989, 57).
Such international documents, conventions, and recommendations as the
one setting out the guidelines for the
nature of world heritage also exist as part
of a longer genealogy of efforts made
towards studying, classifying, and protecting material culture across the world,
prompted by fears of its destruction and
looting during times of conflict. These
genealogies reflect first and foremost
the fact that heritage, its identification,
documentation, conservation, and promotion has always been transnational
in nature, owing to the contexts in which
encounters with cultural diversity and
difference emerged: those of imperial
and colonial enterprise. A critical reevaluation of existing ideas and approaches
to heritage is therefore needed.
Middle Eastern heritage, for example, has tended to be overwhelmingly
associated in the popular imagination as
well as in scholarly writing and archaeological work with the antique period
and the unearthing, preservation, and
protection of its material traces in the
region. In recent decades, the region
has been depicted as “a repository of
precious archaeological resources constituting a universal world heritage, but
a heritage that requires control and
management by Western experts and
their respective governments” (Meskell
and Preucel 2008, 315).
The categorization and delineation
of heritage sites and objects is intimately related to colonial practices and
ideas about “tradition” and “modernity.”
Examples abound about how the classification and preservation of Middle
Eastern objects, buildings, or crafts
under different colonial regimes were
central to discourses that sought to portray a particular image of the societies
under their rule.
An emerging focus on the critical reassessment of the production of
cultural heritage as well as the entanglement of material and immaterial
229
KEY-TERMS
heritage has meant that, in recent
decades, concerns about and analyses of heritage sites and practices
have been able to offer more complex
accounts of the legal, moral, cultural,
affective, political, and increasingly
economic (due to its inclusion in tourism and real-estate circuits) stakes for
local and transnational actors involved
(Herzfeld 2010; Falser and Juneja 2013).
Cristiana Strava
REFERENCES
Falser, Michael, and Monica Juneja, eds.
2013. Kulturerbe und Denkmalpflege
transkulturell: Grenzgänge zwischen Theorie und Praxis. Bielefeld:
transcript.
Herzfeld, Michael. 2010. “Engagement,
Gentrification, and the Neoliberal Hijacking of History.” Current
Anthropology 51 (S2): 259–267.
Meskell, Lynn, and Robert W. Preucel,
eds. 2008. Companion to Social
Archaeology. New York: John Wiley
& Sons.
UNESCO, 1989. Draft Report of Commission IV. General Conference TwentyFifth Session Commission IV. Paris:
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
Hybridity
Hybridity is a term often used in relation
to migration and syncretism and understood as a result of adaptation, fusion,
or mixing. Accordingly, hybridization is
considered a process that unfolds when
coexistence becomes interaction, thus
describing moments, dynamics, or intermediate realms that eventually result in
transformation. It can have a temporal dimension referring to transitions
between historical periods, but also a
more geographical or culturalist one
(Burke 2009). Like many of the terms
and concepts that seem to have experienced a particular boom since the most
recent wave of transcultural studies,
230
“hybridity” was, in fact, already a familiar term in academic debates around
the beginning of the twentieth century.
Initially relevant mostly to scholars
of religious studies or literature, then
studied by scholars of Afro-American
or Latin-American cultures, the concept
was later taken up by anthropologists,
before migrating on a larger scale into
cultural history and related disciplines
since around the turn of the millennium.
It is important to note that an
awareness of hybrid phenomena has
had a fundamental impact on the way
we look at internal diversities of cultures
such as that of Europe, which had long
been regarded as rather monolithic or
centralized entities (Burke 2016). At the
same time, hybridity has become an
increasingly crucial category for transcultural processes.
The most important—and probably
most debated—use of hybridity concepts is now found in postcolonial theory
where they are linked to an understanding of cultural spaces beyond static
homogeneity (Bhabha 1994; Sieber
2012). In this context, hybridity’s connotation as a reciprocal, though not
necessarily symmetric, constellation
that emphasizes deliberate or immanent agency on both sides, while also
accounting for the power relations typically inherent in colonial exchanges
(Burke 2009; 2016), becomes a substrate
of transcultural modernities (Sieber
2012, 103).
The use of the term “hybridity”
is often intertwined with metaphors
categorized by Peter Burke (2016, 21)
as either metallurgic (“melting pot”),
linguistic (“creolization”), or culinary
(“salad”). Yet the most critical figure of
thought in this context is probably the
connotation conjured up by the binary
between “hybridity” and “purity,” which
is a value-free model in the realm of
chemical or biological sciences, but can
become value-laden and problematic
when translated into cultural history or
anthropology, as it has the potential of
being linked to judgmental othering or,
indeed, to racist agendas in terms of
both real politics and historical interpretation (Ha 2005; Steward 2011).
MASTERPIECE
Hybridity can therefore even be
considered a kind of litmus test for
the quality of cross-cultural studies,
as its productive epistemic potential
can only exceed its problematic connotations when used in an argument
that, on the whole, is at a safe distance
from any hierarchical or essentialist
thinking. Under these conditions, the
term “hybridity” is most commonly and
productively used as a methodological tool for the analysis of new or for
the reinterpretation of known material. Moreover, we find it applied as an
adjective to characterize cultural and
artistic practices, archaeological traces,
or objects in the transcultural field—an
approach that, in turn, is able to shift
our understanding of the spaces, temporalities, and trajectories in which said
objects are located or circulate (see
e.g. Wolf 2009, à⏵Circulation). Accordingly, “hybridity” may also be understood as an underlying paradigm for
the multitude of methods in current
interdisciplinary humanities and their
dynamics and interrelations (see Preston Blier 2005). In sum, the notion of
“hybridity” provides a test case for the
intersections between the content and
shape / structure of critical postcolonial
thinking (see Sieber 2012, 99).
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
REFERENCES
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of
Culture. London: Routledge.
Burke, Peter. 2009. Cultural Hybridity.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
———. 2016. Hybrid Renaissance: Culture, Language, Architecture. Budapest: Central European University
Press.
Ha, Kien Nghi. 2005. Hype um Hybridität. Bielefeld: transcript.
Preston Blier, Suzanne. 2005. “Transcending Places: A Hybrid, Multiplex Approach to Visual Culture.”
In Anthropologies of Art, edited by
Mariet Westermann, 89–107. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Sieber, Cornelia. 2012. “Der ‘dritte
Raum des Aussprechens’ – Hybridität – Minderheitendifferenz.
Homi K. Bhabha: The Location of Culture.” In Schlüsselwerke der Postcolonial Studies, edited by Julia Reuter
and Alexandra Karentzos, 97–108.
Hamburg: Springer VS.
Steward, Charles. 2011. “Creolization,
Hybridity, Syncretism, Mixture.” Portuguese Studies 27 (1): 48–55.
Wolf, Gerhard. 2009. “Fluid Borders,
Hybrid Objects: Mediterranean
Art Histories 500–1500, Questions
of Method and Terminology.” In
Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration
and Convergence. The Proceedings
of the 32nd International Congress
in the History of Art, edited by Jaynie
Anderson, 134–137. Melbourne:
The Miegunyah Press.
Masterpiece
The “masterpiece” in art historical discourse describes a unique work of art
that is considered one of the finest, outstanding examples in relation to a particular aspect or a certain period, artist,
or style. There is no single definition
of the term, but, generally speaking, a
masterpiece not only is claimed to be
of central importance to art history, but
also meets universally applicable aesthetic criteria—predominantly aesthetic
standards of Western art.
In the past, the term “masterpiece”
was regarded above all as an indicator
of an artwork’s “museum quality” (Danto
1990, 112). This for a long time concerned
mainly Western art objects. The very
basic concept of the masterpiece can be
traced back as early as Plato’s Ion, where
Socrates draws a strict line between arts
and crafts and points to disparate quality
characteristics for art production (Danto
1990, 119). Etymologically, the term
“masterpiece” derives from the Dutch
word Meesterstuk or, alternatively, the
German word Meisterstück, referring to
a piece of work craftsmen in medieval
Europe produced to apply for guild membership. Accordingly, the term is closely
linked to the person with the highest
231
KEY-TERMS
professional qualification in crafts in a
guild, the master craftsman.
Hans Belting (1998) stresses the rise
of the concept of masterpieces following
Hegel’s definition of something absolute
and unconditional with the development
of the arts in general. The emergence of
autonomous artworks only emerged
later and goes hand in hand with the
birth of modern art, art museums, and
the canonization of art in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries (Belting 1998,
11). Depending on the context, different
concepts of the “masterpiece” oscillate
between a more technical, material, and
a more idealistic notion.
Art historians have discussed the
concept of the masterpiece and its many
implications in-depth and recent debates
reconsider the notions of masterpieces
and canons (à⏵Canon) as based on Vasari
and the Western tradition (Locher 2012,
32). At the same time, anonymous yet
technically outstanding artworks in
other traditions are also considered masterpieces, suggesting that quality can
be objectively determined (Halbertsma
2007, 22). To help themselves and to
prove authenticity, people referred to
these anonymous artists as “masters” of
for example specific regions (Vogel 1980,
133–142). As the art historical canon has
opened itself up to greater diversity since
the modern period, the classical canon is
still referenced today, but often in terms
of a critical historiographic reconsideration (Harris 2006, 185–186).
The perspectives of postcolonial
or gender studies with their emphasis on functions of both aesthetic and
social differences have contributed to
this critique by questioning established
yet vague criteria such as “greatness”
(Troelenberg 2017). Museum practice,
particularly in the wake of the postcolonial turn, is currently very much
confronted with such questions, as the
notion of the museum as an idealistic “temple of masterpieces” is being
increasingly challenged by its understanding as a place of active exchange
(Troelenberg 2017).
The key issue does not seem to be
the identification of masterpieces in art
history and museum practice, but rather
232
the question of why concepts such as
“masterpiece” are used and what their
usage implies (Danto 1990, 112).
Maria Sobotka
REFERENCES
Belting, Hans. 1998. Das unsichtbare
Meisterwerk: Die Modernen Mythen
der Kunst. Munich: C. H. Beck.
Danto, Arthur C. 1990. “Masterpieces
and the Museum.” Grand Street 9
(2): 108–127.
Halbertsma, Marlite. 2007. “The Call of
the Canon: Why Art History Cannot
Do Without.” In Making Art History.
A Changing Discipline and its Institutions, ed. Elizabeth C. Mansfield,
16–31. New York: Routledge.
Harris, Jonathan. 2006. Art History: The
Key Concepts. Abingdon: Routledge.
Locher, Hubert. 2012. “The Idea of the
Canon and Canon Formation in Art
History.” In Art History and Visual
Studies in Europe: Transnational Discourses and National Frameworks,
ed. Matthew Rampley, Thierry
Lenain, Hubert Locher, Andrea
Pinotti, Charlotte Schoell-Glass, and
Kitty Zijlsman, 29–40. Leiden and
Boston: Brill.
Troelenberg, Eva-Maria. 2017. “Images
of the Art Museum: Connecting
Gaze and Discourse in the History
of Museology: An Introduction.”
In Images of the Art Museum: Connecting Gaze and Discourse in the
History of Museology, ed. Eva-Maria
Troelenberg and Melania Savino,
1–31. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Vogel, Susan Mullin. 1980. “The Buli
Master, and Other Hands” Art in
America 68 (5): 133–142.
Microhistory
Amidst the polarized swirls of historiographical discourse in 1970s Italy,
a group of scholars affiliated with the
Bologna periodical Quaderni Storici
first coined the term microhistoria. In
MICROHISTORY
a canonical series of books published
in the 1980s, the group developed the
concept further to denote a methodical and theoretical practice of historical
research. By means of in-depth study
of historical particulars, it reconstructs
history from the bottom up. As such,
it forms a counterpoint to the generalizing meta-narratives and distorting
large-scale quantitative analyses of
macrohistory.
In its early stages, the concept of
microhistoria witnessed significant definitional and methodical discrepancies.
Looking back, Carlo Ginzburg described
it as the label of a historiographic box
still waiting to be filled with content
(Ginzburg 1993, 169). Methodologically,
microhistorical studies start out from
the analysis of particulars, be it individuals, small-scale social networks, or
enveloped case studies. In the process,
they reveal previously unobserved factors from which it is possible to induce
well-founded assertions about the overarching connections and fundamental
questions of history (Levi 1991, 97–98).
In a nutshell, microhistorical studies
evince three main characteristics: 1) a
focus on particular areas of study, but
not in the vein of a mere investigation
of historical details; 2) an emphasis on
the agency of individuals as opposed
to abstracting history into impersonal
structures; 3) the induction of broader
connections from the particular. On the
historiographical stage, microhistory
evolved as a reaction to quantitative
models of social history that presume
patterns to consistently weave through
historical periods.
Since the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary cultural anthropology increasingly honed in on questions of daily life,
oral history, and cultural-historical topics. Such aspects cannot be decoded by
means of general and universally valid
rules but only through an understanding of individual entities and their interrelated functioning in a systemic frame
of reference (Magnússon and Ólafsson
2017, 4–5; see also Magnússon and
Ólafsson 2013).
Unconstrained by rigid methodical or theoretical rules, microhistorical
perspectives spread across various
fields in the 1980s and 1990s. While the
German school evolved from empirical
investigations of daily life, Americans
focused on individuals’ agency in effecting social change. These developments
were, and still are, accompanied by critiques of microhistorical approaches
that, among other issues, center on the
inductive reasoning from the particular
to the general (Appuhn 2001, 107–111).
Microhistorical methodologies have
meanwhile made major inroads in areas
beyond the realm of historical studies, including in novel, interdisciplinary
fields such as cultural studies. In each
of those fields, microhistorical studies
aim to counterbalance methodological
nationalism, determinate structuralism,
and Eurocentrism. Hence, they do not
serve merely to complement a global
historiography, but rather shed a new
light on global history through detailed
knowledge of specific sources, agents,
and entities (àà⏵Agency). Moreover, by
studying historical particulars of transregional and global scope, asymmetrical relations and differences can be
addressed critically (Epple 2012). This
suggests applying microhistory as a
theoretical axiom to transcultural studies and discourses on global art, which
requires rejecting any conception of
cultures as ethnically contained and
territorially confined spaces and allows
a better understanding of the concepts,
agency, and mobility involved in the
production, display, and reception of
images and objects. Cultures are thus
placed in an overarching, global context, while taking into account their continuously unfolding transformations
and dynamic intertwining (à⏵Entangled
Histories).
Elahe Helbig
REFERENCES
Appuhn, Karl. 2001. “Microhistory.”
In Encyclopedia of European Social
History from 1350 to 2000, edited
by Peter N. Stearns, 105–112. New
York: Scribner.
Epple, Angelika. 2012. “Globale Mikrogeschichte: Auf dem Weg zu einer
233
KEY-TERMS
Geschichte der Relationen.” In Im
Kleinen das Große Suchen, edited by
Ewald Hiebl and Ernst Langthaler,
37–47. Innsbruck: Studienverlag.
Ginzburg, Carlo. 1993. “Mikro-Historie:
Zwei oder drei Dinge, die ich von
ihr weiß.” Historische Anthropologie,
1 (2): 169–192.
Levi, Giovanni. 1991. “On Microhistory”.
In New Perspectives on Historical
Writing, edited by Peter Burke,
93–113. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Magnússon, Sigurđur Gylfi, and Davíđ
Ólafsson. 2017. Minor Knowledge
and Microhistory: Manuscript Culture
in the Nineteenth Century. New York:
Routledge.
Magnússon, Sigurđur Gylfi, and Davíđ
Ólafsson. 2013. What is Microhistory? Theory and Practice. New York:
Routledge.
Multiple Modernities
In the twentieth century, the concept
of modernity has been constitutive for
the social sciences as an organizing paradigm that focuses on a fundamental
reorganization of the relation between
state and society, including central
spheres like economy, religion, and culture (Eisenstadt 2000). The dominant
understanding of modernity—as the
designation of an epoch and as a conceptual term for paradigmatic social change
(“modernization”)—has been tied to the
idea of a uniform and teleological societal
development characterized by industrial
technological progress, secularization,
and enlightenment. At the same time,
it was conceptualized in opposition to
the “pre-modern” and to “tradition.” As
a consequence, all societies that did not
conform to the normative European
model were excluded from being modern. Imperialism, of course, provided the
material basis for this rationale. In contrast to this, the Israeli sociologist S. N.
Eisenstadt (2000) coined the term “multiple modernities” and pushed for a theoretical reconsideration of the very idea of
234
“modernity”: “The essential idea behind
the multiple modernities thesis is that
‘modernity’ and its features and forces
can actually be received, developed, and
expressed in significantly different ways
in different parts of the world” (Smith
2006, 2).
The theoretical premise of European modernization as a blueprint for
the world has also had serious consequences in other disciplines. In art history, it meant that European art (from
the last quarter of the nineteenth century on) could be, and indeed was,
considered modern and avant-garde,
while non-European art was not. The
new theoretical foundation of a plurality of modernities and modernizations
opened up new ways for art history in a
global context (Moxey 2009). Starting at
the end of the 1990s, exhibitions like “Die
Anderen Modernen – Zeitgenössische
Kunst aus Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika” (The Other Moderns – Contemporary
Art from Africa, Asia and Latinamerica,
House of World Cultures, Berlin) (Hug
1997) challenged the European canon
(à⏵Canon) of “modern art.” But while the
notion of “other” modernities still seems
to stabilize the dominance of Western
modernity as the center of development,
the concept of “transculturality” puts forward a relational perspective. Modernity
has always been entangled (Randeria
2005 ⏵
à Entangled Histories) and modern art could only emerge in the contact
zone. Recent approaches in art history,
such as Kobena Mercer’s “Cosmopolitan
Modernisms” (2005) or Christian Kravagna’s concept of “transmodernity” (2017),
emphasize that contacts and cooperations in the twentieth century were
a prerequisite for the relevant artistic
practices. In case studies focusing on
the era of anti-colonial and anti-racist
movements, Kravagna highlights artistic and theoretical counterprojects and
-narratives to the exclusivity of Western modernity. The fact that the project
of decentering Western Modernity is
still far from being completed underscores the relevance of transcultural
approaches in art historical research.
Kerstin Schankweiler
NATION
REFERENCES
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. 2000. “Multiple modernities.” Daedalus 129
(1): 1–30. (Special Issue “Multiple
Modernities”)
Hug, Alfons, ed. 1997. Die Anderen
Modernen: Zeitgenössische Kunst
aus Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika.
Heidelberg: Edition Braus.
Kravagna, Christian. 2017. Transmoderne: Eine Kunstgeschichte des Kontakts. Berlin: b_books.
Mercer, Kobena, ed. 2005. Cosmopolitan Modernisms. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press and Iniva Institute of
International Visual Arts (vol. 3
in the Annotating Art’s Histories
series).
Moxey, Keith. 2009. “Is Modernity
Multiple?” Accessed February 2,
2018. http://www.columbia.edu/
cu/arthistory/courses/MultipleModernities/moxey-essay.html.
Randeria, Shalini. 2005. “Verwobene
Moderne: Zivilgesellschaften, Kastenbindungen und nicht-staatliches
Familienrecht im (post)kolonialen
Indien.” In Jenseits von Zentrum und
Peripherie: Zur Verfassung der fragmentierten Weltgesellschaft, edited
by Hauke Brunkhorst and Sérgio
Costa, 169–196. Munich: Hampp
(Zentrum und Peripherie 2).
Smith, Christian. 2006. “On Multiple
Modernities: Shifting the Modernity Paradigm. University of Notre
Dame.” Accessed April 11, 2011.
www.nd.edu/~csmith22/documents/
MultipleModernities.pdf.
Nation
There is no generally accepted definition of a “nation,” nor is there any general consensus on the time from which
one can speak of a “nation.” Peter Alter
(1985, 19), for example, questions the
very possibility of a systematic definition of the term. Early conceptions of
nation defined it as a group of people
who shared history, traditions, and
culture, sometimes religion, and usually
language. Scholarly discussions revolve
principally around different conceptions of the nation: the political nation,
the civic nation, and the nation defined
by culture. Benedict Anderson’s publication Imagined Communities (1983) offers
a much-quoted reference and useful
starting point for the debate. In his view,
nations are imagined communities and
thus not natural entities, but rather fictitious and phantasmal structures.
In general, a sense of a nation as a
“cohesive whole” results from the presence of collective elements which are
rooted in the nation’s history, such as
traditions, memories of national experience, and achievements or visual codes,
for example national symbols and flags
(see Smith 1991, 14).
The often-referenced definition by
Deutsch, “Eine Nation ist ein Volk im
Besitz eines Staates,” 1 suggests that
the foundation of a state precedes the
nation’s establishment. Nation-building
outlines the social developments that
are necessary to construct national
unity. The term was first established in
the 1950s regarding western industrialized countries (see Almond 1960; Pye
1962; Deutsch 1966). Since the 1990s,
the term nation-building is commonly
used in research on nationalisms. It is to
be understood in a narrower sense than
“nation formation” (James 1996), the
broad process through which nations
come into being. At the same time, it
is crucial to differentiate between the
terms “state-building” and “nation-building.” While a nation often consists of an
ethnic or cultural community, a state is
a political entity with territorial boundaries and a high degree of sovereignty.
Many states are nations, but there are
many nations that are not fully sovereign states (Richmond 1987). The nation
itself may be fictitious (see Bhabha
1990), but nonetheless nationalisms
construct strong myths and uniform
narratives suppressing phenomena that
do not correspond to the guiding ideas
of the respective nation. “Since every
search for identity includes differentiating oneself from what one is not,” writes
Seyla Benhabib, “identity politics is
235
KEY-TERMS
always and necessarily a politics of the
creation of difference” (Benhabib 1996,
3–4). There is—in an essentialist sense—
no such thing as one national identity.
Different identities are discursively constructed according to audience, setting,
topic, and substantive content. National
identities are therefore malleable, fragile, and, frequently, ambivalent and diffuse (see Smith 1991, 3–8).
With the formation of nation states
in the modern era, the relationship of art
and nation became an important issue
as “it serves as an indicator of social
and political change” in the “search for
renewed identity and national consciousness” (Karnouk 1988, 1). Particularly in
the age of post-colonialism, the process
of decolonization and nation-building
required new narratives and forms of
cultural and artistic expression in the
newly independent nation states of the
former colonized countries. In search for
national art and modernity, different cultural movements in Africa, for instance,
liberated themselves from “European
cultural imperialism” and “sought inspiration in African forms, themes, and
history” (Enwezor 2001, 13–14; see also
Chatterjee 2007). In many societies, the
visual arts remain the source of nationalist imagination. Through objects, artists
reflect on nationalism and identities—
not only as a personal experience but
also as realities and metaphors. The
artistic outcome concerns the aesthetics
emerging from the concepts of nations
and not—or not necessarily—the concepts themselves.
Sonja Hull
Pia Wiesner
ENDNOTE
1 A nation is a people in possession of
a state.
REFERENCES
Almond, Gabriel Abraham, and James
Smoot Coleman, eds. 1960. The
Politics of the Developing Areas.
Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Alter, Peter. 1985. Nationalismus.
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
236
Anderson, Benedict R. O’G. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origins and Spread of Nationalism.
London: Verso.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1996. Democracy and
Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Bhabha, Homi K., ed., 1990. Nation and
Narration. London: Routledge.
Chatterjee, Partha. 2007. The Nation
and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Deutsch, Karl W., and William J. Foltz.
1966. Nation Building in Comparative
Contexts. New York: Atherton Press.
Enwezor, Okwui. 2001. “The Short Century: Independence and Liberation
Movements in Africa, 1945–1994.
An Introduction.” In The Short Century: Independence and Liberation
Movements in Africa, 1945–1994,
edited by Okwui Enwezor, 10–16.
Munich: Prestel.
James, Paul. 1996. Nation Formation:
Towards a Theory of Abstract Community. London: Sage Publications.
Karnouk, Liliane. 1988. Modern Egyptian
Art: The Emergence of a National
Style. Cairo: American University in
Cairo Press.
Pye, Lucian W. 1962. Politics, Personality,
and Nation Building: Burma’s Search
for Identity. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Richmond, Anthony H. 1987. “Le nationalism ethnique et les paradigms
des sciences sociales.” Revue Internationale des Sciences Sociales 39
(1): 3–19.
Smith, Anthony D. 1991. National Identity. London: Penguin Books.
North / South
The terms “North” and “South” have
been introduced as a result of the reordering of the global map at the end of
the Cold War in the late 1980s to conceptualize the relationship of and binary
opposition between Euro-America and
NORTH / SOUTH
Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and
the Middle-East. In recent decades,
these terms have come to be used and
established as a system of classification
in various fields such as academic scholarship and politics in order to describe
and define countries with “high and
low human development indexes” or
“spheres amalgamating countries that
donate (global North) or receive foreign
aid (global South)” (Angosto-Ferrandez
2016, 16). Against this background, it
is important to note that, in a cultural
context, the word “South” has become
accepted as a substitute for terms such
as “Third World” or “Developing World”
(Wolvers et al. 2015) and phrases such
as “East / West” (à⏵East / West) or “the
West against the rest” (Hall 2007).
The binary opposition of “North” and
“South,” in particular, has been controversially debated since its inception, as
has the term “South” itself, especially
in view of its terminological precursors. Thus, on the one hand, “South”
emphasizes empowering aspects, as
it is understood as less hierarchical or
evolutionary, notably in the context of
globalization. On the other hand, there
are obvious limitations to this binary
concept and its definition not just with
regard to geographical boundaries,
geopolitical classification systems, or
economic divisions (Wolvers et al. 2015),
as some countries oscillate geographically and economically between “North”
and “South” and others show internal
social, political, and cultural differences
that are as crucial as those between
countries of the “global North” and
the “global South” (Angosto-Ferrandez
2016, 17).
In the postcolonial era, the dissolution of colonial power relations and
the rise of globalization and transnationalism became increasingly important for the production and reception
of contemporary art from the “South”
(Enwezor and Okeke-Agulu 2009,
18–19). Okwui Enwezor sees the growing interest in contemporary art and
culture especially from so-called “marginal” regions of the “South” as an effect
of the geopolitical changes in the late
1980s. Furthermore, he argues that the
emergence of contemporary African
art is a “consequence of the crisis of
traditional African art due to colonialism” and “of the encounter with new
paradigms of artistic production generated by African responses to European
modernity” (Enwezor and Okeke-Agulu
2009, 12).
The year 1989 in particular marks
an important turning point with regard
to the reordering of the global art
map: Transnational exhibitions such
as “Magiciens de la Terre” in Paris and
biennials such as the third edition
of the “Bienal de la Habana” in Cuba
established transnational, “NorthSouth” as well as “South-South” networks. In the years that followed,
artists and art practices from the
“South” became increasingly visible
and an important, prominent part of
the contemporary global art world
(Filipovic 2010). The notion of an
encounter of different cultural spheres
with regard to a geographical mapping
of the contemporary art scene was also
highlighted in the title and the topics of
the magazine of documenta 14, “South
as a State of Mind.” Against the background of the humanitarian crisis, the
two cities hosting the 2017 edition of
documenta, Kassel and Athens, were
understood as “real and metaphoric
sites […] where the contradictions of
the contemporary world, embodied by
loaded directionals like East and West,
North and South, meet and clash”
(Latimer and Szymczyk 2015). According to Monica Juneja, it is especially
the “cartography of contemporary art,
which encompasses several continents
and encounters with diverse cultures,”
that constitutes an important challenge for art history which, as a discipline, is rooted in and built upon strict
geographical definitions of culture
(2011, 276).
Anna Sophia Messner
REFERENCES
Angosto-Ferrandez, Luis Fernando.
2016. “The Value of Everything
and the Price of Nothingness.” In
Anthropologies of Value: Cultures of
237
KEY-TERMS
Accumulation across the Global North
and the Global South, edited by Luis
Fernando Angosto-Ferrandez, 1–30.
London: Pluto Press.
Enwezor, Okwui, and Chika OkekeAgulu. 2009. Contemporary African
Art since 1980. Bologna: Damiani.
Filipovic, Elena, ed. 2010. The Biennial
Reader: An Anthology on Large-Scale
Perennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz.
Hall, Stuart. 2007. Formations of Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Juneja, Monica. 2011. “Global Art History and the ‘Burden of Representation.’” In Global Studies: Mapping
Contemporary Art and Culture, edited
by Hans Belting, Jacob Birken,
Andrea Buddensieg, and Peter
Weibel, 274–297. Ostfildern: Hatje
Cantz.
Latimer, Quinn, and Adam Szymczyk.
2015. “Editors’ Letter.” In
South as a State of Mind, 6 (1).
Accessed March 14, 2018. http://
www.documenta14.de/en/
south/12_editors_letter.
Wolvers, Andrea, Oliver Tappe, Tijo
Salverda, and Tobias Schwarz.
2015. “Introduction.” In Concepts of the Global South: Voices
from around the World, edited by
Andrea Wolvers, Oliver Tappe,
Tijo Salverda, and Tobias Schwarz.
Accessed March 13, 2018. http://
voices.uni-koeln.de/2015-1/
conceptsoftheglobalsouth.
Object Ethnographies
The study of material culture has been
at the origin of several cognate disciplines (archaeology, anthropology, art
history, museum studies), all of which
have developed related and, at times,
competing interpretations of and theorizations for dealing with objects,
broadly defined. Two major and still
influential theoretical directions were
outlined in 1986 by Arjun Appadurai and
Igor Kopytoff in a collected volume that
238
introduced the idea of “the social life
of things” as a means of going beyond
Marxist understandings of commodities and goods intended for circulation. By focusing on “things-in-motion,”
Appadurai sought to illuminate the
processual nature of value-creation, as
well as the potential of all things to be
commodified (1986, 5, 13). Kopytoff’s
“cultural biographies” were similarly
process-oriented, aiming to illustrate
the contexts and cultural processes
through which objects became invested
with various registers of meaning and
value. In Kopytoff’s view, in order to be
able to understand these registers it is
necessary to examine the biographies
of “things” beyond moments of production and exchange.
Building on this conceptual work
and analytical conclusions, Barbara
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s “ethnographic
objects” helped spur further ways of
thinking, particularly about the construction of museum objects and practices as part of processes of detachment
(1991). Similarly, in recent decades,
scholars of material culture, art historians, and anthropologists have produced crucial theoretical reflections and
nuanced accounts of “things” ranging
from ethnographic objects to performance art (Buchli 2002; Henare et al.
2007; Schechner 2003). Associated with
the “material turn,” these approaches
engaged for the first time directly with
the “thingness” of objects, allowing for
a sustained focus on the sensory and
material properties of artefacts. This
recent and growing body of work has
made it possible to research and write
about objects in a way that fleshes out
social history, culturally constructed
meanings, aesthetic aspects, and politics of engagement.
While this body of work acts as a
necessary corrective for the methodological imbalances produced by earlier commodity-focused approaches
(Appadurai 1986; Miller 1995), it continues to be divided along either
object-focused or biography-focused
lines of inquiry (Hahn and Weiss 2012;
Hoskins 2006, 78). Moreover, dealing
with objects, especially ones whose
OBJECT ETHNOGRAPHIES
histories of production, provenance,
circulation, and display are entangled in
what might be termed “politically inexpedient” contexts (Smith 2007)—which
is frequently the case with transcultural
art histories—requires further rethinking of the methodological tools at our
disposal.
A move from object biographies
towards object ethnographies can help
balance previous display and performance-centered approaches with the
methodological apparatus and self-reflexive stance of the ethnographer. Such
an ethnographic approach to the study
of material culture would not simply
add ethnography to already established
methods of dealing with objects, but
instead synthetically and symmetrically
combine two methodological practices
and traditions. Within this framework,
objects and their histories are understood as contingent, context-bound,
co-produced, and co-productive of
dynamic social, cultural, aesthetic,
economic, and political relations. This
approach aims to balance a focus on
the material properties of an object with
a close attention to the micro-histories,
mundane processes, and constellations
of actors engaged and entangled with
the object or objects in question.
In the context of transcultural object
histories and trajectories where the
“things” in question exist in a complex
web of relations of production, circulation, and meaning, such ethnographic
approaches to object biographies have
the ability to make visible previously
hidden processes and relations, while
making room for ambiguity and ambivalence. As such, they do not preclude
aiming for deep and “holistic contextualization” (Miller 2016) that can work
against tendencies to fetishize and fix
the meaning of material culture. By
requiring that objects always be considered through their placement within
relationships and networks of production and engagement, bio-ethnographic
analyses can help foster much-needed
nuanced and critical accounts of material culture.
REFERENCES
Appadurai, Arjun. 1986. The Social Life
of Things: Commodities in Cultural
Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Buchli, Victor. 2002. The Material Culture
Reader. Oxford: Berg.
Hahn, Hans Peter and Hadas Weiss,
eds. 2013. Mobility, Meaning and
Transformations of Things: Shifting Contexts of Material Culture
Through Time and Space. Oxbow
Books.
Henare, Amiria, Martin Holbraad, and
Sari Wastell, eds. 2007. Thinking
through Things: Theorising Artefacts Ethnographically. London:
Routledge.
Hoskins, Janet. 2006. “Agency, Biography and Objects.” In Handbook
of Material Culture, edited by
Christopher Tilley et al., 74–84.
London: Sage.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara. 1991.
“Objects of Ethnography.” In Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics
of Museum Display, edited by Ivan
Karp and Steven D. Lavine, 17–78.
Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Kopytoff, Igor. 1986. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization
as Process.” In The Social Life of
Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, edited by Arjun Appadurai,
70–73. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, Daniel. 2016. “The Internet: Provocation.” Correspondences, Cultural
Anthropology. Accessed June 20,
2017.
———. 1995. “Consumption and commodities.” Annual Review of Anthropology, 24, 141–161.
Schechner, Richard. 2003. Performance
Theory. New York: Routledge.
Smith, Laurajane. 2007. “Empty gestures? Heritage and the politics
of recognition.” In Cultural Heritage and Human Rights, edited by
Helaine Silverman and D. Fairchild
Ruggles, 159–171. New York:
Springer.
Cristiana Strava
239
KEY-TERMS
Orientalism
The term “Orientalism” was originally
applied to Western philological and historical studies focusing on the so-called
‘East’ and particularly its scriptures. In
artistic and art historical contexts, it
also frequently serves as an umbrella
term for representations of the Muslim
world or Asia, mostly in traditional costume, painting, and photography. At the
same time, it covers the appropriation
of Islamic or Asian styles, particularly in
the applied arts and architecture. “Orientalism” can thus be a geographical
reference to the aesthetic or decorative
systems of diverse regions reaching
from the Maghreb (North Africa), the
southeastern Mediterranean, and the
Middle East via the Iranian world and
Central and Southeast Asia to Japan and
China. With the rise of postcolonial studies, and especially since Edward Said’s
groundbreaking work of the late 1970s
(Said 1978), the term “Orientalism” has
taken on a decidedly critical connotation,
underscoring often asymmetric relations
of power, knowledge, and representation, particularly in imperialist and colonial contexts. Said’s argument has itself
triggered lively debate and controversy
(e.g. Macfie 2000). While increasingly
differentiated, the discourse on Orientalism has revealed imaginary or generalizing narratives about “the Orient” that
involve an implicit association with the
feminine, with backwardness, or with
binary ideas of the exotic picturesque vs.
Western rationality. Critical post-colonial
research thus demonstrates how Orientalism has operated—and often still
operates—as an instrument for Western
modernity’s teleological idea of historical ascent and development: The orientalist subject—whether presented in
affirmative and idealized, or in ridiculing
or vilifying ways—is routinely seen as
the ultimate other that stands outside
modernity (à⏵
à Multiple Modernities).
While Said refers mostly to academic and literary Orientalism, his
reassessment of the term has also led
to an increasingly critical approach
240
toward Orientalist art and design (see
e.g. Sievernich and Budde 1989; Nochlin
1989; Benjamin 2003; Del Plato and
Codell 2016; Koppelkamm and Mueller
2015; Pouillon and Vatin 2015; Troelenberg 2018). The wide qualitative range
of scholarly work on Orientalism is
linked to several aspects deriving from
the subject itself as well as from its academic context: For one, Orientalism is
very much shaped by different national
histories and scholarly cultures. Thus,
many manifestations of French Orientalism are to be considered against the
immediate background of colonialism,
while German Orientalism generally
appears much more characterized by an
indirect, often idealistically or spiritually
informed approach. For another, there is
a certain dialectic inherent in Orientalist
art: iconographically, in terms of its preference for non-figurative patterns, many
examples of Orientalist art carry strong
historicizing or romanticizing connotations. In their decorative approach to
what is often labelled as ‘ornament’, they
often do not do justice to the complex
meanings of non-naturalistic systems of
representation which carry cultural significance, such as the vegetal motives
subsumed under the term ‘arabesque’.
At the same time, however, numerous
nineteenth and twentieth-century artists have regarded the reference to nonEuropean source cultures as a gateway
to abstraction, a catalyst in the search
for modern style (e.g. Brüderlin 2001).
Yet another important aspect is that
scholarship is becoming increasingly
aware of Orientalism’s multidirectional
trajectories that go far beyond the
notion of the so-called Western world
as the only receiving end. The growing
interest in multiple modernisms worldwide has shed important light on the
more local functions of Orientalism, for
instance related to modernization processes within the Islamicate world (see
e.g. Troelenberg 2015), as well as on
transregional Orientalisms beyond the
common “East-West” demarcation lines
(e.g. López-Calvo 2012).
As these very general observations already suggest, there is no single homogenous manifestation of
OTHERING
Orientalism in art, but rather a multitude of Orientalisms across space and
time that are directly interrelated with
the multiplicity of transcultural modernity. (This key-term is partly derived
from Troelenberg 2018).
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
REFERENCES
Benjamin, Roger. 2003. Orientalist Aesthetics: Art, Colonialism, and French
North Africa, 1880–1930. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Brüderlin, Markus, ed. 2001. Ornament
und Abstraktion: Kunst der Kulturen,
Moderne und Gegenwart im Dialog.
Cologne: Dumont.
Del Plato, Joan, and Julie F. Codell. 2016.
Orientalism, Eroticism and Modern
Visuality in Global Cultures. London:
Routledge Taylor et Francis Group.
Koppelkamm, Stefan, and Ilze Kl̦ avin̦a
Mueller. 2015. The Imaginary Orient:
Exotic Buildings of the 18th and 19th
Centuries in Europe. Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges.
López-Calvo, Ignacio. 2012. Peripheral
Transmodernities: South-to-South
Intercultural Dialogues between the
Luso-Hispanic World and ‘the Orient’.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.
Macfie, Alexander L., ed. 2000. Orientalism: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Nochlin, Linda. 1989. “The Imaginary
Orient.” In The Politics of Vision:
Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and
Society, edited by Linda Nochlin,
33–59. New York: Harper and Row.
Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. New
York: Pantheon Books.
Sievernich, Gereon, and Hendrik
Budde. 1989. Europa und der Orient: 800–1900, Exh. Cat. Berlin:
Berliner Festspiele, and Gütersloh:
Bertelsmann.
Troelenberg, Eva-Maria. 2015. “Drawing
Knowledge, (Re-)Constructing History: Pascal Coste in Egypt.” International Journal of Islamic Architecture
4 (2): 287–313.
———. 2018. “The Modern Diffusion of
Islamic Styles.” The Encyclopedia of
Asian Design, vol. 4: Transnational,
and Global Design Issues. Published online. London: Bloomsbury
Academic.
Pouillon, François, and Jean-Claude
Vatin. 2015. After Orientalism: Critical Perspectives on Western Agency
and Eastern Re-Appropriations.
Leiden: Brill.
Othering
The term “other” has a long tradition in
the humanities and social sciences. It
emerges across disciplines as a mental construct based on perceived differences from a subject’s identity, i.e.
in many ways an antithesis that plays
out on intersubjective, interpersonal, or
societal levels.
The notion of the other can be found
among idealistic philosophical beliefs
as early as Pratyabhijñā philosophy (fl.
ca. 925–950 AD) (Ratié 2007, 314). Hegel
brought the discussion to a new level
by focusing on self-consciousness and
its relation to the construction and distinction from others (Popal 2009, 67).
Psychoanalysis then further probed the
other’s role in intrapersonal development; while Freud focused largely on
sexual identity (Hall 1997, 237), Lacan,
as pointed out by Evans (Evans 2002),
emphasized subjectivity and distinguished between the “big Other”—with
a capital “O”—and the other with a lowercase “o,” indicating their inherent power
relations. Here, the O / other is a kind of
external consciousness or point from
which the subject sees itself. While the
“other” is a reflection or projection of the
ego (illusory otherness), the capitalized
“Other” designates fundamental alterity,
an otherness that exceeds the imaginary
(Evans 2002, 38–40).
Othering as a key term for postcolonial studies was coined above all by
Gayatri Spivak (Popal 2009, 67). Spivak
(1985) investigated power relations in
the larger context of imperial discourses
and described the process through
241
KEY-TERMS
which colonization creates otherness.
Following the Lacanian differentiation of
O / other, her usage of Other describes
the colonizing Other, the oppressor,
whereas the other is the so-called “mastered” subject. For Spivak, the formation
of the O / other is a mutually dependent
process in which the O / other are established simultaneously (1985, 133–139).
Continuing the mapping of other / ing
within postcolonial and cultural fields,
Homi Bhabha (Bhabha 1994, 66–84)
underlined the paradox of stereotypes
and the creation of otherness, while others investigated the fetishism, voyeurism, and the “regimes” of representation
involved in othering (Hall 1997, 264–276).
Some fields have especially arisen
to challenge the effects and mechanisms of othering inherent to their own
disciplines. Johannes Fabian’s metacritique of anthropology (Fabian 2002),
for instance, identified how its writing
relegates persons of study, others, to
an earlier, more primitive temporality,
while anthropologists are understood
to exist here and now. This denial of
coevalness for the other also relates
to a geographical distancing and the
traditional distinction between centers
and peripheries (Fabian 2002, 25–37).
Recent calls for more global approaches
in art historiographical debates reveal
the field’s struggle to position “non-European” art in their canon (à⏵Canon)—
a canon shaped in no small part by
nineteenth-century nationalist German art history survey books (Shalem
2012). Western art remains the principle focus and persistent point of departure of so-called global art histories
where art not originating from Europe
is still viewed as “the other” (Shalem
2012; Leeb 2012), as the widely used
term “non-European” illustrates. Many
scholars suggest that, in order to move
towards a truer “global” approach, it is
critical to teach and perceive (art) histories of diverse times and regions not as
if they existed independently, but rather
as being embedded in networks of connectivity, in contact zones.
Westrey Page
Maria Sobotka
242
REFERENCES
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of
Culture. London: Routledge.
Evans, Dylan. 2002. “other / Other.”
In An Introductory Dictionary of
Lacanian Psychoanalysis, edited by
Dylan Evans, 135–136. London:
Routledge.
Fabian, Johannes. 2002. Time and the
Other: How Anthropology Makes Its
Object. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Hall, Stuart. 1997. “The Spectacle of the
‘Other.’” In Representation: Cultural
Representations and Signifying Practices, edited by Stuart Hall, 225–279.
London: Sage Publications / The
Open University.
Leeb, Susanne. 2012. “Weltkunstgeschichte und Universalismusbegriffe: 1900 / 2010.” kritische
berichte. Zeitschrift für Kunst- und
Kulturwissenschaften 40 (2): 13–26.
Popal, Mariam. 2009. “Heine und der
Orient? Zwischen Subjektivität und
Veränderung oder wie das Andere
nach Deutschland kam – sah –
und – ?” In Fremde, Feinde und Kurioses: Innen- und Außenansichten
unseres muslimischen Nachbarn,
edited by Benjamin Jokisch, Ulrich
Rebstock, and Lawrence Conrad,
67–74. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Ratié, Isabelle. 2007. “Otherness in
the Pratyabhijñā Philosophy.”
Journal of Indian Philosophy 35 (4):
313–370.
Shalem, Avinoam. 2012. “Dangerous Claims: On the ‘Othering’ of
Islamic Art History and How It
Operates within Global Art History.” kritische berichte. Zeitschrift
für Kunst- und Kulturwissenschaften
40 (2): 69–86.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1985.
“The Rani of Simur.” In Europe and
Its Others: Proceedings of the Essex
Conference on Sociology of Literature, July 1984, Volume 1, edited
by Francis Barker, Peter Hulme,
Margaret Iversen, and Diana Loxley,
128–151. Colchester: University of
Essex.
PHOTO ARCHIVE
Periphery
The term “periphery,” which can be
qualified as a border zone or outer
edge, suggests a binary geographic
model in which there is a core area surrounded by a perimeter region. Thus,
this theoretical concept can be defined
equally by what it is not: central, innermost, median.
The center / periphery model was
first introduced by sociologists in the
1970s to explain economic networks
and structures. In his multi-volume
magnum opus, The Modern WorldSystem, first published in 1974, Immanuel Wallerstein imagined the concept
of center / periphery on a global scale.
Building on the work of Karl Marx,
Fernand Braudel, and Andre Gunder
Frank, Wallerstein argued that, beginning in the early modern period and
continuing until the present day, a
“core” of several dominating capitalist
countries, primarily those of Europe
and North America, emerged in economic and political relation to areas
that were on the “periphery” or a developing “semi-periphery,” i.e. Africa, Asia,
and Latin America.
The fundamental concepts of this
world-system theory subsequently
found life in a range of disciplines across
the humanities. The division of the
world between center and periphery,
the haves and the have nots, was swiftly
identified by theorists like Edward Said
(1978) as the heart of colonial and
postcolonial discourse. As a result, the
veneer of impartiality suggested by a
model based on space or topography
began to be questioned, with subsequent generations of academics working to uncover the subjective nature of
and imbalance of power within colonial
structures. What’s more, scholars like
Said and Homi Bhabha (1994) noted the
inherent ambivalence and instability of
this binary configuration, and a number of theories such as transculturation, intertextuality, and hybridity have
emerged to refuse and deconstruct a
strict boundary between center and
periphery, especially in terms of cultural
production.
Most recently, the concept of the
“periphery” has been marshaled to
describe understudied material within
the imagined geography of a particular
branch of study, all part of an effort to
globalize or de-center the humanities
tradition at large. Within art history,
the call to question the long-standing
eurocentrism in the field has been particularly resonant (Elkins 2007). Various
critics have called to dismantle or at
least heavily revise the conception of a
hierarchical artistic canon (à⏵Canon) that
has been so dominant within the discipline. At any rate, the ongoing search to
incorporate actors and material on the
periphery prompts researchers to continue working to construct a truly “horizontal” history of art.
Emily Neumeier
REFERENCES
Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of
Culture. London: Routledge.
Elkins, James, ed. 2007. Is Art History
Global? London: Routledge.
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New
York: Pantheon Books.
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European
World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press.
Photo Archive
As many scholars have already acknowledged, photography is about materiality, seriality, multiplicity, and the
mechanized industrial production of
images. If so, what are the organizing
structures for these vast and uncontainable bodies of photographic objects?
The archive, as an informational and
intellectual resource, provides an institutional framework for understanding the management of photographs
as well as the networks in which they
243
KEY-TERMS
circulated (Derrida 1996; Sekula 1986).
The archive has been imagined as a
broad historic “depot” for the storage
and transmission of historic material.
It is, according to Robin Kelsey, “not
an institution or set of institutions,
but rather a system enabling and controlling the production of knowledge”
(Kelsey 2007, 9). Archives unify not only
knowledge or information through text
and image, but whole territories of
empire (Richards 1993). In addition to
being bodies of information and documentation, photo archives operate as
image ecosystems and transnational
interlocutors that connect cultures,
people, ideas, and institutions; as such,
they constitute an important category
for a transcultural art history. Within
the archive, as Elizabeth Edwards has
so eloquently noted, “there is a dense
multidimensional fluidity of the discursive practices of photographs as linking objects between past and present,
between visible and invisible and active
in cross-cultural negotiation” (2001, 4).
By thinking and reading photographs
as three-dimensional objects that are
active in social, political, and archival
spaces and networks, they emerge as
agents in complex and international
migratory processes. These migratory
experiences shape cultural, spatial, and
temporal borders as well as become
inscribed into the body of the photographic archive. In other words, it is in
archival spaces that photographic biographies are enacted (Caraffa and Serena
2015, 9). Based on their biographies
in various collections, photographs
(and their related hierarchies of value)
emerge as objects shaped by a reciprocal rather than a unilateral discourse.
Whether telling tales of dormancy or
display, the archive generates histories of photography that are intimately
entwined with institutional narratives
and political discourse. To this end,
especially in modern transcultural contexts, photographs and photographic
archives can be placed within an institutional milieu, which in turn illuminate
mechanical representations (and their
myriad reproductions) as symbols of
a national, historical, and temporal
244
imaginary. In the digital age, the photographic archive is confronted with new
challenges and forced to ask new questions. The more recent emergence of
boundless and pervasive photographic
images complicates their storage, circulation, and deletion within Internet and
social media archives (Baladi 2016).
Anna Sophia Messner
Erin Hyde Nolan
REFERENCES
Baladi, Lara. 2016. “Archiving a Revolution in the Digital Age, Archiving
as an Act of Resistance.” ibraaz,
010 / 03. Accessed January 9,
2018. https://www.ibraaz.org/
essays/163/.
Caraffa, Costanza, and Tiziana Serena,
eds. 2015. Photo Archives and the
Idea of Nation. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Derrida, Jacques. 1996. Archive Fever:
A Freudian Impression. Translated by
Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press.
Edwards, Elizabeth. 2001. Raw Histories:
Photographs, Anthropologies and
Museums. Oxford: Berg.
Kelsey, Robin Earle. 2007. Archive Style:
Photographs and Illustrations for U.S.
Surveys, 1850–1890. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Richards, Thomas. 2011. The Imperial
Archive: Knowledge and the Fantasy
of Empire. London: Verso.
Sekula, Allan. 1986. “The Body and the
Archive.” October 39: 3–64.
Primitivism
The term “primitive” has historically
meant many different things: From an
early Christian usage to mean simply
“original,” to a negative connotation in
the Enlightenment as an early stage
of human development, to an inverted
celebration of that very quality by some
twentieth-century thinkers, or, alternatively, for others a belief that primitive
art and experience were a universal
RESILIENCE
spiritual quality. Therefore, the term
“primitive” and, by extension, “primitivism” are best understood according
to their political valences and uses in a
particular context (Pan 2001, 29).
Within art history, the term “primitivism” has been most used to describe
“the interest of modern [Western] artists in tribal art and culture, as revealed
in their thought and work,” in which, in
parallel to Orientalism (àà⏵Orientalism),
“it refers not to the tribal arts in themselves, but to the Western interest in and
reaction to them” (Rubin 1984, 1). This
twentieth-century artistic mode of primitivism has often relied on geographic
constructions of difference (i.e. center / periphery à⏵Periphery, à⏵East / West,
Africanism) and, perhaps even more
crucially, temporal ones. Primitivist
thinking often claims “temporal distance” and denies coevalness between
the primitive “Other” (àà⏵Othering) and
the modern subject even when they
are contemporaries (Fabian 1983, 1).
Within this social and political context,
definitions of primitivism run the gamut
from calling it “a function of colonial discourse” (Araeen 1987, 8), to a “reciprocal
relationship” that consists of “modalities
of empathy” (Severi 2012, 27). As Ruth
B. Phillips has argued, primitivism’s
very ambiguities allowed it to function
not simply as a tool of the colonial West
but as “the primary engine of modernism’s global dissemination” enabling
modern art’s “global adaptability” as it
was employed for different reasons by
artists all over the world (Phillips 2015,
6). As Partha Mitter has pointed out,
however, these visual “borrowings”
between cultures are often received differently, which reflects social, cultural,
and political asymmetries. Accordingly,
in what Mitter terms the Picasso manqué
syndrome, while Picasso has often been
deemed a genius for looking to African
sculpture to inspire cubism, an African
artist is likely to be treated as belated
or inauthentic if she looks to cubism
to inspire her own art (Mitter 2008,
534–538).
Primitivism has served in the twentieth century as both a mechanism for artists, curators, academics, and collectors
to freeze other cultures as part of a
permanent past, whether to demean
or celebrate them as such, and as a way
for artists to explore and re-evaluate—
albeit under uneven conditions—new
content and forms from both their own
and others’ visual traditions. In these
ways, a critical and analytic study of
how primitivism works, in both historic
and contemporary contexts, can reveal
underlying assumptions, stereotypes,
and ideologies that structure aesthetic
practices and the reception of art.
Alison Boyd
REFERENCES
Araeen, Rashid. 1987. “From Primitivism to Ethnic Arts.” Third Text 1:
6–25.
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the
Other: How Anthropology Makes Its
Object. New York: Columbia University Press.
Mitter, Partha. 2008. “Interventions:
Decentering Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the
Periphery.” Art Bulletin 90: 531–548.
Pan, David. 2001. Primitive Renaissance:
Rethinking German Expressionism.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press.
Phillips, Ruth B. 2015. “Aesthetic Primitivism Revisited: The Global Diaspora of ‘Primitive Art’ and the Rise
of Indigenous Modernisms.” Journal
of Art Historiography 12: 1–25.
Rubin, William. 1984. “Primitivism” in
20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal
and the Modern. New York: Museum
of Modern Art.
Severi, Carlo. 2012. “Primitivist Empathy.” Art in Translation 4: 99–130.
Resilience
The term “resilience,” which describes the
capacity to bounce back after a deformation, to adapt to uncertainty, or to recoil
and recover from changes and setbacks,
has its primary, very empirical origin in
245
KEY-TERMS
the technical sciences and engineering. As a concept—or a paradigm often
referred to as “resilience thinking”—it is
also integral to the language of psychology, sociology, and a number of related
fields. It is most commonly used in the
context of policies towards international
development and global change and has
come to be employed particularly since
the financial crisis of 2008 (Brown 2016).
To date, resilience does not appear to
be very established yet in written scholarship on visual studies or art history,
but we may currently witness the migration of this concept into our discipline:
Recently, “resilience” has been appearing
with significantly increasing frequency
(see e.g. Meyen 2015).
The fact that resilience seems to
be increasingly moving center stage
in the critical humanities as well as in
artistic practice—particularly where
they engage in critical contemporary
debate—might in itself be an interesting indicator for the self-conception
of academic and artistic agency today.
Resilience thinking has, for instance,
been criticized for opening the doors
to neoliberal individualization of risk
and responsibility and lacking awareness for change-inducing power structures and resulting asymmetries. At the
same time, resilience as understood in
psychology and philosophy is framed
in terms of empowerment and emancipation (Nida-Rümelin and Gutwald
2016; Bollig 2014). It is thus a polyvalent
term that links diverse epistemic frameworks between the first and second
modernity.
Resilience addresses the relation
between individual identities and systems, which often plays an important
role in cross-cultural exchange processes. As the paradigm of resilience
thinking becomes relevant in moments
of change and especially change-inducing crisis, it may provide a productive,
though not celebratory or affirmative
approach to colonial and post-colonial
constellations. Spelling out a processual, diachronic perspective, it links the
notions of longue durée and the microhistorical (à⏵Microhistory), thus reconciling two paradigms of the humanities
246
that often stand in opposition to one
another.
The concept of resilience also has a
particularly prominent function within
the framework of ecosystems; in this
context, interesting observations about
a so-called “edge effect” have been
described, underlining the notion of
resilience in the sense of an adaptive
capacity in transitional areas (Turner
et al. 2003). In encapsulating border
phenomena between different cultures
and ecosystems alike, this provides a
close analogy to the concept of contact zones (à⏵Expanded Contact Zone),
describing cultural diversity and flexibility as a result of productive exchange
and border crossing.
Resilience thinking provides a potentially very broad epistemic framework
for art history and visual studies. This
means that the relation between art
or visual practices and the concept of
resilience is by no means unambiguous
or unidirectional. For instance, artistic
techniques and practices as well as artworks and artifacts can survive (or be
resurrected) through multiple practices
of resilience—a mechanism that may
be considered an active and reciprocal response to claims for asymmetric,
often institutionally framed “salvage
paradigms” (Clifford 1989). In turn, these
practices can shape and enhance resilient identities of communities or individuals in situations of crisis. Thus, it may
be not only an analytical tool but also a
policy device that feeds into notions of
cultural heritage and canons, challenging privileges of interpretation.
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
REFERENCES
Bollig, Michael. 2014. “Resilience – Analytical Tool, Bridging Concept or
Development Goal? Anthropological Perspectives on the Use of a
Border Object.” Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 139 (2): 253–279.
Brown, Katrina. 2016. Resilience, Development and Global Change. London,
New York: Routledge.
Clifford, James. 1989. “The Others:
Beyond the ‘Salvage’ Paradigm.”
RETURN
Third Text: Third World Perspectives
on Contemporary Art and Culture
(March 6): 73–77.
Meyen, Michael. 2015. “Resilienz als
diskursive Formation: Was das
neue Zauberwort für die Wissenschaft bedeuten könnte.” Resilienz.
Accessed June 2, 2017. http://
resilienz.hypotheses.org/365.
Nida-Rümelin, Julian and Rebecca
Gutwald. 2016. “Der philosophische
Gehalt des Resilienzbegriffs. Normative Aspekte.” Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift 67 (3): 250–262.
Turner, Nancy J., Iain J. Davidson-Hunt
and Michael O’Flaherty. 2003. “Living on the Edge: Ecological and Cultural Edges as Sources of Diversity
for Social-Ecological Resilience.”
Human Ecology 31 (3): 439–461.
Return
In her foundational study, The Return of
Cultural Treasures, Jeannette Greenfield
(1989) privileged the term “return” over
repatriation or restitution, writing that it
“may also refer in a wider sense to restoration, reinstatement, and even rejuvenation and reunification” (Greenfield
1989, 368). The term “return” can, in
fact, be used to encompass cases of
both restitution and repatriation. Restitution tends to refer to cases that allow
for a return to an owner based on property rights and is most often the term
employed when dealing with displaced
art works in situations of armed conflict,
notably “Nazi-looted art,” while “repatriation” is largely used in relation to
returns based on ethical considerations
pertaining to human remains and sacred
objects in indigenous communities
(Bienkowski 2015, 433). The notion of
return encompasses the phenomenon
of the physical return of objects as one
aspect of a broad set of practices that
are essentially related to ethical rather
than legal considerations. According to Michael Skrydstrup, “[r]eturn
is not a debate about reparation in a
judicial sense, but about goodwill, ethics and what is at times referred to as
‘natural justice’” (2010, 63). It can also
be usefully related to the notion of
“recovery” bridging from the physical
to the symbolic impact of return, as it
points to the “healing through the restoration of cultural losses and the psychic damage those losses have caused”
(Coombes and Phillips 2013, I). In James
Clifford’s Returns (2013) it appears as a
much larger process of resilience and
decentering.
“Return” is thus particularly useful
when thinking about historic cases,
notably related to colonial contexts
which lie outside the bounds of current
legal jurisdictions. Practices related to
return include dialogue with source
communities and former owners, and
they situate museum collections in an
essentially social and relational perspective, tying objects back to former contexts (Bouquet 2012, 152) and leading
to the development of new and specific
ritual forms of return ceremonies which
have become an object of study in their
own right (Roustan 2014). The notion of
return potentially unsettles not only the
object’s perceived permanence of place
but also the ontological and epistemological interpretations produced by the
museum. In particular, it contributes
to dissolving the notion of specimen,
as the process of return implies focusing on specific trajectories that lead
to stronger individuation of objects, a
process that is particularly exemplary
in the case of human remains. It also
underlines the museum’s role as a form
of soft power, calling on new actors and
forms of curation, producing objects
with more hybrid or heterogeneous
biographies and identities that question
traditional categories of classification.
Felicity Bodenstein
REFERENCES
Bienkowski, Piotr. 2015. “A Critique of
Museum Restitution and Repatriation Practices.” In The International
Handbooks of Museum Studies,
431–453. Hoboken: John Wiley &
Sons, Ltd.
247
KEY-TERMS
Bouquet, Mary. 2012. Museums: A Visual
Anthropology. London: Berg.
Clifford, James. 2013. Returns: Becoming
Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century.
Boston: Harvard University Press.
Coombes, Annie E., and Ruth B. Phillips.
2013. “Museums in Transformation: Dynamics of Democratization
and Decolonization.” In The International Handbooks of Museum
Studies, xxxiii–lxiii, edited by Sharon
MacDonald, Helen Rees Leahy,
Andrea Witcomb, Kylie Message,
Conal McCarthy, Michelle Henning,
Annie E. Coombes, and Ruth B.
Phillips. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Greenfield, Jeanette. 1989. The Return
of Cultural Treasures. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Roustan, Mélanie. 2014. “De l’adieu
aux choses au retour des ancêtres:
La remise par la France des têtes
māori à la Nouvelle-Zélande.”
Socio-anthropologie 30: 183–198.
Skrydstrup, Martin. 2010. “What Might
an Anthropology of Cultural Property Look Like?” In The Long Way
Home: The Meaning and Values of
Repatriation, edited by Paul Turnbull
and Michael Pickering, 57–80. New
York: Berghahn Books.
Spolia
The term “spolia” designates reused
ancient materials, most often stones
incorporated into newer buildings. In
antiquity, the term denoted war booty
or spoils. An extension from “hide”, it
suggests an analogy between taking
the armor from a fallen enemy and skinning an animal. The current meaning
was introduced by sixteenth-century
antiquarians. In a 1519 letter to Pope
Leo x, Raphael uses the word “spolia”
to educate the pope about how to recognize high quality ancient works in a
context of lesser artistic quality (Kinney
1997, 122).
In the European context, the circulation of and trade in spolia was
248
particularly widespread from late antiquity until the thirteenth century. The
reasons were often practical, as ancient
sites were used as quarries while at
the same time being acknowledged
for their historical value. The study of
spolia emerged in the 1930s and has
focused on the incentives behind the
reuse of older materials. The term’s
martial origins link it to the practice of
taking objects from other cultures separated in space, time, or politics from
one’s own. In scholarship, the use of
spolia has often been explained either
as a deliberate reference to the ancient
past or as a matter of pure practicality. With regard to the latter, it is often
assumed that the desacralization of
pagan buildings stripped them of all
meaning and reduced them to quarries
(Sanders 2015; Kiilerich 2005). However,
the prominent reuse of pagan spolia in
many medieval churches suggests that
those “foreign” elements were reinterpreted through a Christian lens and
given new importance (Esch, 2005).
Recent scholarship has shifted
away from describing spolia as a purely
practical or illicit practice, instead considering them as an example of a form
of local engagement with the past
that falls outside academic categories (Brilliant and Kinney 2001; Siapkas
2017; see also à⏵Allelopoiesis). The usefulness of the term “spolia” has also
been questioned. Based on the term’s
origin in Renaissance antiquarianism
and its close association with the reuse
of ancient Greek and Roman materials,
it does not seem able to adequately
reflect ancient or non-European notions
of the significance of reused materials
(Kinney 1997, 118).
It should also be considered
whether all reused objects transferred
into a new context can be seen as spolia, including, by extension, ideas, captives, architectural forms, ornaments,
or portrayed objects, since of all these
function as topographical and historical
references.
Frederika Tevebring
Lisa Heese
TRANSLATION
REFERENCES
Brilliant, Richard, and Dale Kinney,
eds. 2011. Reuse Value: Spolia and
Appropriation in Art and Architecture
from Constantine to Sherrie Levine.
Farnham: Ashgate.
Esch, Arnold. 2005. Wiederverwendung
von Antike im Mittelalter: Die Sicht
des Archäologen und die Sicht des
Historikers. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Kiilerich, Bente. 2005 “Making Sense of
the Spolia in the Little Metropolis
in Athens.” Estratto Dalla Rivista Arte
Medievale Nuova Serie, 4: 95–114.
Kinney, Dale. 1997. “Spolia, damnatio
and renovatio memoriae.” Memoirs
of the American Academy in Rome,
42: 117–148.
Sanders, Guy D.R. 2015. “William of
Moerbeke’s Church at Merbaka:
The Use of Ancient Spolia to Make
Personal and Political Statements.”
Hesperia: The Journal of the American
School of Classical Studies at Athens,
84 (3): 583–626.
Siapkas, Johannes. 2017. Antikvetenskapens teoretiska landskap Volym I:
Från Laokoon till Troja. Lund, Nordic
Academic Press [forthcoming in
English translation].
Translation
Traditional notions of the translation
process emphasize the search for and
use of equivalencies across languages to
render an original text comprehensible
to a foreign audience. Schleiermacher,
Goethe, and, later, early twentieth-century thinkers, however, began to deconstruct the unilateral notions inherent
to this view that translations should
resemble the inalterable and authoritative original (Langenohl, Poole, and
Weinberg 2015, 175–179). Walter Benjamin, for instance, unsettled the stability
of the original by describing translation
as calling out both languages into a kind
of third space between them, heightening self-reflection in the process,
and opening the languages to mutual
transformation. Literary theorist Mikhail
Bakhtin then re-assessed the construction of meaning itself, arguing that it is
produced in dialogue between subject
and world. In this analysis, all situations
or stagings of a text, including translational ones, release potential for new
meaning.
These radicalizing notions of translation began to migrate beyond literary
theory, supported by poststructuralist
and postcolonial approaches. The traditional “cultural translation” practiced
by anthropologists, which searched for
corresponding phenomena across cultures to “learn” them like a language
(Burke 2009, 55), increasingly witnessed
criticism that resisted the conception
of cultures and languages as fixed,
homogeneous entities, and rather highlighted the negotiation and change at
play within social and cultural encounter. This critical shift amounted to what
Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere
announced in 1990 as a “cultural turn”
in translation studies, while Doris
Bachmann-Medick (2009) proclaimed
a “translational turn” within cultural
studies. These “turns” involve a focus
on bilateral transformations within
encounters and the valorization of
deeper entanglements, displacements,
and multiplicities. They also maintain an
awareness of and resistance to hegemonic forces and the tendency towards
“monolingualism,” which would insist
on others finding corresponding meanings to a “Western” original “language”
(see Hall and Chen 1996).
Translation, particularly in reference
to its definition as the movement or
conversion of things to another place
or into a new medium, also frequently
traces object mobility, its “routes” rather
than “roots,” as James Clifford (1997)
famously wrote. Objects here are thus
conceived as translated and translating
entities whose meanings arise in negotiations and histories of cultural encounter. Museums can similarly be read as
translating institutions; by inscribing
objects into narratives that are comprehensible to a foreign audience, they
function through the creation of spaces
that are palpable or “real” to the new
249
KEY-TERMS
observer. The perceived authenticity of
the object thus relies on the translation,
which can be seen as a kind of spectacle
or performance, of the original object.
Westrey Page
REFERENCES
Bachmann-Medick, Doris. 2009. “Introduction: The Translational Turn.”
Translation Studies 2 (1): 2–16.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1980 [1934–1935].
“The Word in the Novel.” Comparative Criticism Yearbook 2: 213–220.
Bassnett, Susan and André Lefevere,
eds. 1990. Translation, History and
Culture. London: Pinter.
Benjamin, Walter. 1996 [1923]. “The
Task of the Translator.” In Selected
Writings, vol. 1, edited by Marcus
Bullock and Michael W. Jennings,
253–263. Cambridge, MA: Belknap
Press.
Burke, Peter. 2009. Cultural Hybridity.
Cambridge: Polity.
Clifford, James. 1997. Routes: Travel
and Translation in the Late Twentieth
Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Hall, Stuart, and Kuan-Hsing Chen.
1996. “Cultural Studies and the
Politics of Internationalization:
An interview with Stuart Hall
by Kuan-Hsing Chen.” In Stuart
Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural
Studies, edited by David Morley
and Kuan-Hsing Chen, 392–408.
London: Routledge.
Langenohl, Andreas, Ralph J. Poole,
and Manfred Weinberg, eds. 2015.
Transkulturalität: Klassische Texte.
Bielefeld: transcript.
Visuality
The term “visuality” emerged in the
early nineteenth century to describe a
metaphorical way of seeing, tying it to
the notion of understanding (Mirzoeff
2011, 2). The OED, for example, defines
visuality as “[t]he state or quality of
250
being visual or visible to the mind;
mental visibility.” The paradigm of visuality, albeit akin to visual theories and
methodologies (see e.g. Rose 2012), is
highly asymmetrical, as it presupposes
a center of perception where an object
can be mentally grasped and rendered
recognizable, ultimately involving the
agency of “the authority of the visualizer” (Mirzoeff 2011, 2). Knowledge and
sight are thus historically intertwined,
making visuality a quality of history itself
(and pointing beyond this to Michel Foucault’s notion of “discourse”). In recent
decades, visuality has been criticized
as being culturally constructed. Many
authors have discussed this notion,
including John Berger in Ways of Seeing
(1972), W. J. T. Mitchell in his numerous
publications on image and picture theory, and Nicholas Mirzoeff in The Right to
Look (2011). This debate is fueled mainly
by the fact that Western culture in particular is defined by ocular-centrism, having favored sight as “the noblest sense”
since antiquity (Sandywell 2011, 591). In
his discussion of the 1889 World’s Fair,
Timothy Mitchell (1989, 221) exemplifies
this condition of the “Western World” as
a “thing to be viewed” and constructed
with an agenda of representation.
What we see is determined by
how we see, and this poses a number
of problems. Sight, originally thought
to be the most objective sense, is now
“presented as highly unreliable” (Hertel
2016, 184–185). Detecting a crisis of
visuality in all areas of visual culture,
Mirzoeff (2011, 6) pointedly notes “that
the visibility of visuality is paradoxically
the index of that crisis.” This crisis is a
result of the realization that the correlation of sight, knowledge, and authority
is, in fact, a misconception based on
imagination. As such, visuality increasingly coalesces with the notion of spatial thinking and with semiotics, where a
dialectic between the icon (after Charles
S. Peirce) and visuality becomes evident
(Bal 2006, 21–24).
In postcolonial criticism, visuality has been more closely defined and
inscribed as a historical mode of perception and of establishing power
by colonizers (e.g. Pratt, 2008). This
VISUALITY
field-specific use carries a pejorative
connotation, although a reversal can
be observed where sight is moved
away from its mental property towards
its corporeality (Mirzoeff 2011; Hertel
2016). In cultural theory, by comparison, Mieke Bal (2002; 2006) uses the
term in its most basic definition as a
“mental image,” thereby pointing to its
metaphoricity. By extension, this points
to areas worth rethinking in terms of
visuality: language as charged by visual
tropes, and narrative theory, both
dimensions related to the mental and
the imaginary. The underlying implication is for visuality to be deconstructed
and methodologically reevaluated not
with regards to sight, but to language.
Isabella Krayer
REFERENCES
Bal, Mieke. 2002. Travelling Concepts
in the Humanities: A Rough Guide.
Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
———. 2006. Kulturanalyse. Frankfurt
a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Hertel, Ralf. 2016. “The Senses in Literature: From Modernist Shock of
Sensation to Postcolonial and Virtual Voices.” In A Cultural History of
the Senses in the Modern Age, edited
by David Howes, 173–194. London:
Bloomsbury Academic.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2011. The Right to
Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mitchell, Timothy. 1989. “The World as
Exhibition.” Comparative Studies in
Society and History 31 (2): 217–236.
Pratt, Mary Louise. 2008. Imperial Eyes:
Travel Writing and Transculturation.
London: Routledge.
Rose, Gillian. 2012. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching
with Visual Materials. London: SAGE
Publications.
Sandywell, Barry. 2011. Dictionary of
Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon
of Terms. Farnham: Ashgate.
“Visuality.” In: Oxford English Dictionary
(OED). Accessed September 7,
2017. http://www.oed.com/view/
Entry/224006?redirectedFrom=
visuality&.
251
About the Authors
Rhea Blem holds a bachelor’s degree in Art History and English literature
from the University of Zürich with a focus on postcolonial theory. She is
currently enrolled at the Freie Universität Berlin for a master’s degree in
Art History of Africa in a Global Context, specializing in ‘older’ African arts
and material culture. Her research interests include the global circulation of objects, the reception and representation of African art in Europe,
and colonial continuities in contemporary structures and thought. From
2019–2020, she worked as a research and curatorial assistant in a project
with the Kunsthaus Zürich that explored, among other things, traces of
colonial history in Switzerland’s past and present.
Felicity Bodenstein is a maître de conférences in Heritage and Museum
History at Sorbonne University, Paris. As a museum historian, her work
focuses in particular on questions of display and representation in colonial and post-colonial contexts. She also co-directs the project Digital
Benin: Reconnecting Royal Art Treasures, in collaboration with the MARKK
(Museum am Rothenbaum. Kulturen und Künste der Welt).
Alison Boyd is currently an assistant professor in art history at Utrecht
University. Previously, she was a post-doctoral research fellow in modern
and contemporary art at the University of Maryland’s Center for Art and
Knowledge at the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. She completed her
PhD in Art History and Gender and Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University. Her main areas of research are modern and contemporary art, arts
of the African Diaspora, feminist art history, and the politics of display.
Sria Chatterjee is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the 4A Laboratory:
Art Histories, Archaeologies, Anthropologies, Aesthetics fellowship program of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence – MPI and the Stiftung
Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, Germany. Sria holds a PhD from Princeton University and was awarded the Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Honorific Fellowship in 2019. She specializes in the political ecologies of art and
design in the global South in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She
is currently working on her first book, which is adapted from her dissertation. Her work draws on transnational environmental histories, the history
of science, in particular, plant science and agriculture, landscape studies,
design, and cybernetics. She is also a Contributing Editor at British Art
Studies.
Lisa Heese holds a master‘s degree in art history from the Technische
Universität Berlin and completed it with a master’s thesis on exhibition
2021. “About the Authors.” In Reading Objects in the Contact Zone, edited by Eva-Maria
Troelenberg, Kerstin Schankweiler, and Anna Sophia Messner, 253–257. Heidelberg
Studies on Transculturality 9. Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.766.c10427
253
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
concepts for the presentation of GDR and West German art. Her fields of
interest include cultural transfer and exchange, curatorial practices, and
social and political circumstances that affected the production and exhibition of art. Her work also includes project-related research assistance as
well as provenance research.
Elahe Helbig is an art historian whose research focuses on the disciplinary
trajectories of photography in Iran and pertains to corresponding fields,
like practices of visual representation, political iconography, and transnational artistic exchanges. She is currently conducting comparative studies
on landscape photography in Iran at the Center for Studies in the Theory
and History of Photography at the University of Zürich.
Sonja Hull is a research assistant at the photographic archive of the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich and holds a master‘s degree in art
history from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Her research
focuses on architecture, design, and photography in the 20th century.
Isabella Krayer has studied fine arts photography, art history, english literature and cultural analysis. She is a doctoral fellow at the University of
Zurich, Cultural Analysis. Her dissertation focuses on feminist methods,
strategies and practices in contemporary art. Other research interests lie
with 20th and 21st century art and literature, cultural, aesthetic and media
theory, and the history and critique of concepts. She is a member of the
curatorial collective Kein Museum.
Lea Mönninghoff holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in cultural studies
with a specialization in contemporary art theory from the Leuphana University of Lueneburg. Her research focuses on 21st century art in a global
context and the sociology of the art market. She is currently working at the
Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg.
Anna Sophia Messner
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3629-7048
(Dr. des., LMU Munich 2020), is an art historian and currently a scientific
staff member at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. From 2015–2018
she was doctoral fellow at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – MaxPlanck-Institut. Her research focus includes modern and contemporary art
in a global context, Jewish art and historiography, visual culture of Israel
and Palestine, history and theory of photography, art history, and postcolonial theory.
Emily Neumeier is Assistant Professor of art history in the Tyler School
of Art and Architecture at Temple University. She completed her PhD at
the University of Pennsylvania and in 2018–2019 was in residence at the
American School of Classical Studies in Athens as Getty / ACLS Fellow in the
History of Art. Her research concerns the art and architecture of the Islamic
254
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
world from the early modern period until the present day, specializing in
the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey.
Erin Hyde Nolan is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Maine College of
Art where she teaches courses on the history of photography and visual
culture, Islamic art, critical museum theory, and global modernism. She
received her PhD from Boston University in 2017. Previously, she worked
at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the Harvard Art Museums, and the
Morgan Library & Museum.
Westrey Page is an art historian and currently a curatorial fellow at the
Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf. She received her master’s degree in
European art history in a global context from the Freie Universtität Berlin, specializing in German art and culture in the 19th and 20th centuries,
museological practices, and the historic relationships between theories of
emotions, psychology, and aesthetics.
Kerstin Schankweiler
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8357-0492
is Professor for Visual Studies in a Global Context at the Institute for Art
and Music, Technische Universität Dresden. Her research interests focus
on digital image cultures, contemporary art from Africa, art history, postcolonial theory, and art history in a global context. Publications include the
two monographs “Bildproteste” (Berlin 2019) and “Die Mobilisierung der
Dinge. Ortsspezifik und Kulturtransfer in den Installationen von Georges
Adéagbo” (Bielefeld 2012) as well as the edited volume “Images Testimonies. Witnessing in Times of Social Media” (London 2019).
Maria Sobotka has completed undergraduate and graduate studies in art
history and economics. She is currently completing her PhD at the Freie
Universität zu Berlin entitled “The Migration of Art. Korean Art in Museum
Collections outside of Korea.” Her research focuses on art history in a global
context with a specialization in East Asian art, transcultural processes, the
art market, economic strategies of artists and art museums, and current
issues in cultural policy.
Cristiana Strava is a social anthropologist (BA, Harvard; MARes & PhD,
SOAS) and currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Middle Eastern
Studies at Leiden University. Her research focuses on questions of ethnographic method, the relationship between urban space and social transformations, and the social and political role of material culture in postcolonial
contexts.
Frederika Tevebring (PhD Northwestern University 2017) is an intellectual
historian and currently a research fellow at the Warburg Institute, London.
Her research explores how Ancient Greece was used as a foil for modern
national identities, especially in Germany. She is particularly interested in
255
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
mythological figures that have been described as obscene or sexual and
how these have challenged idealizing notions of Ancient Greece.
Eva-Maria Troelenberg
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5536-9460
(Dr. phil., LMU Munich 2010) was head of the Max-Planck-Research Group
“Objects in the Contact Zone – The Cross-Cultural Lives of Things” at Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut from 2011–2018. She
has taught the history of Islamic art, modern global art history and transcultural museum history at the Universities of Vienna and Heidelberg and
as a visiting professor at LMU Munich and University of Zürich, and she was
a research fellow at the Munich Centre for Global History. Since 2018, she is
professor for modern and contemporary art history at Utrecht University.
Her publications include the monograph “Mshatta in Berlin – Keystones of
Islamic Art” (Dortmund 2017) as well as the edited volumes “Images of the
Art Museum – Connecting Gaze and Discourse in the History of Museology” (Berlin 2017, with Melania Savino) and “Collecting and Empires” (Turnout New York 2019, with Maia Gahtan).
Katharina Upmeyer studied art history and history at the LudwigMaximilians-Universität München and Tel Aviv University. She graduated
with her Master’s thesis on Lee Miller’s photographs from Egypt. During and
after her studies she worked at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence,
Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte in Paris, Christie’s in Munich, Kulturstiftung der Länder in Berlin as well as the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and the 16th Architecture Biennale in Venice. Her main fields of
interest include: modern and contemporary art (especially photography),
intercultural transfer as well as art market, collections, and provenance.
Theodore Van Loan received his PhD in 2018 in the History of Art at the
University of Pennsylvania with a dissertation entitled, “Umayyad Visions:
Charting Early Islamic Attitudes Toward Visual Perception.” His research
focus includes Early Islamic art and architecture (622–1000 C.E.), visual and
aesthetic theory, and methodologies of art history. He was a visiting lecturer in the Program of Middle East Studies at Smith College.
Janna Verthein studied Art History and Islamic Studies at the University
of Münster, presenting a bachelor’s thesis on foreign influences on Qajar
painting. She then pursued a master’s degree in Translation with a focus
on English, German, and Arabic. Currently, she is a PhD student at the JGU
Mainz, where she is a member of the Center for Translation and Cognition
in Germersheim.
Matthias Weiß (Dr. habil., FU Berlin 2015) is professor for modern and
contemporary art history at Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg with
an additional focus on entangled art histories. He was the head of the
research project “Images of Europe beyond Europe” at the Bibliotheca
256
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Hertziana –Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte and taught art history
as a visiting professor at the Freie Universität Berlin. Also, a long-term
member of the Max Planck Research Group at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, he curated the exhibition “Exchanging
Gazes. Between China and Europe 1669–1907,” which was in cooperation
with the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.
Tom Young was a project curator at the British Museum, working on the
exhibition Tantra: enlightenment to revolution (2020). Before that, he was
a lecturer at the University of Warsaw, primarily teaching the postgraduate
curriculum. He received his PhD, M.Phil., and undergraduate degrees from
the University of Cambridge, subsequently taking up fellowships at Yale
University and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. He specializes in
the visual and material histories of the British Empire, with a recent focus
on the global history of lithographic printing.
257
9
HEIDELBERG STUDIES
ON TRANSCULTURALITY
The cultural effects of globalization constitute one of the most important challenges for the discipline of art history today. The aim
of this publication is to take a critical look at art historical narratives. Based on transcultural object biographies, the volume brings
together analyses of objects and images that circulate in transcultural
contact zones: their histories of origin, circulation and perception
slice through space and time. The histories of these objects and
images thus demonstrate in exemplary fashion how knowledge and
understanding can be generated, communicated or also challenged
in cultural contact zones. Hence, the publication is designed as a
methodological contribution to a transcultural art and cultural history. It is also conceived as an instrument for teaching and contains
a critical-discursive glossary of key-terms that combines theory and
practice of transcultural art history.
ISBN 978-3-96822-051-2
9 783968 220512