Orientalism in view
June 22, 2008
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/exhibitions/britishorientalistpainting/
British Orientalist Painting will explore the responses of British artists to the cultures and landscapes of the Near and Middle East between 1780 and 1930, offering vital historical and cultural perspectives on the challenging questions of the ‘Orient’ and its representation in British art.
Below are some postcards of the paintings on view; the others are in the catalogue, or even, in this digital world, to be seen in real time at the Tate — in the instance of the sign, signifier, and the referent, the latter exists as a painting as well as the scene it captures if, indeed, it ever existed.
If there had been certain other postcards I would have chosen them: a beautiful scene of an encampment in the desert by moonlight by a man who is said to have already embarked on the madness that caused him to kill his father and end in an asylum; a stunning huge standing figure of an Egyptian peasant young woman surrounded by the signs of the Nile’s fertility, in a style and with a face that is the absolute spitting image of Frieda Kahlo; and landscapes and locations I myself have visited in my own Oriental wanderings — Aya Sophia in Constantinople, the Great Mosque in Damascus and a view of the city from way up above on a mountain, the temples at Edfu and Philae and the Valley of Kings in Egypt, and Beirut and, the big one, Jerusalem, although in the case of the two latter my holiday in one was cancelled because the Israeli airforce was bombing it, and for the other it is to come, God willing, though if I said “Next year in Jerusalem” it would not be for that reason.
This is Byron of course.
The hero, or the dissolute, of Missalonghi in Greece who wrote home in 1824:
“We shall have work this year, for the Turks are coming down in force; and as for me, I must stand by the cause.”
Need I say more? The riches and pleasures of the East.
A somewhat softer kind of sensuality, in fact love, gentleness, and learning
This reminds me of the inside courtyard of a house we visited in Damascus.
A little bunch of English tourists with a learned and empathetic Arab Christian guide, inside the mosque I had chatted to an Iranian Shi’ite woman on pilgrimage to visit her saint’s tomb who told me about her relatives in Bayswater. Outside an old man vociferated at our party in Arabic, well, he would, wouldn’t he, as if to say “What are you lot doing here at this holy site?”
As our guide took up off into a warren of narrow streets into the old city, a couple of guys in mufti tagged along discretely until we arrived inside the house and stopped to relax and dring lemonade; I guess they must have been from the equivalent of the Mukhabarat just to see we came to no harm.
Anyway, the point is, in all the countries of the East, what with the heat, you have a cool shady courtyard in which to enjoy the open air.
Similarly, inside there are screens like these, as was explained to me by Ali, my friend and also Friend of the Tate host, whose family live in Pakistan. Rather like venetian blinds they let in the light and the breeze without the glare and the heat, and create a mirror effect of multiple patterns of shadows on the interior walls of the rooms.
TE Lawrence. 352087 A/c Ross. Aircraftsman Shaw.
Actually, I am a member of the TE Lawrence Society. In Syria and Jordan I toured the Crusader castles which brought him to the East as a student.
At Krak des Chevaliers, below, it was so hot I wanted a hat and at the little shop in the castle they insisted on me having a proper Arab headscarf and band — I’m ought to know the name for it, but it was red and white. One man put it on for me, and I had my photo taken, with everyone laughing and joking and saying “Orens, Orens!” Unfortunately, I no longer have that photo.
But I do have the scarf and band. I wore the scarf going to Brussels for the weekend, when, unknown to me, there was a meeting reported later in the press of exiles from one or other Arab state; I don’t remember offhand.
Anyway, coming back through border control at Waterloo I was stopped for nearly half an hour while the Arab stamps in my passport were examined, and I had polite chats with one officer and then his boss about who I was and what I did, and why I took trips abroad.
At length I lost patience and reminded them I was a British citizen but also a journalist on a certain newspaper that takes a dim view of infringements of liberty.
When I told the friend in Brussels about this, he retorted: “What do you expect, going round wearing a PLO scarf?” I suppose he has a point, and I have to ask myself if I was trying to do something beyond, in either instance, stay cool or keep warm.
I have visited Aqaba, the Red Sea port which he captured after a desert march the Turkish army thought couldn’t be done — a stunning victory that set the Arab Revolt on its way, and I have traced some of the track and visited one of the stations of the Hedjaz Railway he attacked.
At this station in the desert, there is the house, built for himself by the German engineer who supervised the railway’s construction, and then a reception lodge for guests of the Jordanian royal family, much as it was 100 years ago but turned into a little museum and surrounded by a graveyard of defunct rolling stock.
I even have some of the beautiful Ottoman arabic script certificates given to pious Moslems, from Bosnia to Indonesia, who subscribed to the Caliphate’s fund to build the Hadj pilgrimage rapid transit innovation — while simultaneously setting up a military supply and reinforcement network to secure the Ottoman empire.
It was Lawrence’s guerrilla war innovation, repeated from Algeria to Vietnam, to have the brilliant idea to tie down vastly superior forces in defending what appear to be formidable assets but which, as fixed points in a war of movement, turn out to be fatal millstones. if the French will not forget the Battle of Algiers, they will never, ever, forget the disaster of Dien Bien Phu.
But here we come to the dark side of Orientalism.
While Pontecorvo laid bare how General Massu tortured his prisoners to get information (and things haven’t moved along much, in this respect, in 50 years — although the present government of Algeria is no slouch in this game), Lawrence in his amazing Seven Pillars of Wisdom told the world how, while pretending to be a Circassian to spy on the Turkish army, he was interrogated in Der’aa and then mysteriously released.
In truth the whole episode is mysterious. No doubt you remember the scene in David Leigh’s epic film (which I saw when 16 and the vast desert and searing skies must “have put the hook in me”); anyway, Bill Fraser played the sinister, oily Turkish officer with a waxed moustache who questions the Christ-like white man Peter O’Toole and then beats him savagely.
The subsequent rape is not shown but unmistakably stated. But did it ever take place? There is no evidence whatsoever Lawrence was captured or even there at that time.
It is a sadistic homoerotic fantasy, pure and simple, projected onto the figure of the wicked, all-powerful Oriental potentate, the flip side of the seductive, submissive Odalisque or servant girl — the word’s meaning in Turkish.
This brings me to other instances which show Orientalism is very much alive and kicking.
One is the recurrent demonisation of Turkey over the so-called Armenian genocide. This is a difficult subject, made harder by resistance today, nearly 100 years later, among some Turks and in the Turkish state, to face the question.
First, the only valid use of the word genocide, though the UN has blurred the definition somewhat, is to designate a systematic programme of extermination planned and ordered by the heart of a state’s government. Anything less is a war crime, group murder, or sheer incompetence or neglect that results in death through hunger, disease or exhaustion.
Such a programme has never been shown to have existed. On the contrary, what do exist are a number of proven forgeries intended to convince the gullible that it did happen.
Below is a famous example, The Mehmed Talat Pasha Telegrams, a book which dissect an Armenian forgery of documents purporting to relate to a genocide programme. Here is one forged telegram from this interior minister:
This is the translation:
This is not to say the Ottoman government did not enact draconian laws, for example:
The Tehcir law, “Regulation for the settlement of Armenians relocated to other places because of war conditions and emergency political requirements”, was passed by the parliament on May 27, 1915 and came into force on June 1, 1915, with publication in Takvim-i Vekayi, the official gazette of the Ottoman State. The temporary law expired on February 8, 1916.
It laid down (1) the military measures against those opposing government orders, country’s defense, and the protection of peace; and against those organizing armed attacks and resistance, and killing rebels during aggression and uprising in wartime, (2) the transfer and resettlement on a single basis or en masse, the people living in villages and towns who are found to be engaged in espionage or treason, (3) the temporary law’s effect and expiration, and (4) the definition of the responsible parties (application).
Remember, in 1915 the Allies had encouraged, financed and armed Armenian nationalists to fight a guerrilla war and seize districts and cities with semi-regular forces, while the Russian army was fighting the Ottoman army on what is now the Caucasus border; in this war on two fronts, fought fiercely and at times with savagery on both sides, there was imminent danger the whole of eastern Turkey would be lost.
Hence these measure in the Tehcir law can be thought to amount approximately to the steps taken at the turn of the 20th century by the British in South Africa when fighting a guerrilla war against Boer commandos. In order to cut the flying columns of farmer-soldiers off from their hinterland and support, the Boer population, women, children and all, were evicted from their homes and herded into “concentration camps” (yes, the British invented them) where thousands died of hunger, disease and exhaustion.
Naturally, anyone outside the camps caught or suspected of aiding the enemy would be shot no doubt without trial or delay. Quite possibly there were reprisals or massacres after particularly galling defeats for the British army. I don’t know the precise history, but you get the picture.
Of course, the upshot years later was the Afrikaans state and apartheid. But nobody now talks about Queen Victoria’s criminal responsibility. On the other hand, neither do I risk prosecution in my home country for saying Queen Elizabeth has blood on her hands, or at least her forebear does.
Hence, to return to Turkey, there were scenes like this this execution:
But for many who died, it was more a question of this, mass deportations and enforced treks to resettlement in Syria or Iraq, where exhaustion, hunger and disease brought about by the disorganisation and shortages of wartime played a larger part than any mass murder:
The Guardian, Friday June 20 2008
Publisher convicted of insulting Turkey
Turkey disputes the allegation that the Armenian deaths were genocide, though not the fact that many died.
Zarakolu was acquitted of a separate charge of insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the modern Turkish state, and has been freed on appeal. He is not expected to serve time after the judge ruled that his sentence could be reduced to a fine, citing good behaviour.
This article from the Guardian is an illustration of how:
a) Turkey continues to shoot itself in the foot;
b) even liberal free-minded journalists unthinking recycle the assertion, by no means a fact, that there is such a thing as “the Armenian genocide”.
If I may declare an interest, I work at the Guardian, and the article as it is above was changed by me after it was first put in the paper, with due consultation and permission, from something stronger.
The first paragraph had read: The publisher of a book by a British author acknowledging the 1915 Armenians genocide has been convicted …
The wording of the third paragraph was also changed slightly, the word “deliberate” being removed, since “deliberate genocide” is a tautology or oxymoron, and the phrase “though not the fact that many died” was added.
The term “Armenian genocide” remained in the headline; but what I now more regret — though at a newspaper at night there’s not a lot of time to spend changing things when there are, seriously, more major changes that have to be made.
“…the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces” may well be the book in question’s view, but it again appears as by implication actually what happened. With hindsight I would have certainly removed the word “slaughter” since, as I have argued, it implies killing on orders what in many case is known to have been unintended deaths due to a multitude of causes; and of course the numbers are disputed even if you use the phrase “up to”.
Well, that’s enough on that subject.
Except to say that if you really are interested, I highly recommend another book for a much more nuanced and I believe accurate account of the true state of affairs in that region at that time.
It is about another Christian versus Moslem conflict within the chaos of the end of the Ottoman empire, the story of the war and ethnic cleansing that began at Missalonghi in 1824 and ended in the treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
Though it could be said to have begun in 1071 when the Byzantine empire lost the battle of Manzikert and hence a lot of what is now Turkey to the Seljuk Turks, and reached its peak in 1453 when the last Greek emperor died in the breach as Mehmet the Conquerer’s Janisseries fought their way into Constantinople.
The “Great Idea” was the hope and determination of the recreated modern Greek state to recapture Istanbul and drive the Turks out of Asia Minor to make it once again part of the Orthodox Christian nation.
With the help of British, French and Italian forces, the Greek army all but captured the whole of the western Turkish mainland, after Turkey had progressively given up the whole of an empire that had stretched throughout the Middle East, southern Europe and the Caucasus.
The Greek invasion led to horrific killings on both sides, millions of refugees herded into an exchange of populations, and the birth of the modern Turkish nation and state under the leadership of Kemal Ataturk.
That of course why all Turks are ambivalent to say the least about their history — it was in many respects them who faced annihilation at the end of world war one.
So read this book and realise that in history there are few altogether good guys, or bad ones for that matter.
To move on, one last thought on Orientalism.
I bought this book at the Tate as well as my catalogue and postcards.
As well as setting up the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra with Daniel Barenboim, Edward Said, as they say, wrote the book about Orientalism.
Just recently there has been a fierce correspondence in the Times Literary Supplement after the neo-Orientalist Robert Irwin wrote a retrospective on Said’s book, damning it with faint praise while acknowledging its centrality to modern thinking on the subject.
In particular Irwin cast doubt on Said’s command of the Arabic language.
Said’s wife was forced to come to her late husband’s defence with personal testimony.
What can one say?
When West meets East … or not, as the case may be.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article4114045.ece http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/tls_letters/article4067321.ece http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article4021027.ece http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3978324.ece http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/article3885948.ece
