1/21/2024 0 Comments Lady in blue by henri matisse![]() ![]() The symbols lending themselves to such readings exist quite literally on the surface. A cursory glance at Deveria’s painting confirms that the interpretations I have laid out for Matisse’s and Picasso’s paintings are not particularly complex. 1830–35), in which, according to the wall text, “the painter emphasizes the sensuality of his scantily clad subject” placing her within “exotic trappings,” including slippers, a parrot, a coffee pot, and her cigarette. The exhibition alludes to the colonial origin of the odalisque as artistic trope through Achille Deveria’s “Odalisque” (c. Henri Matisse, “Nude on Sofa” (1923), oil on canvas But in this lies the crux: Matisse has transposed the fantasy of a sex slave into his living room, positioning female sexual subjugation as part of the everyday. ![]() ![]() Only the square of wallpaper adorned with the recognizable shapes of Arabic decorative arts inform us we are still in the theme of the odalisque. The vase of cut flowers creates a sense of peaceful domesticity. The landscape outside suggests provincial France rather than the Ottoman Empire. She is of the decorations and they of her, all objects of male, sensual pleasure.Īt last we arrive at “Nude on Sofa” (1923). The blue of her shirt is drawn from the mosaic’s geometric shapes and her nipples mimic the circular tiles. Her arms raised to strike the instrument mirror the arched mosaic behind her, while her pants match the green outline. Painted in Nice, where, for “eight years, Matisse devoted himself to the theme of the odalisque,” the figure and decoration of Matisse’s constructed harem scene seem to merge. One step over we’re confronted by “Odalisque with Tambourine” (Harmony in Blue) (1926). Henri Matisse, “Odalisque with Tambourine (Harmony in Blue)” (1926), oil on canvas Each contains its own cues of female sexual exploitation with remarkable variance that nevertheless goes unremarked upon by the exhibition’s text. ![]() In between lies the rest of the exhibition, most notably three of Matisse’s odalisques who occupy the center wall. Her surroundings are the labyrinthian prisons of slavery. Appearing simultaneously everywhere at once, Picasso’s fragmented figures complete this abstraction by subsuming them in the field of painting just as the odalisque is subsumed by the desires of her male owner. Alienated from their reality, the women become objects for the male voyeur. The discarded sandal, the narghile pipe, the various states of undress, speak not to the women’s experience but to that imagined by their viewer. Inspired by his visit to Algeria soon after its brutal conquest by France, Delacroix’s painting is more Western fantasy than social reality of life in a harem. Pablo Picasso, “Women of Algiers, Version I” (1955), oil on canvasĪlone on the far wall of the exhibition is Pablo Picasso’s “Women of Algiers, Version I” (1955), one variation in his monumental series based on Eugene Delacroix’s “Women of Algiers in their Apartment” (1834). It is through this moment that the exhibition enters. While the nude as a subject stretches back to antiquity, the odalisque trope is particular in that it emerged precisely at the moment of the Second French Empire, in 1830, when the French colonized Algeria, which had previously been part of the Ottoman Empire. Namely, that she was an object for male sexual gratification.Įmployed first in literature as an example of the moral superiority of Western monogamy over Eastern polygamy, the odalisque was transformed into an object of desire in the erotic paintings of the 19th-century Orientalism art movement. Though a harem slave and a concubine were two very different stations in life within the Ottoman Empire, that they are conflated within the French definition is indicative of the underlying concept of the odalisque in Western thought. Originally applied to chambermaids living in the sequestered quarters of female members of the Turkish court, the term “odalisque” came to refer to a harem slave or concubine in Renaissance France, which had numerous political and commercial dealings with the then powerful Ottoman Empire. Installation view of Matisse/Odalisque at the Norton Simon Museum ![]()
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