AHIS 246 Piece Significance

Amrita Sher-Gil, Self-Portrait as a Tahitian, 1934 

  • This piece is thought to take from Gauguin’s Two Tahitian Women, reclaiming the idea of primitivism as Sher-Gil takes the form of the women, but replaces their more vibrant tones with the color and form of her own body. This piece removes the idea of “otherness” of non-Western, colonized cultures, challenging Europe’s idea of Modernism.   

Paul Gauguin, The Mango Trees, Martinique, 1887 

  • The inclusion of the woman holding the fruit basket on her head as well as the woman eating the mango with her hands demonstrates the exoticism of colonized lands. These actions are foreign to Western society, and like the iconography of the Fellah with the water jug on her head, the primitive and “otherness” of these actions demonstrate the presumed primitivism and exoticness of Tahitian life. 

Jamini Roy, Two Cats Holding a Large Prawn, c. 1920 

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Hippolyte Arnoux, Photo of a Woman in Oriental Dress, c. 1880s 

  • Arnoux helped photograph the Suez Canal project and while in Egypt, took posed photographs of the Egyptian people to bring back to Europe. In this photo, the woman is posed and dressed in a manner to create a fantasy of Egyptian women, insinuating the sensualness of a covered woman.  

William Holman Hunt, The Abundance of Egypt, 1857 

  • Image is an attempt to establish Christo-European legitimacy within Egyptian culture as it draws parallels to the Abundance of Egypt in the Bible. The woman is carrying the wheat or bread above her head while lifting a jar of assumedly wine. The act of Egyptomania was not only a fascination with Egyptian culture, but also a movement to grab legitimacy of Europe from ancient Egyptian innovation, and this image furthers this idea. 

 

Hendrik Willem Mesdag, Panorama Mesdag, opened 1881 

  • Hendrik Willem Mesdag was commissioned to create this panorama in response to the “panoramania” movement that allowed other lands and times to be consumed through paintings. Due to the rise in popularity of dynamic films, panoramas no longer were the most effective method of immersion in a different time and culture, so Mesdag purchased his own panorama to avoid its destruction, causing it to be the oldest surviving piece.  

Francisco Oller, The Wake, 1893 

  • Oller is a Puerto Rican painter who studied in Europe, and we can see the influence from European culture as he characterizes the figures in a Puerto Rican wake as primitive. The perception of noise and movement in the scene attempt to show the Puerto Ricans as concerned with worldly objects as animals do, rather than the matter of death.  

Olowe of Ise, Veranda Post of Enthroned King and Senior Wife, early 20th c. 

  • The seated king’s crown is decorated with four carved ancestral faces with open eyes, a reference to the divine line of descent and spiritual wisdom it contains. This demonstrates the importance of ancestry and lineage in Yoruba culture, and how Olowe of Ise’s attention to detail allows for a respectful and proper recreation of traditional Yoruba art.  

Gazbia Sirry, Life on the Embankment of the Nile (II), 1960 

  • The overlapping of color and lines represents the perspective of Egypt being a complex matrix of relationships that belongs to Egyptians. The modernist approach to portray the Nile and the people living there is an act of reclaiming art of the Nile through an inherently Egyptian perspective to redefine what life is on the Nile outside of colonialism.  

Tippu’s Tiger, mechanical organ, c. 1790 

  • The organ represented a tiger attacking a British soldier, making a noise of the attack while the soldier’s arm raises in the air. This piece is significant as it was made for the Indian Sultan, Tippu, who was typically symbolized by a tiger and represented the hostility of imperial British rule and Indian people and royalty.  

Jean Leon Gerome, Portrait of an Egyptian Fellah, c. 1856 

  • This sketch, though thought to convey realism, revealed a fantasy of Egypt. The choice of portraying this laborer from the side accentuates his facial features such as his nose and brow bone, features that vary with Europeans. This demonstrates the development of phrenology in Europe, which sought to determine one’s character and susceptibility to committing a crime.  

Alphonso Lisk-Carew, Bundoo Girls, Sierra Leone, c. 1905 

  • Alphonso Lisk-Carew was a local photography and personality, and this is demonstrated in his photograph as the women appear comfortable and willing to participate in the photograph. The staging of the women can be argued to be artificial, but demonstrated a reclaiming of culture, as the women are depicted from a Sierra Leonen perspective that sets the woman as people in the scene, rather than ethnographic objects.  

Kingdom of Benin, Carved Leopards, 19th c. 

  • The symmetry of the leopards projects a sense of order or power and shows regional rulers of Benin valued signals from the animal kingdom that consolidates power and does it in a domestic and civic setting.