Near East to Far West: fictions of French and American colonialism

Abstract

"From the 1830s to the 1920s, American artists such as Alfred Jacob Miller, George de Forest Brush, Joseph H. Sharp, Bert Geer Phillips, and Ernest Blumenschein traveled to France to study their craft. Returning from abroad, these artists looked to the American West in search of new subjects. Influenced by French Orientalists such as Eugène Delacroix, Eugène Fromentin, and Jean-Léon Gérôme, the American artists applied an Orientalist aesthetic and ideology to their paintings, sculptures, and drawings, while at the same time creating works that appeared uniquely American. Exploring the ways that the visual tropes and knowledge structures of Orientalism influenced French and American colonialism and expansion, this volume considers the impact of French artistic techniques and tropes on the development of western American art. Other themes include the symbolism of desert landscapes and exotic animals, the role of world's fairs in disseminating Orientalist spectacles and stereotypes, and the importance of artistic pilgrimage to the deserts of North Africa and the American Southwest. Historical and contemporary perspectives of Indigenous peoples of North America, Muslim Americans, and Arab Americans challenge, negotiate, and provide alternative perspectives to the artworks."--Exhibition: Denver Art Museum, March 5-May 28, 2023.

Contents

Director's foreword / Christoph Heinrich -- Note from the director of the Petrie Institute / Jennifer R. Henneman -- Near east to far west: fictions of French and American colonialism / Jennifer R. Henneman -- Divided allegiances: French images of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, 1798-1848 / Jennifer W. Olmsted -- Algeria under French colonialism: resistance, survival, and memory, 1830-present / Jennifer E. Sessions -- Looking at Miller looking at Indians / Scott Manning Stevens -- Imagining the desert / Richard V. Francaviglia -- Studio fictions: the allure of elsewhere / Molly Medakovich -- Spirited women: painting North Africa, the middle east, and the American southwest / Betsy Fahlman -- Caged in bronze: hunting for the "Orient" in the sculpture of Alexander Phimister Proctor / Christine Garnier -- World's fairs as sites of Orientalism east and west / Emily C. Burns -- The Arab performers in Buffalo Bill's wild west / Danielle Haque -- "American Arabs": wild metaphors and the myth of the disappearing Indian / Jacob Rama Berman -- Before Taos, there was Paris / Marie A. Watkins -- Adam or Odalisque? Or, the recline of the west / Robert Warrior