i love all your videos but this is such a bad faith interpretation of said's work. to say that western artists didn't fetishize or exoticize their subjects because they created beautiful paintings is so reductive and untrue. scores of orientalist artists engaged with their subjects and the middle east and north africa in ways that were dehumanizing and fetishistic. paintings like the snake charmer and the slave market should illuminate this for you. for another example, paul gauguin spent years painting women in tahiti while he was raping them - rendering them beautifully while denying them personhood. the fact that orientalist art was being created at the same time these places (algeria, tunisia, the levant, morocco, etc) were being colonized should give you a hint as to how european artists felt about the people and scenes they painted. there is no sense of equality or reciprocally in a colonial system, only exploitation. your attempt to depoliticize orientalism to make it more palatable only does yourself and your audience a disservice.
I've had to read the arguments for and against Orientalism in 3 different courses. Orientalist art isn't problematic because it depicts every day life. It's problematic when it continued to depict the middle east as static, frozen in time at the height of the Ottoman Empire. I've done research on historical fashion of the middle east. It was mandatory in the Ottoman Empire since 1850 to wear western dress. You can see photographs and read travel accounts of people discussing how people of the middle east dressed. Prior to then, during the 1810's when the Balkans were taken over by Russia, locals immediately adopted western dress and had western style fashion houses in under 2 years. Also the Middle East was incredibly diverse during the 18th and 19th century because Christians and Jews also lived there and had their own styles of dress. You rarely see depictions of those people's in art from Western artists during this period. I will not say that every artist was trying to depict what they dreamed. But it is hard to accept that most artists were portraying reality in their work due to restricted access. There are paintings that depict nonsense Arabic or imaginative squiggles on the walls of mosques. There are paintings of women in Turkish baths that no men would have been allowed to enter. Many depictions of harems are also a male artist's idea of what it would look like, as only males allowed inside were eunuchs and family members. Many women are portrayed to be scantily clad or nude, when that would have gone entirely against their religious and social values. We can't simply brush all of this off and say artists were depicting what they saw. Art can depict reality, but artists also depict what they dream. Both can exist and be true at the same time.
And don't forget that most artists paint what they can easily sell. The tradition of covertly salacious images in disguise (such as fake "harem" scenes) goes back much further than "orientalism" - many a buxom virgin and child or classical goddess was painted to be ogled.
People in Japan wear western clothes all the time. It doesn't mean they stopped wearing kimono. Also, the artists weren't selling their paintings as documentary evidence of how the sultan's court looked in the 1860s. It's almost like there's a phrase for that... artistic license! Squiggles are a time honored tradition. Yes, let us blame these artists for not first becoming fully fluent in Arabic and not getting every dot, dash, and hamza correct. A law must be issued to stop artists from making squigglies that suggest the presence of writing! Do you know what men fantasize about besides the Roman empire? Wow, a guy painted a picture of a hot woman in a exotic setting. Truly that is awful and has never been done before except by these terrible European painters. What depraved perverts lol. Where are you getting that all of these are documentary pieces? Some are obviously fantastical. The works aren't entitled "Reporting live from the Harem Peephole - Odalisque Slumber Party, 1852" But maybe being purposefully obtuse is what allows your fantasy to work.
@@casimirgythe2181 thing about art is that it influences how people think and approach a subject. The middle east narratively in the west has *consistently* been stereotyped as a mysterious land full of oppressed women and hostile warlike men who need other people to solve their problems for them. The ottoman empire was considered a western power, but also like a child trying to impersonate one at the same time. "Orientalism" by Edward Said for a better understanding. You may also find "The Question of Orientalism" by Bernard Lewis to show some insight into how Orientalists bristled at Said's arguments. Definitely give a look at "At All the Shah's Men" for insight into how the US overthrew Iranian Democracy in the 1940's to protect them from communism, but in reality was trying to let Britain maintain control over their natural resources. When it comes to fetishization of Muslim Women, feel free to endure the condescension of the author in "Do Muslim Women Need Saving?" "Re-Presenting the Harem: Orientalist Female Artists and the 19th century Ottoman Empire" by Megan McDaniel and "Gender, Orientalism and the War on Terror" by Maryam Khalid may also be enlightening. But if you really want insight into how perception of the middle east impacts how the people who live their are treated, look no further than "Iran Awakening" by Shirin Ebadi and the French animated film "Persepolis". I am not saying the art is bad or completely racist. I am saying that the bias of every person influences their work and understanding of the world. Art can be used for propaganda as much as it can be used to educate or inspire. Take a look at how people from the middle east are portrayed in film and media have been portrayed in the last 25 years. How often are they given the role of heros or nuanced protagonists? Even in the animated version of Alladin, the opening song calls their culture barbaric. One can't ignore the fact that perceptions of a nation, a religion, or a people as whole loses its context and nuance if a mass majority of media upholds stereotypes. Japan has its own nuance and context too. From how it responded to western infiltration. To chosing to adopt western culture and technology in the idea of "if you can't beat them, join them". The western world consumes media that Japan has put out. Japan is not viewed as poor 3rd world country that hasn't progressed since the 18th century. The Roman empire is seen as the ancestor of the western world. Its seen as the inheritance of the West, a power that shaped our ideas and notions of several nations identies. It's fetishization is based off the art Rome itself produced. The middle east has not been extended that same courtesy despite its preservation of Greek and Roman texts during the european Dark Ages. Art can be appreciated for the sake of art. But it doesn't exist in a bubble. It's a response. You are right people do depict random squiggles all the time. That's why people didn't want to give credit to the peoples of the mezzo or South American the credit for founding and building their own ancient monuments. Many of the first depiction of Mayan script have elephants and other Hindu elements. Things that we're not actually in the glyphs standing right in front of them. Still, those artists continued to perpetuate the theory that it was another known civilization that created these structures. Ever heard of people claiming things like the pyramids or nazca lines were made by aliens? Yeah. That comes from the notion that western people are the only civilizations capable of being smart enough to build incredible things. Hark back to the Romans. Nobody claims the colloseum was made by aliens. Because that's considered nonsense.
Thank you for adding research and informed opinion to these comments. The title of this video uses the word “nuance,” and you’ve added a bit more nuance to this discussion. People may agree or disagree, but you definitely have added to the discourse. Thanks!
Deeply dissapointed with this episode. First for your massive Misportrail of Orientalism i can only hope it wasnt Intentional. And also of your pronuciation. Big L this episode.
Julian, I love your work and what you do, I have been watching your videos for years, but I have to say I was disappointed to hear how critical of Said you are. I have studied and written about Said in academic contexts, maybe the art world’s understanding of Said is different than the political science world, but I think your description of his thesis is such an oversimplification that it becomes inaccurate, and I was hoping my perspective on Said might be able to clarify a few things. Said argues that cultural exchange is based around perceptions. Europe has a perception of what it means to be European, and what it means to not be European. He argued that European scholars, writers, and artists, who produced media based on “the Orient” operated through the lens of what it means to be “Uneuropean.” This is not the fault of any individual artist, I’m sure they had a deep admiration for the cultures they were studying and attempted to convey that through their art, but perceptions still shape our worldview and how we produce. Said argued that the ultimate impact of Orientalism was a proliferation of the idea that the Orient was whimsical and beautiful, but also alien, underdeveloped, and perverted, worldviews which acted as a justification for colonialism. Said did not argue that “anything a European says about the middle east is bad and racist” but that the cultural movement of Orientalism served as a catalyst for some bad things Europe would go on to do in the middle east. These paintings are beautiful and should be cherished as treasures and invaluable parts of history, but part of understanding history is knowing their complex cultural impact. Hope this finds you well!
Well said. It is hard to imagine how Jean-Léon Gérôme's The Slave Market could possibly be understood as anything other than objectifying, especially given the unreality of the scene.
The whole reason orientalism became such a problem was because these European artists were changing the realities they saw to better suit European expectations so these paintings could sell. Regardless of their feelings, artists have to make money. While there were absolutely artists that simply painted what they saw, it was a little sad to hear him downplay the criticism here. As he said though, this painting seems to be one of the examples of one made out of simple love of the culture and people… hopefully
Even more flatly racist to say that about the slew of work out of the orientalism movement. Like, it's in the name! I've never heard someone so quickly dismiss Edward Said's work like that, as if he's naive for pointing out the way British and more broadly European art contributes to the colonialist effort to exocitize the "Middle East" and extract resources from it. Like?? Truly out of pocket interpretation here.
Not only broad, it's blatantly false... I'm only one class away from graduating with a BA in art education & I'm convinced he's never read any of Said's work. The fact that he only displays depictions of mundane life when a very large part of orientalism was looking to depict sexual fantasies is concerning. Many artists who became synonymous with orientalism never even visited the places they depicted & became fascinated with a version of "the east" that doesn't exist in reality after reading or hearing about fake cultural practices (or even worse, they did go & lied to appeal to Europeans). It doesn't really take much effort to find this kind of information, even the Wikipedia page for orientalism features quite a few fetishistic works of nude women in spaces it wasn't culturally normal to be nude in & infamous harem paintings.
Looking forward to your follow up video in which you walk back your incredibly reductive and dismissive claims about Said’s huge contributions to art criticism.
For those unfamiliar with Said, here's wikipedia's description of this book: "Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.[1]" As others have noted, its definitely more nuanced than Julian's comment, and not strictly related to art. if you are interested in these ideas or feel defensive of the art/artists (Said is not arguing about the beauty of the art, but about its relationship to colonial power structures) i would encourage reading Said's work or looking at other scholarship on Orientalism.
The problem with critical theories is that the moment you put on that lens, everything becomes problematic because of the theory's bias. If you have a painting that is a caricature of the people and is portraying them in false light or obviously racist stereotypes then yes, Said might have a point. But if the painting is of a Moroccan man sitting at a table during the day, then no it's idiotic to then ascribe the horrors of colonial legacy to that work. Some works are just as they appear, a wonderful composition with a striking subject. Other works can be very political. But to confuse the two is to be purposefully stupid or malevolent in an attempt to manipulate people. Were there artists that could be described as Said is suggesting, yes sure, is every work and every artist doing that, obviously not. As the title of the video implies, "Radical Nuance" each work and each artist has its own nuance. Reductively dumping them all into a set of "problematic/colonial/racist/sexist/etc" art is a tired, stupid, and boring technique used by Marxist 101 undergrads and those under its influence to create windmills for their Quixotic delusional crusade against fake made up problems. I would encourage other people before reading anything to look at the painting, look at how it portrays the subject, to think about the artist who spent time painting it, and then ask themselves, if I was the subject and saw this work, would it offend me? If your answer is no, then you probably don't need to do extra research to find out why you should be offended or why you a century plus later, a culture different, and sitting thousands of miles away should be offended on behalf of the subject.
@@JacquesDeLeon it's not just "another opinion", it's cancel culture. And yes, that is stupid to - reductively dump everything into a category of 'problematic', and to then go on a crusade.
@belneste there is a big difference between being critical of something and 'canceling' it. As an anthropologist, it's important to understand that some, and the original comment does say much, art will show the sitter in different views that correlate with the painter's view on the society. You have to try and understand the implicit bias (which is subconcious) to figure out if an artwork is true to fact or not. One also has to separate their own bias' from the work they do in order to keep it from corrupting the work. It's also important to understand that not everyone is viewing this art. Art used to be seen as something only those in high society, those with money and power, viewed. Therefore they'd influence those parts of the world based on their ideas of what was existing there. So if an artist paints a simple scene, but imparts his bias of it being riddled with poverty, this can be done with colors chosen or the placement of shadows that western viewers would subconsciously read as 'poor', then the person buying the art will assume the sitter is poor, or unhygienic. Being critical of a system, like how we know that brain capacity between people doesn't really effect intelligence but they believed it did in the 1800s, doesn't mean we can't improve upon it and take the bits that work out, like how there's sometimes roughly a 25cc brain capacity difference between males and females and in some cases that helps investigators identify missing and dead people. Cancel culture would be throwing the whole system out, and erasing it from history, much like the ancient Egyptians did to pharaohs they didn't like, not finding the issues with a system and setting about fixing it, which can only come through being critical.
lmao responses to this comment appear to sum up to“don’t read critical theory because it’ll turn you woke” people still getting upset about Said generations after his work was integrated into serious thinking on these topics and we all moved on
To explain simply why the “intentions” of orientalist artists don’t matter: I’m sure every amateur artist who eagerly dipped their toes into painting restoration and (either temporarily or permanently) ruined a painting also had good intentions - they weren’t TRYING to ruin the painting, to insult the original artist, I’m sure on some level they “loved” that piece too. But that doesn’t change the final outcome and the harm they’d done, however unintentional it was.
A beautiful portrait! Really not a fair assessment of Edward Said's work or thesis at the beginning, however, which overshadowed this video for me. Said dedicated his life to understanding how colonized people were represented by colonizers in colonial-era literature particularly. The complex dynamics between interpersonal relationships (which may be positive) and broader power structures (which were overwhelmingly exploitative - including in North Africa) are a huge part of what Said discusses across volumes of his work. I would recommend rather that accepting the summary provided here, people should read Said's work for themselves.
Yes it is incredibly naive and anyone who’s engaged with the field of study would laugh at this casual dismissal of one of the most important sociological authors of the 20th century.
Yeah, agreed, I was a bit saddened that this argument was presented so onesided and comically overblown. People can still agree or disagree, but flattening down the argument because you don't agreee with it is always a bad look.
@@ChrisGalardi I studied Said and was repulsed by his work. Not that some of the implications weren't merited, but his work was what was one-sided - not our reactions to it.
I kind of cringed a little myself, but a brief explanation of why wouldn't go amiss from an expert. Although it's true that Said isn't immune to criticism, Julian's statements presented things as a lot more cut and dried in a revisionist way than they actually are, that's for sure. Although at least he didn't ignore the topic completely.
3:07 "the artists certainly did not" .... Sure mate 👀 Looking at the title of that piece & being a Muslim myself, with Morocco being a Muslim country these pictures of men "prostrating" to the king like they are praying is sus as hell to me!! It wouldn't happen as would be against the religion. & no they are not praying as all would be facing the same way. Even bowing is looked down on but it happened sure, my point who is to say the artist didn't play it up to make it look better for the painting. Just adding my two cents to what some of the other more thoughtful & well worded statements have said in the comments section about your take on orientalism. Even the example paintings you gave are not all great is my point. And to some of the pushback to those thoughtful takes. Im not white, so this isn't a white guilt take lol. On a more positive note, great restoration video as always.
if this portrait is as nuanced as you say, why do we not know the name of the sitter? often times, with portraits especially, you provide context with names, history, and sometimes even family history. your complete dismissal of said's analysis of orientalism, while at the same time exhibiting the exact phenomenon he was critiquing, is disappointing to say the least.
you're lucky i like this channel and love to watch the restoration cuz i almost turned the video off when you claimed to know more about orientalism than Edward Said 😅 the idea that fetishization is always deliberately hateful or with an eye toward colonization is false, plenty of orientalist artists "loved what they saw" and still warped the cultures they depicted when they did so because that's like? basically how human point of view works??? if you read said you would know that.
Edward Saids work is racist theory. You have to be a racist to believe in all the critical race theories out there to begin with. What positive change does his work or any of the other bring to society? How does it unite society and help spread peace and love in any way shape or form? How does it bring positive solutions for issues our society is facing today since all this has been applied it seems onto everyones brains? Because I see nothing but racism on the rise, hate, division, blame placed where it doesn't belong, and nothing positive being applied or put in place of what is destroyed over something that is theory not even fact.
Julian, question, are you being critical of Said because he was critical of something you like and enjoy or you really believe what you said about “orientalist” artists. Or was it a quick jab at a Palestinian academic? Oriental” term itself is problematic and a term created from a white European view as well as “Orientalism”. What artists were from the regions that were painted within this group? None of them. They’re all white UK and European based artists. Orientalism will always be a white perspective of what they saw and chose to paint. Academics and art professionals have to face uncomfortable truths even when it’s about a subject matter they either love or have investment in.
I am a bit surprised by the short tangent in the beginning about Said's "Orientalism", since the book does not address visual arts at all. There is literary criticism and an investigation into historical accounts of the middle east by western writers, and a description of how the presentation of the middle east in those works is tied to imperialist power dynamics, how our view of the Orient was created and how it shapes our understanding in turn. In light of this, calling his argument "reductionist" is pretty awkward, and slightly ironic. Other than that I enjoyed the video greatly, as I always do with content this channel puts out, just wanted to mention this.
@@iandonnelly6684 I've been following this comment section for the past 2 days because I was a bit shaken. I made comments similar to yours. Some people have had a more generous interpretation of Julian's "misunderstanding" of Saïd's work and tried their best not to speculate, given the general (and deserved) admiration for his work. But yeah, I can't wrap my head around it. I wonder whether Julian will address it in the future. Tbh it'd probably be safer for his channel to let the issue die and get on with the next restoration vid as if nothing had happened, but who knows ?
@@elax75I agree. considering one can enjoy a work of art only through its aesthetic qualities and/or view it through its historical/cultural dimension, it may be wise for Julian to focus solely on the aesthetic aspect if treating the historical/social aspect cannot be done with enough nuance within this video format. Critical inquiry is highly valuable to understand the world but its oversimplification may hurt more than help its objective.
It's because art history is equal parts visual critique as it is literary/poltical/cultural/religious critique. Said's Orientalist arguments are trotted out to undergrads and grad students who are often getting their first blush of "Critical Theory" aka Marxism and many other concepts that are often horrifically misapplied by people who don't know enough but don't have the wisdom to keep their uninformed opinions to themselves. Said's Orientalism is one of the gateway texts to anything anti-European if you're interested in the colonial period. It allows for an instant vilification of one group and victimization of another group. This then allows the budding academic to create utterly inane "hot takes" on any work that you think could be "problematic." Said does have some valid criticisms but they have to be applied properly. That requires research, context, evidence, and actual thought. That a lot of times is unfortunately missing from people who want basically a premade academic theory to support their "I want free stuff" or "Europeans bad!" opinion. Applying Said's Orientalism to this work is idiotic just as its wrong to many works which are essentially North African and Middle Eastern genre paintings.
It’s not a college class that addresses orientalism. It’s an art conservation YT channel. Any more epistemology beyond the scope of the artwork would diminish my enjoyment. Julian’s all about not bringing excessive work to the conservation, eh? 🙂
@@fracasfracas Then he shouldn't have even started on the topic honestly, orientalism and it's flaws is an extremely complicated and controversial topic and brushing over it so broadly and generally is an incredibly irresponsible thing to do, as many have pointed out already
while i can appreciate your work, i do not agree with your commentary on Edward Said. Said's criticism of westerners' beliefs and stereotypes of asians focused on the issues and harm it brought to these peoples and their nations. westerners/colonizers spread the ideas that asians were weak, barbaric, irrational, and in need of saving in order to take control of their governments and use the people to their disposal. Edward Said's criticisms were not misplaced due to the impact it has had on asian people across the entire continent. Long ago this was an issue and it still is today. This misunderstanding of an activist's work is not necessary
I have really enjoyed your previous videos but the start of this one left a bad taste in my mouth and I stopped watching. Reducing Said’s work like that was extremely ignorant and shows your privilege. I encourage you to read it properly and consider what he writes about a little deeper than just getting upset because it might mean that some painters were participating in orientalism. You can still appreciate their art while also understanding the history and context behind it.
like the critique of orientalism, claiming that "the artists who fell in love with the middle east and east were not seeking to exploit it" is also reductive, and takes me out of my enjoyment of this video. the radical nuance here is to understand that both can be true, and, to quote @sashasays2062 in other comments, "we can’t naively look at artistic production as springing from a culture-free (and power-free) vacuum", in particular with how our exploitative imperialism towards the middle east is ongoing. as a portrait artist, i struggle with these realities whenever i paint.
Love the work and i am a long time follower, but to reduce a lifes work and dismiss it, is not ok. I havent tead Said, but i think I might now. The fact is that you seem to he hung up on the word 'fetishization" because it has a sordid history. Try to insert yhe word "enthralled" or "obsession". These people were just living their lives when colonziers decided they were "Exotic". This made more colonizers flock to the area and they arent known for kindness towards locals .. just sayin.. Colonizers gonna Colonize
You can love something and think it is problematic. We can be grateful for his work and know that he was participating in perpetuating harmful stereotypes. We can know his intention was good, but that his impact was varied. If someone says something is problematic, please consider using an and/both viewpoint instead of an either/or viewpoint. It will help us view this work of art as a whole in a web of complex history, instead of something wholly good or bad. As a long time watcher, I think you usually strive for seeing that complexity and I value that. This time, you might have oversimplified a bit.
That's simple presentism. How dare people in the time they live behave as if they're not future people! If you look at what is being shown, the works are a wide variety of genre paintings. They're no more problematic than those painted by the Netherlandish masters. Said's point is uselessly reductive and prevents anyone not from the region from painting anything of that region. That's essentialism on steroids and does nothing for the art historical value of these pieces. The works are tremendous as they are windows into these times and places. Your present day opinion on colonialism or whatever you're channeling doesn't have anything to do with these painters who obviously took extreme care to render their subjects in a way faithful to what they saw and encountered. Have you ever been to some of these places? They are striking, and wonderful, and exotic, and beautiful. Imagine what it would be like at the time of the painting when you can't instantly watch travel videos or scroll through Instagram feeds to become jaded. Said's critique of Orientalism is a cover for his politics and its refreshing to see someone like Julian push past the bog standard academic narrative and deal with these paintings and painters on their own terms and merits.
@@casimirgythe2181: I'm afraid you completely missed the point and it doesn't look like you understand more nuanced than "black or white" opinions, so I'll leave it at this: no, the world doesn't work that way. The fact that humans did reprehensible or just... a bit worse than "morally ambiguous" things in the past doesn't mean that they were faultless or that their deeds were harmless just because a certain type of behaviour was more widely accepted (then again - more widely accepted by which social groups? those whose voice mattered? and accepted or suffered in silence because there was no choice? etc, etc) or that certain terms didn't exist or weren't widespread back then.
@@Airsaber Do you understand why presentism is a logical fallacy? And what EXACT reprehensible thing are you suggesting Coutts did other than paint a wonderful picture? Can you actually defend your claim? Be precise now, I'd like to know how it is you've come by this knowledge that gives you the authority to make such a claim. Or are you just painting him in your own black and white colors of oppressor/oppressed? No one suggested that people haven't done bad and evil things. Obviously they have, but not all people are bad and evil. Sometimes a painting of a Moroccan man is just a painting of Moroccan man. Unless you actually know when and when not to apply a critical lens, you're going to make the mistake of assigning things as being "problematic" when its just your own bias on display.
@@casimirgythe2181: Yep, unfortunately you didn't get the point. I suggest re-reading the comments not agreeing with the rather flippant/dismissive tone re: the aforementioned book and term. And I'm afraid that you are the only person talking about this who writes comments that suggest that the author of said comments sees things in black and white. Nobody else here is talking in such absolutes - on the contrary, people are asking for more nuance.
While I really appreciate your work and love watching your videos, your take on orientalism and colonialism was just embarrassing. The attempt to critique Said's conceptual framework showed a flagrant lack of contact with his actual writings. You really didn't need to say all of that to work on this painting, please don't make this a habit lmao
my initial *critical* comment was deleted so here it is again: your statement about E Said was completely unnecessary and racist. How dare you talk like that about a Palestinian revolutionary. you obviously have zero concept of political or artistic analysis. I recommend you read every single comment critiquing you and take it to heart. this video was in such bad taste, I could not watch the rest and probably wont watch another. if anyone wants to read any of E Said's work, there are many free ebooks online with his work and many more Palestinian activists to learn from. from the rivers to the sea!!
whoah what's with the dismissal in the beginning??? just came back here after doing my own research on orientalism and read the book. i've been a loyal subsriber for 4 years, i watch all your videos, without skipping mind you! and knowing your position on this matter i dont feel comfortable supporting you again. bye!
Loved the mini history lesson, although I don't agree with your interpretation of Said's work, his criticism also leans towards commodification of the Oriental image, rather than just all discourse regarding the East through the Western eye being reductive, although he does talk about it too, his works also have a lot of (radical) nuance
Yeah, there is plenty of legitimate criticism of Said, but Julian goes way too far here in dismissing him. Artists commodifying and fetishising North Africa and the Middle East (and its inhabitants) was absolutely a thing - even though that is not a reason to condemn all the art of that period.
All art is a commodity, at least the 'good' stuff is. The artist produces the work, and is paid for it, that is how artists make their living. The same work of art may lie neglected, stay with the owner to be inherited, or sold through a few or multiple hands, in any event it is a commodity, it has a value. What on earth is a "Western Eye"?
Cool thing about the varnish, is even if it's old and yellow - the fact you can remove it and see such bright colors underneath says the varnish totally did its job.
@@ordulf7193 Yeah I just mean, the major purpose of varnish is to protect a painting. That's what it did. It just also happened to yellow after some time lol!
That weirdly unnuanced and reductive refutation of Edward Said in the beginning really soured the rest of the video for me. Orientalism is a pretty mainstream academic concept, and to dismiss to breath of nuance and knowledge there is to be found in discussions surrounding it like this comes across as profoundly shallow. What a shame, because I usually enjoy these videos and learning about art history and conservation through this channel. This makes me worry that perhaps that knowledge hasn't been as nuanced as I thought.
Edward Said's thesis is not "whatever Westerners say about the ME is worthless and racist". You claim that his thesis is reductive and misplaced, yet you do exactly this to his book and theses which are much more nuanced...
that's the weirdest take on orientalism ive ever heard. "the snake charmer" (one of the most famous orientalist paintings, but it wasn't shown) isn't a faithful representation of life in the middle east (it shows a naked boy charmjng snakes for a group of decrepit looking older men, which Simply Did Not Happen), and saying that gêrome "was just in love with the people" doesn't explain why he made up that scene. even if orientalist painters had the best of intentions, that intent doesn't change the effect that orientalism had on the public perception of the middle east. heck, we know that manet didn't want to cause such upheaval with his art, but we still remember manet's art pushing boundaries and being revolutionary! saying Said's argument is reductive is actually really reductive of that same argument. i wish the art history lesson had the same nuance as the conservation work :( pretty confused by this one not going to lie
I felt the same way. I can't pretend to be super familiar with the history at work here, but the extremely broad generalizations of "NONE of these artists were racists" was definitely a red flag and lacked any nuance that is absolutely required when talking about colonizers making profit off of other people's cultures.
very weird take on his part to brush aside Mr. Said’s work (of all people!) on the subject at hand. Orientalist works can be beautifully painted and I quite enjoy them, but to take them at face value… come on. One can practically hear these painters thinking “people back home are going to go crazy when they see this!”. It’s fantastical artwork at times and to illustrate just refer to Gérôme’s “The Tiger and the Guardian”, a painting that’s left a huge impression on me when I was younger precisely for its fantastical qualities. Pretty? Yes. Faithful, would anyone REALLY say so? Bit of a bad take by the guy… Amazing video as always, but misleading at best historically. I’m with you on this one mate!
You saying a man can't just paint what he wants? He has to worry about what effect his painting might have on someone home or miles away across the ocean perhaps. Or are you saying you should only paint your own culture or home, to me that sounds really boring.
I’m sure some artists from this time period had a genuine appreciation or admiration for the middle east, but it’s clear from numerous portrayals that just as many (if not more) of them sought to exploit those cultures by capitalizing on the ignorance of the western imagination. There are plenty of paintings from this movement where western artists represented the middle east as “barbaric”-just look at the countless depictions of women (often, inexplicably, white women) standing demurely (often nude or partially nude) with their hands tied, as dark-skinned male figures gawk at them. The implication of these scenes is that they are being sold into slavery. And the colorism is no coincidence: they depict the women as white or white passing because to westerners that makes them easier to sympathize with as innocent victims, powerless against the evil arab characters in the paintings. (It also makes the female figures more desirable, because people are racist!) And what about all of the paintings of odalisques, which are clearly an excuse to objectify the bodies of women from those countries (even if colorism often means that their appearances are extremely whitewashed-because of course, they had to fit victorian beauty standards at least a little bit to be desirable, and therefore easier to objectify). Those are absolutely fetishistic. And this is all besides the fact that most artists who engaged in orientalism didn’t ever actually travel to the lands that they were depicting! Many of them created scenes based purely on their imagination. I doubt that many of them even endeavored to do actual research before depicting cultures that they knew nothing about. I genuinely think some paintings from this movement are quite beautiful, and sometimes even respectfully rendered, but I’ve encountered just as many paintings that make me extremely uncomfortable. I think it’s hard to deny that major elements of orientalist art tend to be racism, colorism and fetishization-one doesn’t need to look far to see that.
the fact you automatically attacked "western ignorance" as if thats the only culture who ever wrongly portrayed foreign cultures tells me everything i need to know about your motives. This reads like an insanely spiteful demonisation of the west, while straight up infantilising and wildly wrong idolising of any non western culture. Especially when you start complaining that westerners paint Middle easterner people as "white" which is spoken like someone who has never been outside of the US because many of the inhabitants of that region really could pass as white after millenia of Roman, greek and Turkic migration... but i guess saying only brown and black people count as "accurate" Middle eastern people is somehow better in your eyes. Stuff like this doesnt challenge people to analyse the biases seen in HUMAN NATURE and strive to improve or at least remember said biases, it just seems like a bitter attempt to smear and demonise the intentions of people you or i will NEVER actually know, based entirely off your clear hatred for Western Europe
It amazes me how, especially fabric, can go from a flat, almost cartoonish, look to a pillowy flowing fabric, simply by removing the varnish. Makes me wonder how all the paintings I've stared at in my life actually were supposed to look.
It's because it flattens out the values (shading). A lot of the sense of depth in a drawing is carried by reproducing the patterns light forms when it hits a geometric form. old varnish, especially as it collects dust, converges the whole image to a kind of middle gray because light is reflecting off the accumulated dust. If you pay attention to the before and afters you can see that the dark parts of the paintings get darker just as the light parts get lighter, that contrast between light and dark is really import to making the 3d illusion work. source: am art student
I don't think you should be defending orientalism or dismissing its critic and his work. This is incredibly reductive at best and a perfect example of the habit of white people getting defensive when their actions are called into question at worst. Many, many white artists were indeed fetishising what they saw, whether you think their art is beatiful or not. This was part of the subject of my major so I studied the subject in detail for years, and I happen to be French so we had a lot of interactions with Moroccan and Algerian scholars and students, for very obvious reasons given our shared history. Your perspective, as well-meaning as you may think it is, is ultimately very misguided here. Orientalism as a movement was another glaring example of the colonial, often paternalist nature of western, and in particular European art. Using your massive platform to defend orientalism is a plain bad move, as many will take you at face value without doing any research and you've now taught a million people to dismiss the concerns of dozens of colonised countries and their artists and scholars.
Says the white person💀 he said that people were fetishing the middle east. And how do you know he's white meny middle easterns have light skin . he wasn't being defensive , he simply pointed out that saying all white people were wrong was a bias thesis 🤷🏽♀called out his actions? He didn't do anything wrong blaming someone for the actions of their ancestors based on their skin tone is simply put it .. Stupid Honestly
Did you actually know if Said specifically, was expressly or impliedly orientalist or not? Specifics matter. Too many broadbrush statements remove clarity, and do little to educate your audience.
@@BigHenFor Said was a scholar who wrote a lot about the West and the East, looking at art, literature and history. A good start is his book Orientalism - he is not just an interesting scholar, but also wryly funny and impeccably well-expressed.
All due respect, generalizing Said's work in such manner is reductive. Not all of his ideas were "misplaced". His thesis on orientalism does not just apply to art, it also includes other areas like literature, and there're substantive amount of literature written in that time by european authors about "the orient" that actually greatly benefit from being analyzed through his theory of orientalism. While I agree that we can't generalize every work of art that came out of this movement as being bad or racist, we can't also say in good conscious that they were all done respectfully. Off the top of my head, Jean Leon Gerome made a lot of questionable choices depicting praying men, for example having them face the wrong way, hold their hands in weird positions, and trying to pass off jibberish writing as arabic to name a few. not to mention countless paintings of Harems with overly sexualized, half-naked women when those women would neither be dressing in such way nor would these artists be allowed anywhere near the Harem. Again, I agree that we can't generalize every piece of art to come out of this period, but that goes both ways.
Art painted during the colonial era doesn't get more or less beautiful by claiming that the artist was somehow more enlightened than his contemporaries. Isn't that a preposterous claim to make? I think it is possible to acknowledge that the artist felt genuine love for the people he painted, without concealing the problematic context of what he did. On the contrary, concealing that context is, as you say, reductive.
Thinking of Gauguin and his many paintings of Tahitian women and also how he "married" and impregnated a 13 year old Tahitian girl and then left and never saw her or her child again. And then later "married" another Tahitian girl, this time who was 14, and then left her to raise his child on her own. And THEN "married" ANOTHER 14 year old Tahitian girl.
@@renerpho i didn't speak to their aesthetic beauty tho, did i? my qualm was the way he presented Edward Said and his views on orientalism. nuance is a thing. we can recognize that these paintings were beautiful and done well, while also acknowledging their problematic nature in some instances. we are saying the same thing.
Imagine being really good at art conservation and thinking that makes you able to have a critical analysis on academic work on orientalism by Edward Said on the basis that the painting are pretty. Its probably best if you just stay in your lane.
@@ginismoja2459imagine thinking you have a more informed and nuanced opinion on a topic after 1 google search than someone who spent 20 years studying it
It's interesting how the actual top comments, criticizing and disagreeing with his dismissal of Said and orientalism, disappear when I hit the "sort by" and go from "newest" back to "top." What is happening here?
I really like your work but I'm a POS english major and so I feel the need to say that I think you've misunderstood what orientalism is. From what I understand Said is discussing the way that the "western" understanding of african and asian cultures forms how they interact with them. This understanding is however, distorted by previous westerners which dictates how these interactions will be recieved and understood. It's basically a self amplifying lens that westerners viewed other cultures during both imperialist colonization and decolonization following WWI and II. I highly recomend reading Said if you haven't and also reading Home Rule by Nandita Sharma as her work builds off of Said's and expands upon the ideas of post colonialism and the damage it does.
Julian’s normally very nuanced point of view is oddly clumsy here . Of course some Western artists fetishized the East (they fetishized women, wealth, aristocracy, and their own genius, as well!). The take on Said is reductive. “Falling in love” with another culture or people is never untainted by hierarchies of power (again, let’s look at women in the entire history of art). That doesn’t mean we can’t find beauty and talent and joy in the art-it just means that we can’t naively look at artistic production as springing from a culture-free (and power-free) vacuum.
Said is annoying tripe. He uses a correct perception "all our views and expressions are coloured by our socio/cultural standing in life" to then dismiss countless amounts of great wonderful art as being worthless because opressor/opressed dynamic. When in reality all of the art (even the fetishized ones) are interesting insights into the human experience. Its groanworthy grandstanding
Someone wrote that in a book that he had to study at school. It's like most of the arts subjects. They read books. Some, like lawyers and mental health professionals use their knowledge constructively in a way that benefits society in a real way.
People "fall in love" with their own perception of something rather than the something itself all the time across countless contexts, so I also thought it was really weird how Julian presented fetishization as dichotomous to love.
My excitement to see Julian restore a work featiring someone if African descent was quitely tempered by Julian's romantic, but revisionist introduction. Yay for representation I think this was the first time I've seen a restoration on this channel where the subject was someone with a darker complexion. But yeah, that intro was problematic.
I don't think you're using the word "revisionist" correctly considering the context. Revisionism would be the intentional rewriting of history. Artists and explorers have before and after colonialism been traveling around fascinated by that which was different and making a record of it. Making the distinction of the motivation that was part of these paintings could be said to be the opposite unless you can prove it is ahistorical- that the known historical facts about these artists doesn't support what he said. Or is your point that NO European could or should paint an African subject because that would be "colonialism"? I'm sorry, but I don't get what exactly you're objecting to in relation to paintings.
@@a.westenholz4032 Orientalist art is Is colonial art instead of extracting raw matierals or labor. It extracted a warped veiw of other cultures as other, as lesser or backwards.
@@iandonnelly6684 If our current period is judged as being "western conglomerate exploitive" of places like Africa (and ignoring China in all this, but there would be a great deal of truth to it), then you're saying ANY Westerner that goes to Africa now in any way, especially if they paint a picture or try to document what they see on film, would be part of that. Or go to Mexico, or anywhere else that is being exploited by conglomerates ATM. That would be such a ridiculous blanket lumping of ALL Westerners right now, to think that every single one who travels and has reason to film something is part of this "Western Conglomerate exploitation" just because it is later deemed to be the hallmark of this age. But IF that is really how you think, then in case that is how we are judged in the future, you better stay at home.
Ilove your work, but I have a bachelor's degree in International Relations, so it hurt very deeply to hear your very shallow interpretation of Edward Said's classic. I'm glad I'm not alone and many viewers felt so too and brought it to your attention. Please consider reading the book asap.
Someone's love for an area and a people does not preclude their also exotifying them. They were "Loved" because they were outside the social norm and that implies that the social norm is Western European White culture. It is the love of a fantasy not an actual people and by commodifying it these artists perpetuated it. Take for example that when the West came to Japan it classified all Japan art as decorative art which on the western hierarchy was the lowest form of art. Thus, tell a culture that all of its art did not have value and to have value it needed to be FINE ART, aka painting. HOWEVER, this did not stop Westerners from exporting, commodifying and all forms of Japanese art to a high degree. Telling a culture their art is worthless, while stealing a copying the style because it is desirable.
Gauguin loved Tahiti and painting Tahitian women so much that he "married" three underage Tahitian girls, impregnated them, and never raised his children.
The social norm for Western European white men was Western European and white... who would have thought. Funny you give that example about Japan since the Japanese under their own social norms saw Europeans as barbarians with no manners and "exotified" them the same way
Just watched and immediately thought: Julien, you didn't do yourself a favour here by detailing your distorted misunderstanding of Said's work as well as you completely absolving the artist of any complicity in the fetishization of the Orient... --- man, didn't just not dodge a bullet but actually jumped right in front of it.
I considered whether I should write this comment for a bit. I decided that I owe you this feedback if I respect your craftsmanship; and I sure do. While I was pleasantly surprised that you know that orientalism as a post-colonial research domain exists, I have to say that your judgment of Edward Saed and his groundbreaking book was simplistic and your criticism of how he exposed systemic racism in artistic depictions of the “East” was borderline offensive. I do hope that you actually read the book and maybe even go further and read the actual criticism of it by another brilliant thinker called Joseph Masad.
For once I disagree with your reductive opinion of Said's work. His work is a great insight of how western countries view other parts of the world, also it shows how racism, islamophobia etc takes place in western countries
A video that talks about this a bit is "His name was Bélizaire." It was posted by the NYT (there is an article with the same title if you prefer to read about it.)
I wouldn’t call orientalism an art movement, it’s a theme, a tendency, or even a genre. Academic, romantic, symbolist, Fauve painters, and more, tried themselves at orientalism. And I do believe a big part of them have very reductive not to say racist views on the so called “Orient”. Just by looking for example at the number of “harem” scene, “odalisque” or lascivious “slave”. Not the case in this beautiful painting of course.
I mean, to be fair, the reason so many people painted it was bcs it captured their attention, it was pretty different that what they saw at home. And i don't think we can judge people, too much, by WHAT interests them, so long as they don't present such things in a deceiving and mean spirited way that doesn't reflect reality, imo. And it's not like things like harems and odalisques didn't exist, unless there is something about it that I'm not aware of? Is it the WAY they painted it that bothers you or is it something else?
@@witcht It's less an issue of whether or not the images depicted by European painters of 'the Orient' were real or not (they most often weren't) and more an issue of numbers. For most people in Europe and America, paintings like Gerome's "The Slave Market" were their only images of what life in the Middle East looked like. Their's good evidence to prove that these paintings were seen as anthropological works, near perfect depictions of the 'Other.' I also agree with the original commenter here- Orientalism involves the complicated relationship between those who produce knowledge (academics and artists like Gerome) and colonial military forces. One reinforces the other. Think about how US media depicting Arabs as terrorists in the 80s-2000s reinforced the cultural image of the Arab as a violent, religious radical. US intervention in the Middle East is made a lot easier if the US people believe the country needs to be protected from Arabs. Said sought to highlight this relationship- not dismiss all art made by Westerners about the East as racist. It's a pretty meaningful reduction of what Said hoped to point out. His original argument is broad, yes, but it leaves a lot of room for complexity. Just because something engages with Orientalism doesn't make it inherently bad- how are people from the region ever meant to challenge the entire construction if just by engaging with its signifiers they're doing a bad, evil thing. Said himself is Palestinian-American. He's well aware of these kinds of complications. Anyway, sorry for the paragraphs. I've spent a lot of time reading with and against Said and I was really disappointed by BR's definition of the topic.
@@witcht harems didnt exist in they way they are currently portrayed. A the harem was the womens quarters a place where no men could go so they could hang around without being all covered up.
@@witcht The guy you replied to doesn't seem to get that 19th/20th century dudes painted 19th/20th century pinups. Sometimes a harem scene isn't a critique on culture or women or politics. Sometimes its just an excuse to paint hot women in a cool scene. They're basically male fantasies about the female locker room. It's why they're naked and having pillow fights. Its because guys think about that type of stuff and usually its not much deeper than "Tits! or Ass!" You hit the nail on the head though. People WANT to judge this stuff and its easy to apply (insert random -ism here) to whatever they're looking at. Did some artists do nefarious things, sure. Or maybe some artists just thought it would be cool to paint a naked woman in a oriental palace. Maybe the artist isn't racist, maybe he was just a pervert and liked titties. Unless there's specific information on what the artist ACTUALLY intended when painting the piece, it's just bad attempts at mind reading from decades to centuries later by people looking to be outraged.
These works are not dismissed but rather it is evidence of the problematic nature of the Orientalist that should be studied . Orientalism is not a movement but a pattern that Said and other scholar noticed in terms of how the West viewed the others in mostly negative way that continues to put the “orient” in a disadvantage
Came to say something similar. We should be listening to the scholars affected by these movements. The artists may have had a different intent, but that intent doesn't erase the impact of their actions. Impact > Intent.
Scholars love to judge the people of the past, because they can't answer back. The fact that they study what others have done, making conclusions to flatter the thinking of the day, is not an intellectual accomplishment.
@@TroyRubert Because people can have good intentions & still wind up having a negative impact. Their intentions don't erase that. Unless we are the ones who have been affected by those actions, it is not our place to say that the impact is erased by the good intentions. They don't have to be a scholar to talk about the impact- I should have said people instead but because Julian was talking about a scholar is why I used that term.
Honesty i love the way Julian narrates his process to cater to anyone so first yime viewers will understand it, instead of just saying its a hot table you all have seen it 200 times now.
Orientalism of course rose out of a love and enchantment with aspects of those foreign cultures. The British loved Oriental cultures so much they have a massive treasure trove of other countries' antiquities in their museum. I don't think anybody is saying that the majority of people who produced orientalist artwork did so to purposely misrepresent those cultures for malicious reasons. But they were colonizers born believing in the might of their own country and culture. Their presentation of foreign cultures is like viewing an image through a skewed lens, naturally distorted, and the way they distorted it ultimately had a negative impact on the people from those cultures. It's false to think that because an artist genuinely loved the culture, their artwork isn't also problematic. But just because an artwork is orientalist doesn't mean it has no cultural or aesthetic value. I think people need to be educated about the context in which it was created and hear the voices of the people whose cultures were depicted in that artwork.
I usually love your videos, but I could barely get through the first three minutes of this one. One of the worst, most reductionist explanations of Orientalism I've ever seen. These artists could absolutely have fallen in love with the subjects of their works- but that doesn't mean they weren't also contributing to the ongoing colonial projects in these regions.
Love you Julian, but I think your understanding of the philosophy of Orientalism is severely lacking. To criticize Said's work as not realizing that art doesn't have a deeper meaning implies that any of your poetic analysis in your videos would ever be legitimate. Artists can love something but it have an impact on systemic issues. Artists don't exist in a vacuum where they can paint something and nothing can be interpreted from it, it's just human to experience it in various ways. Saying "European artists found themselves inextricably attracted to the Middle East...things that didn't exist back home in Europe" is ironically exactly why it's fetishism. Fetishism isn't always intended to be bad. The -ism part of it with colonialism means that even if you love something, it can still have the bias of whatever power structure it comes from. An example is that you can love the Middle East and paint daily life, but European artists may editorialize what they paint. Specific e.g., choosing a specific subject, removing certain people, choosing certain colors to make things look different than in reality, or adding elements to capture an idea rather than copying reality. It's not inherently wrong, and it's intrinsic to art that artists have their own style, but that still means their background, education, experience, and environment can influence what they pick and choose to create. And especially if they're trying to sell something, commodification can influence people a lot too. And your argument that maybe only consumers fetishized & not the artists also proves that artists would perhaps cater to these people. You can't remove artists from colonialism, but that doesn't mean it's only european artists. Even colonized people can internalize colonialism and perpetuate -isms against themselves. I implore you to fully read Said's work. It's reductive and unfair to claim that all he said was European art can be dismissed as racist. There's a wider meaning behind his work than just malevolence, and decolonizing is a wonderful journey - trust me! Ps. with all that being said, I truly appreciate you bringing it up though! I didn't expect that but it's a pleasant surprise and it's an important element of fine arts, even if I disagree :P
I tire of your brand of reductive meta-analysis as if middle eastern and Asian peoples don’t also look to the west and fetishize and co-opt counter-cultures and lift them for their own commercial and and self-expressive applications, removing them from their original context. You speak of colonialism and fetishism as if it was a universal corporate policy and as if western nations are a hive-mind which disgusts me.
pretty poor timing to drop such a reductionist and unfounded take on said’s orientalism… artists being genuinely interested and enamoured with the beauty of another culture does not mean that colonialist and objectifying beliefs aren’t reflected in their work and the way it is received.
Although many have already spoken about it in great detail, I still want to express my deep disappointment at Mr. Baumgartner's naive and simplistic view of Edward Said's theses, especially when he discards them in the name of the apparent infallibility of the artists. Honestly, it seems like the umpteenth case of a cis white person ignoring the well-founded complaints of the victims of colonial processes.
Why would you say "cis"? What does his sexuality have anything to do 18th/19th century North African and Middle Eastern art? Or are you just tuning your dog whistle so the other SJWs can upvote your social credit score because you too can repeat groupthink buzzwords!?
This may be my favourite painting that you've restored. So beautiful, subtle and full of contemplation. Truly an exceptional artist who took great care in capturing this scene originally and an exceptional conservator who has now preserved it so that it can be enjoyed for years to come!
Not familiar with Said's work, but I was disappointed to have the pushback against Orientalism dismissed so casually. I'm sure these artists did love the region and the subjects that they painted-- that doesn't preclude the work from exoticizing or fetishizing them. Unconscious bias is still bias. We can still acknowledge the beauty and craftsmanship of these paintings while acknowledging their problematic history.
As a Moroccan specifically from Tangier "The bride of the north" born and raised watching your videos for years, this was the least expected restoration ever! Tangier has a history of attracting renowned painters and artists. The city's unique cultural blend, picturesque landscapes, and vibrant atmosphere have made it an appealing destination for artists seeking inspiration. Notable painters and artists, such as Henri Matisse and Eugène Delacroix, have been drawn to Tangier for its artistic inspiration. Additionally, American expatriate artists, like Paul Bowles and Tennessee Williams, spent time in Tangier, further contributing to the city's reputation as a hub for creative minds.
@furrymessiah that's what I'm saying. Keep that woke $hit somewhere else. Lol. I'm an artist and what's truly amazing is that most artist just painted what they observed. They honestly could not have cared at all about being racist or any of that stuff. When your painting you have to focus, and you also have to love what your painting. People are just looking for an argument in the comments.
When I clicked on a video titled "Radical Nuance", I definitely didn't expect to hear such a flippant and reductive dismissal of an entire school of postcolonial criticism. Sure, you're not an art historian, you're a conservator, perhaps it's unfair to expect you be fully informed of the cultural and critical context of every piece you work on. But, as you can see from many of the comments on this and other videos, people do look to you as an educational resource. I really hope you'll consider making a follow-up digging deeper into your own defensiveness.
As probably one of the few commenters here to have read Said's Orientalism, the treatment given to it here is ... woefully insufficient. Saying that artists "were not seeking to exploit" colonized areas and their peoples is a staggeringly simplistic claim to make as a supposed counterargument to Said, and one that betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the nuance and detail involved in an analysis like Said's. The argument presented here amounts to a willfully naïve perspective that is a significant part of what Said effectively and succinctly deconstructs by showcasing the cultural and historical context these artists existed in, the political structures they operated in tandem with, and the beliefs, norms, and cultural views that they both held and expressed. It truly doesn't matter if you believe you aren't seeking to exploit something or someone if you are willfully operating within a system that does so or even furthering that system. Naïve intention alone is not a sufficient defense. The entire "love" of these areas held by these artists was based on the Orientalist views Said eloquently describes - fetishization, Othering, exotification, and so on. Very, very few artists were sufficiently radical thinkers to actually put aside culturally engrained ideas of national and regional superiority that were entirely dominant in Western cultures at the time (as doing so is, for all intents and purposes, impossible - the cultural context of your upbringing and education is not something you can just choose to put aside). Given the level of care, attention to detail, and nuance in your restoration work, seeing this brash, simplistic and naïve view on a pivotal work of decolonial theory is ... well, disappointing, to put it mildly. I doubt it would get a passing grade from any of my art historian colleagues.
Lot of arrogant assumptions packed into a single comment, based on the writings of a man that wasn’t alive to talk to any of the artists in question about their motivations. Said was a thin-skinned reductionist that treated any criticism of his work as a racist attack, while making broad and unfalsifiable claims about “systems” from a perspective and background of privilege that would have been utterly inconceivable to any of the people whose minds he was supposedly able to read.
@@DaveM86 Hm, that's certainly a take. Care to elaborate on what those assumptions are? Yes, I do assume that not many commenters have read Said, but beyond that? Also, a significant proportion of "criticism" directed towards Said _was_ racist nonsense, so treating it as such is a pretty reasonable response.
When Julian mentioned the name Gordon Coutts I thought "Why does that sound familiar?" When he mentioned Palm Springs, I went "AH!" Living in the Palm Springs area, I've heard his name and of Villa Dar Marroc many times. He's considered one of the founders of the city, and was one of a couple dozen artists who lived and worked here in the early 20th century before Palm Springs became famous as a movie colony.
Julien, I was disappointed by your dismissal of the well-known problems with European gaze being directed at non-European subjects. As someone who has faithfully watched (and will likely STILL watch) your restorations for 3 years, my hope for you is that you re-read and reconsider your conclusions about this subject.
I hope everyone yelled out Hi Kit just like I did! :) how much more stunning is that now that it's been cleaned and properly taken care of just beautiful.
I was a bit perturbed, maybe jealous, when Julian first introduced his intern. Now I miss Kit! She's cool. Would love to know how she's progressing and see what she's working on!
Stick to the art, not the analysis. You critiqued Said without providing any evidence for your argument except that “these artists were certainly not fetishing these people.” Give any evidence whatsoever if you want to have a productive conversation. “They painted with care” is not enough to support your claim.
'Glasgow' is pronounced 'Glaz-go' not 'Glass-Cow'............Apart from the mispronunciation of my home town's name, I loved this wee video, stunning painting brought back to all it's reflective subject's glory ❤
Aw man... I only got a few minutes in, but idk if I can keep watching :/ It's hard to decode this as simple naivety or ignorance, but more as a wilful misunderstanding. Did you just not read it? Might not be too keen to hear Julian's thoughts surrounding Israel's latest war crimes. When you've got such a broad audience of people who adore you, man you gotta be more responsible
@lauraw3117 as an artist, academic, and lover of art theory, I actually couldn't disagree more! Politics and art have always been deeply connected, for better and for worse. Nazism couldn't have risen like it did without mass media, and I'd argue that nothing challenged them quite like theorists and art movements at the time
Jesus, the beginning argument is honestly unbelievable. To boil down Said’s work to “any and all statements by westerns about the Middle East as worthless and racist” removes all the nuance of his position and is a gross mischaracterization of his work. You even then call it reductive as if your “summation” of his thesis is not the very thing you accuse it off. You then move on to talk about the intent of the artists, which you can only assume. Moreover, this romanticization of the Middle East quite literally is an issue of orientalism. And to say it’s not fetishization but reverence and respect, but then to go on and say that the artist of this painting built a Moroccan styled home that later became a HOTEL and not see that contradiction is shocking. This intro is a failure on many fronts and is deeply disappointing. It feels as though you don’t understand Orientalism at all. The video truly would be better off without the beginning for just how deeply ignorant it is.
the way you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the comments criticising your racist opinion about Orientalism is interesting. but if I have to comment under every comment here ill do just that.
Are you suggesting that Morocco is in the Middle East when you started talking about Orientalism? Because Morocco is in North Africa, south of Scotland where this artist came from, and south west of most of Europe. The discussion about the colonial infatuation with all things they saw as "exotic" is definitely one that needs to be had, but bundling North Africa in with the Middle East is exactly the kind of thing that they would have done. For example: the author bundled middle east and far east stereotypes together when he wrote Aladdin. I love everything you do, and this is the first time I've seen something in one of your videos that concerned me. I know you don't mean to do any harm. Keep up the work dude.
honestly it was so disappointing to start this video and immediately get blasted with a reductive, colonialist take on edward said's incredibly important and salient work. i'm very glad other people in the comments have pointed out how harmful your POV is, and it's pretty telling that the only people getting defensive and agreeing with you are the stereotypical 'lol you triggered snowflake liberals racism isn't real you just wanna be offended' folks. fun. i really hope you read said and other literature on cultural appropriation, orientalism, colonialism, and racism. i really REALLY hope you make a video in the future addressing your misconceptions and making it clear that you don't support oppressors and racists, because it seems like there's a group of people who love that stuff who assume you're with them. and if you are, you're not the kind of person whose work i want to support anymore.
I hadn't time to watch this video and was looking forward to it... But I was massively disappointed at the reductionist and wildly incorrect summary of Said's thesis.
That mini history lesson was painful. I’m sorry Julian. It just comes off as so reactionary, as if someone told you this painter held racist views and the idea of that made you determined to argue not just he but all western artists making “Oriental” art weren’t in fact racist, participating in a racist system or benefitting from a colonial fad. Which on its face is so broad and reductive my jaw dropped. I usually really enjoy your videos, but that section just made me cringe even with my basic art history background.
Unbelievably reductive and insulting assessment of one of the most acclaimed Palestinian academics review of western Orientalism. I’d recommend you actually read the book before you dismiss his well accepted critiques
Really gross commentary at the beginning. Really gross! Painters/artists were not racist, ever? Twain too was an artist. gmaFb!! Disappointing. Without some kind of explanation/apology in a future video about propagating this crap I won’t continue watching.
Do you mean Mark Twain? He was an anti-racist if anything. His works satirize and critique attitudes towards race at the time. He was a very outspoke anti-imperialist, and supporter of women's rights.
@@skyn3817 Despite all of these things Twain somehow managed to also be violently anti-native american. While it's safe to assume that he abandoned his literally genocidal views on them from his earlier works, he did leave some very nasty remarks on them well into his late years
I'm still shocked by an extremely reductive discussion of Said and orientalist art. It would be more responsible to be objective when showing this to first time audiences. Your work is great, but this decision was unwise
This is one of the most striking paintings I've ever seen. Among all the paintings I've seen you do, none has captured an emotion so strongly, nor light interaction so vividly, in so much detail with so few strokes. I see why so many artists fell in love with the sun in this part of the world.
The only time I've ever had issue with you Sir, it's Glaz-go not Glass-cow in Scotland. Wonderful video and work that is a lesson in not accepting second best. Regards from Scotland.
Julian: "With a wax-based adhesive"
The entire audience: "IT'S HOT TABLE TIME BAYBEEE LETS GO"
I mean it was hot table time as soon as he mentioned the impressions... But it's more hot table time!
Could you imagine a drinking game base on Julian’s videos? We’d all be sozzled halfway through! 😂
I don’t know anything about art history but I’m gonna need some popcorn before I get into this comments section
i love all your videos but this is such a bad faith interpretation of said's work. to say that western artists didn't fetishize or exoticize their subjects because they created beautiful paintings is so reductive and untrue. scores of orientalist artists engaged with their subjects and the middle east and north africa in ways that were dehumanizing and fetishistic. paintings like the snake charmer and the slave market should illuminate this for you. for another example, paul gauguin spent years painting women in tahiti while he was raping them - rendering them beautifully while denying them personhood.
the fact that orientalist art was being created at the same time these places (algeria, tunisia, the levant, morocco, etc) were being colonized should give you a hint as to how european artists felt about the people and scenes they painted. there is no sense of equality or reciprocally in a colonial system, only exploitation. your attempt to depoliticize orientalism to make it more palatable only does yourself and your audience a disservice.
Obviously a very talented person but boy is that a white guy take
I've had to read the arguments for and against Orientalism in 3 different courses.
Orientalist art isn't problematic because it depicts every day life. It's problematic when it continued to depict the middle east as static, frozen in time at the height of the Ottoman Empire.
I've done research on historical fashion of the middle east. It was mandatory in the Ottoman Empire since 1850 to wear western dress. You can see photographs and read travel accounts of people discussing how people of the middle east dressed. Prior to then, during the 1810's when the Balkans were taken over by Russia, locals immediately adopted western dress and had western style fashion houses in under 2 years. Also the Middle East was incredibly diverse during the 18th and 19th century because Christians and Jews also lived there and had their own styles of dress. You rarely see depictions of those people's in art from Western artists during this period.
I will not say that every artist was trying to depict what they dreamed. But it is hard to accept that most artists were portraying reality in their work due to restricted access.
There are paintings that depict nonsense Arabic or imaginative squiggles on the walls of mosques. There are paintings of women in Turkish baths that no men would have been allowed to enter. Many depictions of harems are also a male artist's idea of what it would look like, as only males allowed inside were eunuchs and family members. Many women are portrayed to be scantily clad or nude, when that would have gone entirely against their religious and social values. We can't simply brush all of this off and say artists were depicting what they saw.
Art can depict reality, but artists also depict what they dream. Both can exist and be true at the same time.
And don't forget that most artists paint what they can easily sell. The tradition of covertly salacious images in disguise (such as fake "harem" scenes) goes back much further than "orientalism" - many a buxom virgin and child or classical goddess was painted to be ogled.
People in Japan wear western clothes all the time. It doesn't mean they stopped wearing kimono. Also, the artists weren't selling their paintings as documentary evidence of how the sultan's court looked in the 1860s. It's almost like there's a phrase for that... artistic license!
Squiggles are a time honored tradition. Yes, let us blame these artists for not first becoming fully fluent in Arabic and not getting every dot, dash, and hamza correct. A law must be issued to stop artists from making squigglies that suggest the presence of writing!
Do you know what men fantasize about besides the Roman empire? Wow, a guy painted a picture of a hot woman in a exotic setting. Truly that is awful and has never been done before except by these terrible European painters. What depraved perverts lol.
Where are you getting that all of these are documentary pieces? Some are obviously fantastical. The works aren't entitled "Reporting live from the Harem Peephole - Odalisque Slumber Party, 1852" But maybe being purposefully obtuse is what allows your fantasy to work.
@@casimirgythe2181 thing about art is that it influences how people think and approach a subject. The middle east narratively in the west has *consistently* been stereotyped as a mysterious land full of oppressed women and hostile warlike men who need other people to solve their problems for them. The ottoman empire was considered a western power, but also like a child trying to impersonate one at the same time. "Orientalism" by Edward Said for a better understanding. You may also find "The Question of Orientalism" by Bernard Lewis to show some insight into how Orientalists bristled at Said's arguments. Definitely give a look at "At All the Shah's Men" for insight into how the US overthrew Iranian Democracy in the 1940's to protect them from communism, but in reality was trying to let Britain maintain control over their natural resources.
When it comes to fetishization of Muslim Women, feel free to endure the condescension of the author in "Do Muslim Women Need Saving?" "Re-Presenting the Harem: Orientalist Female Artists and the 19th century Ottoman Empire" by Megan McDaniel and "Gender, Orientalism and the War on Terror" by Maryam Khalid may also be enlightening.
But if you really want insight into how perception of the middle east impacts how the people who live their are treated, look no further than "Iran Awakening" by Shirin Ebadi and the French animated film "Persepolis".
I am not saying the art is bad or completely racist. I am saying that the bias of every person influences their work and understanding of the world. Art can be used for propaganda as much as it can be used to educate or inspire. Take a look at how people from the middle east are portrayed in film and media have been portrayed in the last 25 years. How often are they given the role of heros or nuanced protagonists? Even in the animated version of Alladin, the opening song calls their culture barbaric. One can't ignore the fact that perceptions of a nation, a religion, or a people as whole loses its context and nuance if a mass majority of media upholds stereotypes.
Japan has its own nuance and context too. From how it responded to western infiltration. To chosing to adopt western culture and technology in the idea of "if you can't beat them, join them". The western world consumes media that Japan has put out. Japan is not viewed as poor 3rd world country that hasn't progressed since the 18th century.
The Roman empire is seen as the ancestor of the western world. Its seen as the inheritance of the West, a power that shaped our ideas and notions of several nations identies. It's fetishization is based off the art Rome itself produced. The middle east has not been extended that same courtesy despite its preservation of Greek and Roman texts during the european Dark Ages.
Art can be appreciated for the sake of art. But it doesn't exist in a bubble. It's a response.
You are right people do depict random squiggles all the time. That's why people didn't want to give credit to the peoples of the mezzo or South American the credit for founding and building their own ancient monuments. Many of the first depiction of Mayan script have elephants and other Hindu elements. Things that we're not actually in the glyphs standing right in front of them. Still, those artists continued to perpetuate the theory that it was another known civilization that created these structures. Ever heard of people claiming things like the pyramids or nazca lines were made by aliens? Yeah. That comes from the notion that western people are the only civilizations capable of being smart enough to build incredible things. Hark back to the Romans. Nobody claims the colloseum was made by aliens. Because that's considered nonsense.
well said!
Thank you for adding research and informed opinion to these comments. The title of this video uses the word “nuance,” and you’ve added a bit more nuance to this discussion. People may agree or disagree, but you definitely have added to the discourse. Thanks!
The painting has moved from late afternoon, almost twilight, to mid morning. It is beautiful. Good work!!
You are awesome! I was searching for Words and i only posted Emojis. You are brilliant! Exactly this!!!!!!
Lost a good amount of respect for you this video, lol. Disappointing and reductive take on Orientalism.
Deeply dissapointed with this episode. First for your massive Misportrail of Orientalism i can only hope it wasnt Intentional. And also of your pronuciation. Big L this episode.
Julian, I love your work and what you do, I have been watching your videos for years, but I have to say I was disappointed to hear how critical of Said you are. I have studied and written about Said in academic contexts, maybe the art world’s understanding of Said is different than the political science world, but I think your description of his thesis is such an oversimplification that it becomes inaccurate, and I was hoping my perspective on Said might be able to clarify a few things.
Said argues that cultural exchange is based around perceptions. Europe has a perception of what it means to be European, and what it means to not be European. He argued that European scholars, writers, and artists, who produced media based on “the Orient” operated through the lens of what it means to be “Uneuropean.” This is not the fault of any individual artist, I’m sure they had a deep admiration for the cultures they were studying and attempted to convey that through their art, but perceptions still shape our worldview and how we produce. Said argued that the ultimate impact of Orientalism was a proliferation of the idea that the Orient was whimsical and beautiful, but also alien, underdeveloped, and perverted, worldviews which acted as a justification for colonialism. Said did not argue that “anything a European says about the middle east is bad and racist” but that the cultural movement of Orientalism served as a catalyst for some bad things Europe would go on to do in the middle east.
These paintings are beautiful and should be cherished as treasures and invaluable parts of history, but part of understanding history is knowing their complex cultural impact. Hope this finds you well!
Thank you so much for this, I came to the comments section specifically for more info on Said.
💯
i hope he sees this
Thank you, I was about to add my two cents, but you said it best.
Well said. It is hard to imagine how Jean-Léon Gérôme's The Slave Market could possibly be understood as anything other than objectifying, especially given the unreality of the scene.
Saying artists didn’t fetishize the people is certainly a broad statement
in this context its a racist one actually
I would disagree. Misguided, sure, but racist? How so?
The whole reason orientalism became such a problem was because these European artists were changing the realities they saw to better suit European expectations so these paintings could sell. Regardless of their feelings, artists have to make money. While there were absolutely artists that simply painted what they saw, it was a little sad to hear him downplay the criticism here.
As he said though, this painting seems to be one of the examples of one made out of simple love of the culture and people… hopefully
Even more flatly racist to say that about the slew of work out of the orientalism movement. Like, it's in the name! I've never heard someone so quickly dismiss Edward Said's work like that, as if he's naive for pointing out the way British and more broadly European art contributes to the colonialist effort to exocitize the "Middle East" and extract resources from it. Like?? Truly out of pocket interpretation here.
Not only broad, it's blatantly false... I'm only one class away from graduating with a BA in art education & I'm convinced he's never read any of Said's work. The fact that he only displays depictions of mundane life when a very large part of orientalism was looking to depict sexual fantasies is concerning. Many artists who became synonymous with orientalism never even visited the places they depicted & became fascinated with a version of "the east" that doesn't exist in reality after reading or hearing about fake cultural practices (or even worse, they did go & lied to appeal to Europeans). It doesn't really take much effort to find this kind of information, even the Wikipedia page for orientalism features quite a few fetishistic works of nude women in spaces it wasn't culturally normal to be nude in & infamous harem paintings.
Looking forward to your follow up video in which you walk back your incredibly reductive and dismissive claims about Said’s huge contributions to art criticism.
For those unfamiliar with Said, here's wikipedia's description of this book:
"Orientalism is a 1978 book by Edward W. Said, in which the author establishes the term "Orientalism" as a critical concept to describe the West's commonly contemptuous depiction and portrayal of The East, i.e. the Orient. Societies and peoples of the Orient are those who inhabit the places of Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Said argues that Orientalism, in the sense of the Western scholarship about the Eastern World, is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much Orientalist work inherently political and servile to power.[1]"
As others have noted, its definitely more nuanced than Julian's comment, and not strictly related to art. if you are interested in these ideas or feel defensive of the art/artists (Said is not arguing about the beauty of the art, but about its relationship to colonial power structures) i would encourage reading Said's work or looking at other scholarship on Orientalism.
The problem with critical theories is that the moment you put on that lens, everything becomes problematic because of the theory's bias. If you have a painting that is a caricature of the people and is portraying them in false light or obviously racist stereotypes then yes, Said might have a point. But if the painting is of a Moroccan man sitting at a table during the day, then no it's idiotic to then ascribe the horrors of colonial legacy to that work. Some works are just as they appear, a wonderful composition with a striking subject. Other works can be very political. But to confuse the two is to be purposefully stupid or malevolent in an attempt to manipulate people. Were there artists that could be described as Said is suggesting, yes sure, is every work and every artist doing that, obviously not. As the title of the video implies, "Radical Nuance" each work and each artist has its own nuance. Reductively dumping them all into a set of "problematic/colonial/racist/sexist/etc" art is a tired, stupid, and boring technique used by Marxist 101 undergrads and those under its influence to create windmills for their Quixotic delusional crusade against fake made up problems.
I would encourage other people before reading anything to look at the painting, look at how it portrays the subject, to think about the artist who spent time painting it, and then ask themselves, if I was the subject and saw this work, would it offend me? If your answer is no, then you probably don't need to do extra research to find out why you should be offended or why you a century plus later, a culture different, and sitting thousands of miles away should be offended on behalf of the subject.
@@casimirgythe2181And do you think your argument is helped or hindered by calling another opinion "stupid"?
@@JacquesDeLeon it's not just "another opinion", it's cancel culture. And yes, that is stupid to - reductively dump everything into a category of 'problematic', and to then go on a crusade.
@belneste there is a big difference between being critical of something and 'canceling' it. As an anthropologist, it's important to understand that some, and the original comment does say much, art will show the sitter in different views that correlate with the painter's view on the society. You have to try and understand the implicit bias (which is subconcious) to figure out if an artwork is true to fact or not. One also has to separate their own bias' from the work they do in order to keep it from corrupting the work. It's also important to understand that not everyone is viewing this art. Art used to be seen as something only those in high society, those with money and power, viewed. Therefore they'd influence those parts of the world based on their ideas of what was existing there. So if an artist paints a simple scene, but imparts his bias of it being riddled with poverty, this can be done with colors chosen or the placement of shadows that western viewers would subconsciously read as 'poor', then the person buying the art will assume the sitter is poor, or unhygienic. Being critical of a system, like how we know that brain capacity between people doesn't really effect intelligence but they believed it did in the 1800s, doesn't mean we can't improve upon it and take the bits that work out, like how there's sometimes roughly a 25cc brain capacity difference between males and females and in some cases that helps investigators identify missing and dead people. Cancel culture would be throwing the whole system out, and erasing it from history, much like the ancient Egyptians did to pharaohs they didn't like, not finding the issues with a system and setting about fixing it, which can only come through being critical.
lmao responses to this comment appear to sum up to“don’t read critical theory because it’ll turn you woke”
people still getting upset about Said generations after his work was integrated into serious thinking on these topics and we all moved on
To explain simply why the “intentions” of orientalist artists don’t matter: I’m sure every amateur artist who eagerly dipped their toes into painting restoration and (either temporarily or permanently) ruined a painting also had good intentions - they weren’t TRYING to ruin the painting, to insult the original artist, I’m sure on some level they “loved” that piece too. But that doesn’t change the final outcome and the harm they’d done, however unintentional it was.
I like how you put it in context
Great analogue
How dare the people of the past live as if they aren't people of the future!
@@oz_jones Please explain.
@@BlueCoolOla I understand what oz_jones mean. However it is not always as simple as that.
A beautiful portrait! Really not a fair assessment of Edward Said's work or thesis at the beginning, however, which overshadowed this video for me. Said dedicated his life to understanding how colonized people were represented by colonizers in colonial-era literature particularly. The complex dynamics between interpersonal relationships (which may be positive) and broader power structures (which were overwhelmingly exploitative - including in North Africa) are a huge part of what Said discusses across volumes of his work. I would recommend rather that accepting the summary provided here, people should read Said's work for themselves.
Yes it is incredibly naive and anyone who’s engaged with the field of study would laugh at this casual dismissal of one of the most important sociological authors of the 20th century.
@@ChrisGalardi Important to leftists because he was one of them.
Said was an absolute wank stain and his work is worthless tom foolery.
Yeah, agreed, I was a bit saddened that this argument was presented so onesided and comically overblown. People can still agree or disagree, but flattening down the argument because you don't agreee with it is always a bad look.
@@ChrisGalardi I studied Said and was repulsed by his work. Not that some of the implications weren't merited, but his work was what was one-sided - not our reactions to it.
I mean... that's such a misrepresentation of what Edward Saïd said it's ridiculous lol
First a cringe, then a groan from the historical sociologist whose PhD supervisor pioneered Critical Muslim Studies.
I kind of cringed a little myself, but a brief explanation of why wouldn't go amiss from an expert. Although it's true that Said isn't immune to criticism, Julian's statements presented things as a lot more cut and dried in a revisionist way than they actually are, that's for sure. Although at least he didn't ignore the topic completely.
Free Palestine
From the rivers to the sea!!!!!!
3:07 "the artists certainly did not" .... Sure mate 👀
Looking at the title of that piece & being a Muslim myself, with Morocco being a Muslim country these pictures of men "prostrating" to the king like they are praying is sus as hell to me!! It wouldn't happen as would be against the religion. & no they are not praying as all would be facing the same way. Even bowing is looked down on but it happened sure, my point who is to say the artist didn't play it up to make it look better for the painting.
Just adding my two cents to what some of the other more thoughtful & well worded statements have said in the comments section about your take on orientalism. Even the example paintings you gave are not all great is my point.
And to some of the pushback to those thoughtful takes. Im not white, so this isn't a white guilt take lol.
On a more positive note, great restoration video as always.
Beautifully said.
if this portrait is as nuanced as you say, why do we not know the name of the sitter? often times, with portraits especially, you provide context with names, history, and sometimes even family history. your complete dismissal of said's analysis of orientalism, while at the same time exhibiting the exact phenomenon he was critiquing, is disappointing to say the least.
This is a really good point I haven't seen brought up in the comments yet
And there are also many sitters we know nothing about. Information is lost over the years. We are not sure who the Mona Lisa is for example.
you're lucky i like this channel and love to watch the restoration cuz i almost turned the video off when you claimed to know more about orientalism than Edward Said 😅 the idea that fetishization is always deliberately hateful or with an eye toward colonization is false, plenty of orientalist artists "loved what they saw" and still warped the cultures they depicted when they did so because that's like? basically how human point of view works??? if you read said you would know that.
Edward Saids work is racist theory. You have to be a racist to believe in all the critical race theories out there to begin with. What positive change does his work or any of the other bring to society? How does it unite society and help spread peace and love in any way shape or form? How does it bring positive solutions for issues our society is facing today since all this has been applied it seems onto everyones brains? Because I see nothing but racism on the rise, hate, division, blame placed where it doesn't belong, and nothing positive being applied or put in place of what is destroyed over something that is theory not even fact.
@@AvalonDreamz begone chud! i don't care what you think
damn bro why are you so into defending orientalism
Yeah I was not expecting to click on a video called "Radical Nuance" only to hear western orientalism apologia
Julian, question, are you being critical of Said because he was critical of something you like and enjoy or you really believe what you said about “orientalist” artists.
Or was it a quick jab at a Palestinian academic?
Oriental” term itself is problematic and a term created from a white European view as well as “Orientalism”. What artists were from the regions that were painted within this group? None of them. They’re all white UK and European based artists. Orientalism will always be a white perspective of what they saw and chose to paint.
Academics and art professionals have to face uncomfortable truths even when it’s about a subject matter they either love or have investment in.
I am a bit surprised by the short tangent in the beginning about Said's "Orientalism", since the book does not address visual arts at all. There is literary criticism and an investigation into historical accounts of the middle east by western writers, and a description of how the presentation of the middle east in those works is tied to imperialist power dynamics, how our view of the Orient was created and how it shapes our understanding in turn. In light of this, calling his argument "reductionist" is pretty awkward, and slightly ironic.
Other than that I enjoyed the video greatly, as I always do with content this channel puts out, just wanted to mention this.
I fear his rejection might have to do with the current situation in Israel/Palestine. But i dont want to speculate lol.
@@iandonnelly6684 I've been following this comment section for the past 2 days because I was a bit shaken. I made comments similar to yours. Some people have had a more generous interpretation of Julian's "misunderstanding" of Saïd's work and tried their best not to speculate, given the general (and deserved) admiration for his work. But yeah, I can't wrap my head around it. I wonder whether Julian will address it in the future. Tbh it'd probably be safer for his channel to let the issue die and get on with the next restoration vid as if nothing had happened, but who knows ?
@@elax75I agree. considering one can enjoy a work of art only through its aesthetic qualities and/or view it through its historical/cultural dimension, it may be wise for Julian to focus solely on the aesthetic aspect if treating the historical/social aspect cannot be done with enough nuance within this video format. Critical inquiry is highly valuable to understand the world but its oversimplification may hurt more than help its objective.
Said was a complete and utter fool.
It's because art history is equal parts visual critique as it is literary/poltical/cultural/religious critique. Said's Orientalist arguments are trotted out to undergrads and grad students who are often getting their first blush of "Critical Theory" aka Marxism and many other concepts that are often horrifically misapplied by people who don't know enough but don't have the wisdom to keep their uninformed opinions to themselves. Said's Orientalism is one of the gateway texts to anything anti-European if you're interested in the colonial period. It allows for an instant vilification of one group and victimization of another group. This then allows the budding academic to create utterly inane "hot takes" on any work that you think could be "problematic." Said does have some valid criticisms but they have to be applied properly. That requires research, context, evidence, and actual thought. That a lot of times is unfortunately missing from people who want basically a premade academic theory to support their "I want free stuff" or "Europeans bad!" opinion. Applying Said's Orientalism to this work is idiotic just as its wrong to many works which are essentially North African and Middle Eastern genre paintings.
you're dramatically misrepresenting Said's thesis. almost cartoonishly so
actually your comment about Edward Said was not only reductive it was racist !
I am very disappointed that Julian has still not addressed his myopic comments on Saids work and by extension, most post colonial thought.
It’s not a college class that addresses orientalism. It’s an art conservation YT channel. Any more epistemology beyond the scope of the artwork would diminish my enjoyment. Julian’s all about not bringing excessive work to the conservation, eh? 🙂
@@fracasfracas Then he shouldn't have even started on the topic honestly, orientalism and it's flaws is an extremely complicated and controversial topic and brushing over it so broadly and generally is an incredibly irresponsible thing to do, as many have pointed out already
while i can appreciate your work, i do not agree with your commentary on Edward Said. Said's criticism of westerners' beliefs and stereotypes of asians focused on the issues and harm it brought to these peoples and their nations. westerners/colonizers spread the ideas that asians were weak, barbaric, irrational, and in need of saving in order to take control of their governments and use the people to their disposal. Edward Said's criticisms were not misplaced due to the impact it has had on asian people across the entire continent. Long ago this was an issue and it still is today. This misunderstanding of an activist's work is not necessary
although i do not know the intention behind it, ostracizing a Palestinian activist during these times is not a good look.
I have really enjoyed your previous videos but the start of this one left a bad taste in my mouth and I stopped watching. Reducing Said’s work like that was extremely ignorant and shows your privilege. I encourage you to read it properly and consider what he writes about a little deeper than just getting upset because it might mean that some painters were participating in orientalism. You can still appreciate their art while also understanding the history and context behind it.
Bad take, Julian
Incredibly bad take
Disgusting, even
like the critique of orientalism, claiming that "the artists who fell in love with the middle east and east were not seeking to exploit it" is also reductive, and takes me out of my enjoyment of this video. the radical nuance here is to understand that both can be true, and, to quote @sashasays2062 in other comments, "we can’t naively look at artistic production as springing from a culture-free (and power-free) vacuum", in particular with how our exploitative imperialism towards the middle east is ongoing. as a portrait artist, i struggle with these realities whenever i paint.
Well, that's not EXACTLY what Said wrote. SOMEBODY is being reductive here, and I don't think it's Said.
Beautiful work! That said, of all the occupations, artists don’t really have the best history of not fetishizing something..
Love the work and i am a long time follower, but to reduce a lifes work and dismiss it, is not ok. I havent tead Said, but i think I might now. The fact is that you seem to he hung up on the word 'fetishization" because it has a sordid history. Try to insert yhe word "enthralled" or "obsession". These people were just living their lives when colonziers decided they were "Exotic". This made more colonizers flock to the area and they arent known for kindness towards locals .. just sayin.. Colonizers gonna Colonize
You can love something and think it is problematic. We can be grateful for his work and know that he was participating in perpetuating harmful stereotypes. We can know his intention was good, but that his impact was varied. If someone says something is problematic, please consider using an and/both viewpoint instead of an either/or viewpoint. It will help us view this work of art as a whole in a web of complex history, instead of something wholly good or bad. As a long time watcher, I think you usually strive for seeing that complexity and I value that. This time, you might have oversimplified a bit.
Well said!!
That's simple presentism. How dare people in the time they live behave as if they're not future people! If you look at what is being shown, the works are a wide variety of genre paintings. They're no more problematic than those painted by the Netherlandish masters. Said's point is uselessly reductive and prevents anyone not from the region from painting anything of that region. That's essentialism on steroids and does nothing for the art historical value of these pieces. The works are tremendous as they are windows into these times and places. Your present day opinion on colonialism or whatever you're channeling doesn't have anything to do with these painters who obviously took extreme care to render their subjects in a way faithful to what they saw and encountered. Have you ever been to some of these places? They are striking, and wonderful, and exotic, and beautiful. Imagine what it would be like at the time of the painting when you can't instantly watch travel videos or scroll through Instagram feeds to become jaded. Said's critique of Orientalism is a cover for his politics and its refreshing to see someone like Julian push past the bog standard academic narrative and deal with these paintings and painters on their own terms and merits.
@@casimirgythe2181: I'm afraid you completely missed the point and it doesn't look like you understand more nuanced than "black or white" opinions, so I'll leave it at this: no, the world doesn't work that way. The fact that humans did reprehensible or just... a bit worse than "morally ambiguous" things in the past doesn't mean that they were faultless or that their deeds were harmless just because a certain type of behaviour was more widely accepted (then again - more widely accepted by which social groups? those whose voice mattered? and accepted or suffered in silence because there was no choice? etc, etc) or that certain terms didn't exist or weren't widespread back then.
@@Airsaber Do you understand why presentism is a logical fallacy? And what EXACT reprehensible thing are you suggesting Coutts did other than paint a wonderful picture? Can you actually defend your claim? Be precise now, I'd like to know how it is you've come by this knowledge that gives you the authority to make such a claim. Or are you just painting him in your own black and white colors of oppressor/oppressed? No one suggested that people haven't done bad and evil things. Obviously they have, but not all people are bad and evil. Sometimes a painting of a Moroccan man is just a painting of Moroccan man. Unless you actually know when and when not to apply a critical lens, you're going to make the mistake of assigning things as being "problematic" when its just your own bias on display.
@@casimirgythe2181: Yep, unfortunately you didn't get the point. I suggest re-reading the comments not agreeing with the rather flippant/dismissive tone re: the aforementioned book and term. And I'm afraid that you are the only person talking about this who writes comments that suggest that the author of said comments sees things in black and white. Nobody else here is talking in such absolutes - on the contrary, people are asking for more nuance.
While I really appreciate your work and love watching your videos, your take on orientalism and colonialism was just embarrassing. The attempt to critique Said's conceptual framework showed a flagrant lack of contact with his actual writings. You really didn't need to say all of that to work on this painting, please don't make this a habit lmao
my initial *critical* comment was deleted so here it is again: your statement about E Said was completely unnecessary and racist. How dare you talk like that about a Palestinian revolutionary. you obviously have zero concept of political or artistic analysis. I recommend you read every single comment critiquing you and take it to heart. this video was in such bad taste, I could not watch the rest and probably wont watch another. if anyone wants to read any of E Said's work, there are many free ebooks online with his work and many more Palestinian activists to learn from. from the rivers to the sea!!
My soul died when Julian uttered the phrase, "Glued to a sheet of Masonite."
I literally gagged when he said it ToT
whoah what's with the dismissal in the beginning???
just came back here after doing my own research on orientalism and read the book. i've been a loyal subsriber for 4 years, i watch all your videos, without skipping mind you! and knowing your position on this matter i dont feel comfortable supporting you again. bye!
I relate!
Loved the mini history lesson, although I don't agree with your interpretation of Said's work, his criticism also leans towards commodification of the Oriental image, rather than just all discourse regarding the East through the Western eye being reductive, although he does talk about it too, his works also have a lot of (radical) nuance
Yeah I think Julian is off on Said too
Yeah, there is plenty of legitimate criticism of Said, but Julian goes way too far here in dismissing him. Artists commodifying and fetishising North Africa and the Middle East (and its inhabitants) was absolutely a thing - even though that is not a reason to condemn all the art of that period.
All art is a commodity, at least the 'good' stuff is. The artist produces the work, and is paid for it, that is how artists make their living. The same work of art may lie neglected, stay with the owner to be inherited, or sold through a few or multiple hands, in any event it is a commodity, it has a value.
What on earth is a "Western Eye"?
WOW, ALL THESE EXPERTS
@@nicktecky55A western eye is a view from a White European based perspective.
Cool thing about the varnish, is even if it's old and yellow - the fact you can remove it and see such bright colors underneath says the varnish totally did its job.
Well, part of its job. It became too yellowed to do the other part of its job well.
@ordulf7193 the varnish wasn't yellow when it was first applied so it did its job for a period of time.
@@ordulf7193 Yeah I just mean, the major purpose of varnish is to protect a painting. That's what it did. It just also happened to yellow after some time lol!
@@xerodeus2337 Modern conservation varnishes do both parts, for they do not yellow.
@@xerodeus2337 I agree.
Orientalists never fetished the people of the Orient? huge if true
That weirdly unnuanced and reductive refutation of Edward Said in the beginning really soured the rest of the video for me. Orientalism is a pretty mainstream academic concept, and to dismiss to breath of nuance and knowledge there is to be found in discussions surrounding it like this comes across as profoundly shallow.
What a shame, because I usually enjoy these videos and learning about art history and conservation through this channel. This makes me worry that perhaps that knowledge hasn't been as nuanced as I thought.
A beautiful restoration, as always, but I'm rather disappointed in your thorough mischaracterization of Edward Said's book and central arguments.
I do love watching Julian work, I’m a fan. However.. his arrogance and lack of art education peaks through once in awhile.
Edward Said's thesis is not "whatever Westerners say about the ME is worthless and racist". You claim that his thesis is reductive and misplaced, yet you do exactly this to his book and theses which are much more nuanced...
that's the weirdest take on orientalism ive ever heard. "the snake charmer" (one of the most famous orientalist paintings, but it wasn't shown) isn't a faithful representation of life in the middle east (it shows a naked boy charmjng snakes for a group of decrepit looking older men, which Simply Did Not Happen), and saying that gêrome "was just in love with the people" doesn't explain why he made up that scene. even if orientalist painters had the best of intentions, that intent doesn't change the effect that orientalism had on the public perception of the middle east. heck, we know that manet didn't want to cause such upheaval with his art, but we still remember manet's art pushing boundaries and being revolutionary! saying Said's argument is reductive is actually really reductive of that same argument. i wish the art history lesson had the same nuance as the conservation work :( pretty confused by this one not going to lie
I felt the same way. I can't pretend to be super familiar with the history at work here, but the extremely broad generalizations of "NONE of these artists were racists" was definitely a red flag and lacked any nuance that is absolutely required when talking about colonizers making profit off of other people's cultures.
Well said
very weird take on his part to brush aside Mr. Said’s work (of all people!) on the subject at hand. Orientalist works can be beautifully painted and I quite enjoy them, but to take them at face value… come on. One can practically hear these painters thinking “people back home are going to go crazy when they see this!”. It’s fantastical artwork at times and to illustrate just refer to Gérôme’s “The Tiger and the Guardian”, a painting that’s left a huge impression on me when I was younger precisely for its fantastical qualities. Pretty? Yes. Faithful, would anyone REALLY say so? Bit of a bad take by the guy… Amazing video as always, but misleading at best historically. I’m with you on this one mate!
Facts
You saying a man can't just paint what he wants? He has to worry about what effect his painting might have on someone home or miles away across the ocean perhaps. Or are you saying you should only paint your own culture or home, to me that sounds really boring.
I’m sure some artists from this time period had a genuine appreciation or admiration for the middle east, but it’s clear from numerous portrayals that just as many (if not more) of them sought to exploit those cultures by capitalizing on the ignorance of the western imagination. There are plenty of paintings from this movement where western artists represented the middle east as “barbaric”-just look at the countless depictions of women (often, inexplicably, white women) standing demurely (often nude or partially nude) with their hands tied, as dark-skinned male figures gawk at them. The implication of these scenes is that they are being sold into slavery. And the colorism is no coincidence: they depict the women as white or white passing because to westerners that makes them easier to sympathize with as innocent victims, powerless against the evil arab characters in the paintings. (It also makes the female figures more desirable, because people are racist!)
And what about all of the paintings of odalisques, which are clearly an excuse to objectify the bodies of women from those countries (even if colorism often means that their appearances are extremely whitewashed-because of course, they had to fit victorian beauty standards at least a little bit to be desirable, and therefore easier to objectify). Those are absolutely fetishistic. And this is all besides the fact that most artists who engaged in orientalism didn’t ever actually travel to the lands that they were depicting! Many of them created scenes based purely on their imagination. I doubt that many of them even endeavored to do actual research before depicting cultures that they knew nothing about.
I genuinely think some paintings from this movement are quite beautiful, and sometimes even respectfully rendered, but I’ve encountered just as many paintings that make me extremely uncomfortable. I think it’s hard to deny that major elements of orientalist art tend to be racism, colorism and fetishization-one doesn’t need to look far to see that.
the fact you automatically attacked "western ignorance" as if thats the only culture who ever wrongly portrayed foreign cultures tells me everything i need to know about your motives. This reads like an insanely spiteful demonisation of the west, while straight up infantilising and wildly wrong idolising of any non western culture. Especially when you start complaining that westerners paint Middle easterner people as "white" which is spoken like someone who has never been outside of the US because many of the inhabitants of that region really could pass as white after millenia of Roman, greek and Turkic migration... but i guess saying only brown and black people count as "accurate" Middle eastern people is somehow better in your eyes. Stuff like this doesnt challenge people to analyse the biases seen in HUMAN NATURE and strive to improve or at least remember said biases, it just seems like a bitter attempt to smear and demonise the intentions of people you or i will NEVER actually know, based entirely off your clear hatred for Western Europe
It amazes me how, especially fabric, can go from a flat, almost cartoonish, look to a pillowy flowing fabric, simply by removing the varnish.
Makes me wonder how all the paintings I've stared at in my life actually were supposed to look.
It's because it flattens out the values (shading). A lot of the sense of depth in a drawing is carried by reproducing the patterns light forms when it hits a geometric form. old varnish, especially as it collects dust, converges the whole image to a kind of middle gray because light is reflecting off the accumulated dust. If you pay attention to the before and afters you can see that the dark parts of the paintings get darker just as the light parts get lighter, that contrast between light and dark is really import to making the 3d illusion work.
source: am art student
I don't think you should be defending orientalism or dismissing its critic and his work. This is incredibly reductive at best and a perfect example of the habit of white people getting defensive when their actions are called into question at worst. Many, many white artists were indeed fetishising what they saw, whether you think their art is beatiful or not. This was part of the subject of my major so I studied the subject in detail for years, and I happen to be French so we had a lot of interactions with Moroccan and Algerian scholars and students, for very obvious reasons given our shared history. Your perspective, as well-meaning as you may think it is, is ultimately very misguided here. Orientalism as a movement was another glaring example of the colonial, often paternalist nature of western, and in particular European art. Using your massive platform to defend orientalism is a plain bad move, as many will take you at face value without doing any research and you've now taught a million people to dismiss the concerns of dozens of colonised countries and their artists and scholars.
Says the white person💀 he said that people were fetishing the middle east. And how do you know he's white meny middle easterns have light skin . he wasn't being defensive , he simply pointed out that saying all white people were wrong was a bias thesis 🤷🏽♀called out his actions? He didn't do anything wrong blaming someone for the actions of their ancestors based on their skin tone is simply put it .. Stupid Honestly
Did you actually know if Said specifically, was expressly or impliedly orientalist or not? Specifics matter. Too many broadbrush statements remove clarity, and do little to educate your audience.
Well expressed!
@@BigHenFor Said was a scholar who wrote a lot about the West and the East, looking at art, literature and history. A good start is his book Orientalism - he is not just an interesting scholar, but also wryly funny and impeccably well-expressed.
All due respect, generalizing Said's work in such manner is reductive. Not all of his ideas were "misplaced". His thesis on orientalism does not just apply to art, it also includes other areas like literature, and there're substantive amount of literature written in that time by european authors about "the orient" that actually greatly benefit from being analyzed through his theory of orientalism. While I agree that we can't generalize every work of art that came out of this movement as being bad or racist, we can't also say in good conscious that they were all done respectfully. Off the top of my head, Jean Leon Gerome made a lot of questionable choices depicting praying men, for example having them face the wrong way, hold their hands in weird positions, and trying to pass off jibberish writing as arabic to name a few. not to mention countless paintings of Harems with overly sexualized, half-naked women when those women would neither be dressing in such way nor would these artists be allowed anywhere near the Harem. Again, I agree that we can't generalize every piece of art to come out of this period, but that goes both ways.
Art painted during the colonial era doesn't get more or less beautiful by claiming that the artist was somehow more enlightened than his contemporaries. Isn't that a preposterous claim to make? I think it is possible to acknowledge that the artist felt genuine love for the people he painted, without concealing the problematic context of what he did. On the contrary, concealing that context is, as you say, reductive.
💯
Thinking of Gauguin and his many paintings of Tahitian women and also how he "married" and impregnated a 13 year old Tahitian girl and then left and never saw her or her child again. And then later "married" another Tahitian girl, this time who was 14, and then left her to raise his child on her own. And THEN "married" ANOTHER 14 year old Tahitian girl.
@@renerpho i didn't speak to their aesthetic beauty tho, did i? my qualm was the way he presented Edward Said and his views on orientalism. nuance is a thing. we can recognize that these paintings were beautiful and done well, while also acknowledging their problematic nature in some instances. we are saying the same thing.
@@GetOfflineGetGood don't forget he also had a wife and 5 kids which he left behind before he embarked on Tahiti.
Imagine being really good at art conservation and thinking that makes you able to have a critical analysis on academic work on orientalism by Edward Said on the basis that the painting are pretty. Its probably best if you just stay in your lane.
Imagine thinking people shouldn't have an opinion on a work unless they spent 20 years pondering over it.
@@ginismoja2459imagine thinking you have a more informed and nuanced opinion on a topic after 1 google search than someone who spent 20 years studying it
you dont understand professors said work
It's interesting how the actual top comments, criticizing and disagreeing with his dismissal of Said and orientalism, disappear when I hit the "sort by" and go from "newest" back to "top." What is happening here?
I noticed this too!!!! Fucked up
I really like your work but I'm a POS english major and so I feel the need to say that I think you've misunderstood what orientalism is. From what I understand Said is discussing the way that the "western" understanding of african and asian cultures forms how they interact with them. This understanding is however, distorted by previous westerners which dictates how these interactions will be recieved and understood. It's basically a self amplifying lens that westerners viewed other cultures during both imperialist colonization and decolonization following WWI and II. I highly recomend reading Said if you haven't and also reading Home Rule by Nandita Sharma as her work builds off of Said's and expands upon the ideas of post colonialism and the damage it does.
Julian’s normally very nuanced point of view is oddly clumsy here . Of course some Western artists fetishized the East (they fetishized women, wealth, aristocracy, and their own genius, as well!). The take on Said is reductive. “Falling in love” with another culture or people is never untainted by hierarchies of power (again, let’s look at women in the entire history of art). That doesn’t mean we can’t find beauty and talent and joy in the art-it just means that we can’t naively look at artistic production as springing from a culture-free (and power-free) vacuum.
Said is annoying tripe. He uses a correct perception "all our views and expressions are coloured by our socio/cultural standing in life" to then dismiss countless amounts of great wonderful art as being worthless because opressor/opressed dynamic. When in reality all of the art (even the fetishized ones) are interesting insights into the human experience. Its groanworthy grandstanding
Someone wrote that in a book that he had to study at school. It's like most of the arts subjects. They read books. Some, like lawyers and mental health professionals use their knowledge constructively in a way that benefits society in a real way.
Marxist nonsense. Said was a complete idiot. No thinking person takes him seriously.
People "fall in love" with their own perception of something rather than the something itself all the time across countless contexts, so I also thought it was really weird how Julian presented fetishization as dichotomous to love.
Is there a visual art version of "death of the author"? It sounds similar to what's being argued here.
My excitement to see Julian restore a work featiring someone if African descent was quitely tempered by Julian's romantic, but revisionist introduction. Yay for representation
I think this was the first time I've seen a restoration on this channel where the subject was someone with a darker complexion. But yeah, that intro was problematic.
agree :(
Totally ruined the video for me
I don't think you're using the word "revisionist" correctly considering the context. Revisionism would be the intentional rewriting of history. Artists and explorers have before and after colonialism been traveling around fascinated by that which was different and making a record of it. Making the distinction of the motivation that was part of these paintings could be said to be the opposite unless you can prove it is ahistorical- that the known historical facts about these artists doesn't support what he said.
Or is your point that NO European could or should paint an African subject because that would be "colonialism"? I'm sorry, but I don't get what exactly you're objecting to in relation to paintings.
@@a.westenholz4032 Orientalist art is Is colonial art instead of extracting raw matierals or labor. It extracted a warped veiw of other cultures as other, as lesser or backwards.
@@iandonnelly6684 If our current period is judged as being "western conglomerate exploitive" of places like Africa (and ignoring China in all this, but there would be a great deal of truth to it), then you're saying ANY Westerner that goes to Africa now in any way, especially if they paint a picture or try to document what they see on film, would be part of that. Or go to Mexico, or anywhere else that is being exploited by conglomerates ATM. That would be such a ridiculous blanket lumping of ALL Westerners right now, to think that every single one who travels and has reason to film something is part of this "Western Conglomerate exploitation" just because it is later deemed to be the hallmark of this age. But IF that is really how you think, then in case that is how we are judged in the future, you better stay at home.
Ilove your work, but I have a bachelor's degree in International Relations, so it hurt very deeply to hear your very shallow interpretation of Edward Said's classic. I'm glad I'm not alone and many viewers felt so too and brought it to your attention.
Please consider reading the book asap.
Bachelors degree. 🤭 so you must know everything. To each their own I suppose.
@@lauraw3117 No, I don't. That's why I recommended the book, duh. You must be overwhelmed by the idea of READING BOOKS, I guess.
Someone's love for an area and a people does not preclude their also exotifying them. They were "Loved" because they were outside the social norm and that implies that the social norm is Western European White culture. It is the love of a fantasy not an actual people and by commodifying it these artists perpetuated it. Take for example that when the West came to Japan it classified all Japan art as decorative art which on the western hierarchy was the lowest form of art. Thus, tell a culture that all of its art did not have value and to have value it needed to be FINE ART, aka painting. HOWEVER, this did not stop Westerners from exporting, commodifying and all forms of Japanese art to a high degree. Telling a culture their art is worthless, while stealing a copying the style because it is desirable.
💯
Gauguin loved Tahiti and painting Tahitian women so much that he "married" three underage Tahitian girls, impregnated them, and never raised his children.
The social norm for Western European white men was Western European and white... who would have thought.
Funny you give that example about Japan since the Japanese under their own social norms saw Europeans as barbarians with no manners and "exotified" them the same way
What would have differentiated that from genuine “love”? Or have you just been granted the power to divine their thoughts and intentions post mortem?
@@DaveM86 If you're white and/or a man whatever you do or think is wrong, it's that simple.
Just watched and immediately thought: Julien, you didn't do yourself a favour here by detailing your distorted misunderstanding of Said's work as well as you completely absolving the artist of any complicity in the fetishization of the Orient... --- man, didn't just not dodge a bullet but actually jumped right in front of it.
Sadly i feel like current events infulenced his "rebuttal" of Saids work.
Yea I have a feeling this relates to an anti Palestinian bias
I considered whether I should write this comment for a bit. I decided that I owe you this feedback if I respect your craftsmanship; and I sure do. While I was pleasantly surprised that you know that orientalism as a post-colonial research domain exists, I have to say that your judgment of Edward Saed and his groundbreaking book was simplistic and your criticism of how he exposed systemic racism in artistic depictions of the “East” was borderline offensive. I do hope that you actually read the book and maybe even go further and read the actual criticism of it by another brilliant thinker called Joseph Masad.
For once I disagree with your reductive opinion of Said's work. His work is a great insight of how western countries view other parts of the world, also it shows how racism, islamophobia etc takes place in western countries
This just made me realize that I have not seen alot of portraits of black and brown people being conserved.
A video that talks about this a bit is "His name was Bélizaire." It was posted by the NYT (there is an article with the same title if you prefer to read about it.)
I'm interested in why you think that is?
In absolute or relative value?
Not many black or brown artists to make portraits of their own people to begin with...
Maybe you haven't searched enough...although why you would says so much about you!
I wouldn’t call orientalism an art movement, it’s a theme, a tendency, or even a genre. Academic, romantic, symbolist, Fauve painters, and more, tried themselves at orientalism. And I do believe a big part of them have very reductive not to say racist views on the so called “Orient”. Just by looking for example at the number of “harem” scene, “odalisque” or lascivious “slave”. Not the case in this beautiful painting of course.
I mean, to be fair, the reason so many people painted it was bcs it captured their attention, it was pretty different that what they saw at home. And i don't think we can judge people, too much, by WHAT interests them, so long as they don't present such things in a deceiving and mean spirited way that doesn't reflect reality, imo. And it's not like things like harems and odalisques didn't exist, unless there is something about it that I'm not aware of? Is it the WAY they painted it that bothers you or is it something else?
@@witcht It's less an issue of whether or not the images depicted by European painters of 'the Orient' were real or not (they most often weren't) and more an issue of numbers. For most people in Europe and America, paintings like Gerome's "The Slave Market" were their only images of what life in the Middle East looked like. Their's good evidence to prove that these paintings were seen as anthropological works, near perfect depictions of the 'Other.'
I also agree with the original commenter here- Orientalism involves the complicated relationship between those who produce knowledge (academics and artists like Gerome) and colonial military forces. One reinforces the other. Think about how US media depicting Arabs as terrorists in the 80s-2000s reinforced the cultural image of the Arab as a violent, religious radical. US intervention in the Middle East is made a lot easier if the US people believe the country needs to be protected from Arabs.
Said sought to highlight this relationship- not dismiss all art made by Westerners about the East as racist. It's a pretty meaningful reduction of what Said hoped to point out. His original argument is broad, yes, but it leaves a lot of room for complexity. Just because something engages with Orientalism doesn't make it inherently bad- how are people from the region ever meant to challenge the entire construction if just by engaging with its signifiers they're doing a bad, evil thing. Said himself is Palestinian-American. He's well aware of these kinds of complications.
Anyway, sorry for the paragraphs. I've spent a lot of time reading with and against Said and I was really disappointed by BR's definition of the topic.
@@witcht harems didnt exist in they way they are currently portrayed. A the harem was the womens quarters a place where no men could go so they could hang around without being all covered up.
@@call-rickey thank you! julien's discussion on the subject bothered me and i couldnt have explained it any better than you did
@@witcht The guy you replied to doesn't seem to get that 19th/20th century dudes painted 19th/20th century pinups. Sometimes a harem scene isn't a critique on culture or women or politics. Sometimes its just an excuse to paint hot women in a cool scene. They're basically male fantasies about the female locker room. It's why they're naked and having pillow fights. Its because guys think about that type of stuff and usually its not much deeper than "Tits! or Ass!"
You hit the nail on the head though. People WANT to judge this stuff and its easy to apply (insert random -ism here) to whatever they're looking at. Did some artists do nefarious things, sure. Or maybe some artists just thought it would be cool to paint a naked woman in a oriental palace. Maybe the artist isn't racist, maybe he was just a pervert and liked titties. Unless there's specific information on what the artist ACTUALLY intended when painting the piece, it's just bad attempts at mind reading from decades to centuries later by people looking to be outraged.
first L julian take
These works are not dismissed but rather it is evidence of the problematic nature of the Orientalist that should be studied . Orientalism is not a movement but a pattern that Said and other scholar noticed in terms of how the West viewed the others in mostly negative way that continues to put the “orient” in a disadvantage
Purely Occidental.
Came to say something similar. We should be listening to the scholars affected by these movements. The artists may have had a different intent, but that intent doesn't erase the impact of their actions. Impact > Intent.
Why do you think that is?
Scholars love to judge the people of the past, because they can't answer back. The fact that they study what others have done, making conclusions to flatter the thinking of the day, is not an intellectual accomplishment.
@@TroyRubert Because people can have good intentions & still wind up having a negative impact. Their intentions don't erase that. Unless we are the ones who have been affected by those actions, it is not our place to say that the impact is erased by the good intentions. They don't have to be a scholar to talk about the impact- I should have said people instead but because Julian was talking about a scholar is why I used that term.
This guy really had a way with painting light. A really lovely portrait. (ed: Gordon Coutts is the guy)
I miss the name of the artist.
I agree, the mastery of light in the fabric is exquisite!
Honesty i love the way Julian narrates his process to cater to anyone so first yime viewers will understand it, instead of just saying its a hot table you all have seen it 200 times now.
Orientalism of course rose out of a love and enchantment with aspects of those foreign cultures. The British loved Oriental cultures so much they have a massive treasure trove of other countries' antiquities in their museum. I don't think anybody is saying that the majority of people who produced orientalist artwork did so to purposely misrepresent those cultures for malicious reasons. But they were colonizers born believing in the might of their own country and culture. Their presentation of foreign cultures is like viewing an image through a skewed lens, naturally distorted, and the way they distorted it ultimately had a negative impact on the people from those cultures. It's false to think that because an artist genuinely loved the culture, their artwork isn't also problematic. But just because an artwork is orientalist doesn't mean it has no cultural or aesthetic value. I think people need to be educated about the context in which it was created and hear the voices of the people whose cultures were depicted in that artwork.
exactly!!! Although I wouldn't say it "rose out of a love and enchantment" but rather simple colonial curiosity.
I usually love your videos, but I could barely get through the first three minutes of this one. One of the worst, most reductionist explanations of Orientalism I've ever seen. These artists could absolutely have fallen in love with the subjects of their works- but that doesn't mean they weren't also contributing to the ongoing colonial projects in these regions.
Love you Julian, but I think your understanding of the philosophy of Orientalism is severely lacking. To criticize Said's work as not realizing that art doesn't have a deeper meaning implies that any of your poetic analysis in your videos would ever be legitimate. Artists can love something but it have an impact on systemic issues. Artists don't exist in a vacuum where they can paint something and nothing can be interpreted from it, it's just human to experience it in various ways. Saying "European artists found themselves inextricably attracted to the Middle East...things that didn't exist back home in Europe" is ironically exactly why it's fetishism. Fetishism isn't always intended to be bad. The -ism part of it with colonialism means that even if you love something, it can still have the bias of whatever power structure it comes from.
An example is that you can love the Middle East and paint daily life, but European artists may editorialize what they paint. Specific e.g., choosing a specific subject, removing certain people, choosing certain colors to make things look different than in reality, or adding elements to capture an idea rather than copying reality. It's not inherently wrong, and it's intrinsic to art that artists have their own style, but that still means their background, education, experience, and environment can influence what they pick and choose to create. And especially if they're trying to sell something, commodification can influence people a lot too. And your argument that maybe only consumers fetishized & not the artists also proves that artists would perhaps cater to these people. You can't remove artists from colonialism, but that doesn't mean it's only european artists. Even colonized people can internalize colonialism and perpetuate -isms against themselves. I implore you to fully read Said's work. It's reductive and unfair to claim that all he said was European art can be dismissed as racist. There's a wider meaning behind his work than just malevolence, and decolonizing is a wonderful journey - trust me!
Ps. with all that being said, I truly appreciate you bringing it up though! I didn't expect that but it's a pleasant surprise and it's an important element of fine arts, even if I disagree :P
I tire of your brand of reductive meta-analysis as if middle eastern and Asian peoples don’t also look to the west and fetishize and co-opt counter-cultures and lift them for their own commercial and and self-expressive applications, removing them from their original context. You speak of colonialism and fetishism as if it was a universal corporate policy and as if western nations are a hive-mind which disgusts me.
Who else grimaced at the utterance of the word "masonite"??
Almost as much as "staples"
Haha yes. Especially since we use it in our house when doing trim work to cover textured drywall!
@@ytfeelslikenorthkorea just googled it, even wiki ppl claim its good... :/ like shit is no better the cardboard.
I CRINGED.
I said "oh NO" out loud
pretty poor timing to drop such a reductionist and unfounded take on said’s orientalism… artists being genuinely interested and enamoured with the beauty of another culture does not mean that colonialist and objectifying beliefs aren’t reflected in their work and the way it is received.
The comment about Said is very questionable
Although many have already spoken about it in great detail, I still want to express my deep disappointment at Mr. Baumgartner's naive and simplistic view of Edward Said's theses, especially when he discards them in the name of the apparent infallibility of the artists. Honestly, it seems like the umpteenth case of a cis white person ignoring the well-founded complaints of the victims of colonial processes.
Why would you say "cis"? What does his sexuality have anything to do 18th/19th century North African and Middle Eastern art? Or are you just tuning your dog whistle so the other SJWs can upvote your social credit score because you too can repeat groupthink buzzwords!?
This may be my favourite painting that you've restored. So beautiful, subtle and full of contemplation. Truly an exceptional artist who took great care in capturing this scene originally and an exceptional conservator who has now preserved it so that it can be enjoyed for years to come!
Not familiar with Said's work, but I was disappointed to have the pushback against Orientalism dismissed so casually. I'm sure these artists did love the region and the subjects that they painted-- that doesn't preclude the work from exoticizing or fetishizing them. Unconscious bias is still bias. We can still acknowledge the beauty and craftsmanship of these paintings while acknowledging their problematic history.
As a Moroccan specifically from Tangier "The bride of the north" born and raised watching your videos for years, this was the least expected restoration ever!
Tangier has a history of attracting renowned painters and artists. The city's unique cultural blend, picturesque landscapes, and vibrant atmosphere have made it an appealing destination for artists seeking inspiration. Notable painters and artists, such as Henri Matisse and Eugène Delacroix, have been drawn to Tangier for its artistic inspiration. Additionally, American expatriate artists, like Paul Bowles and Tennessee Williams, spent time in Tangier, further contributing to the city's reputation as a hub for creative minds.
Seeing your comment after all the white guilt in the comments is like a breath of cool, fresh air.
Lovely Cosmopolitan city Tangier. It has only been an international hotspot for about 2000 to 3400 years.
@@furrymessiahhuh where 😭
@@jazzjj7665 Don't look! You'll need retouching if you see it!
@furrymessiah that's what I'm saying. Keep that woke $hit somewhere else. Lol. I'm an artist and what's truly amazing is that most artist just painted what they observed. They honestly could not have cared at all about being racist or any of that stuff. When your painting you have to focus, and you also have to love what your painting. People are just looking for an argument in the comments.
When I clicked on a video titled "Radical Nuance", I definitely didn't expect to hear such a flippant and reductive dismissal of an entire school of postcolonial criticism. Sure, you're not an art historian, you're a conservator, perhaps it's unfair to expect you be fully informed of the cultural and critical context of every piece you work on. But, as you can see from many of the comments on this and other videos, people do look to you as an educational resource. I really hope you'll consider making a follow-up digging deeper into your own defensiveness.
thanks!
Could you elaborate please? Interesting to hear you reaction and thoughts on this
As probably one of the few commenters here to have read Said's Orientalism, the treatment given to it here is ... woefully insufficient. Saying that artists "were not seeking to exploit" colonized areas and their peoples is a staggeringly simplistic claim to make as a supposed counterargument to Said, and one that betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the nuance and detail involved in an analysis like Said's. The argument presented here amounts to a willfully naïve perspective that is a significant part of what Said effectively and succinctly deconstructs by showcasing the cultural and historical context these artists existed in, the political structures they operated in tandem with, and the beliefs, norms, and cultural views that they both held and expressed. It truly doesn't matter if you believe you aren't seeking to exploit something or someone if you are willfully operating within a system that does so or even furthering that system. Naïve intention alone is not a sufficient defense. The entire "love" of these areas held by these artists was based on the Orientalist views Said eloquently describes - fetishization, Othering, exotification, and so on. Very, very few artists were sufficiently radical thinkers to actually put aside culturally engrained ideas of national and regional superiority that were entirely dominant in Western cultures at the time (as doing so is, for all intents and purposes, impossible - the cultural context of your upbringing and education is not something you can just choose to put aside).
Given the level of care, attention to detail, and nuance in your restoration work, seeing this brash, simplistic and naïve view on a pivotal work of decolonial theory is ... well, disappointing, to put it mildly. I doubt it would get a passing grade from any of my art historian colleagues.
Extremely well said!
Quite
Fantastic comment breaking it down.
Lot of arrogant assumptions packed into a single comment, based on the writings of a man that wasn’t alive to talk to any of the artists in question about their motivations. Said was a thin-skinned reductionist that treated any criticism of his work as a racist attack, while making broad and unfalsifiable claims about “systems” from a perspective and background of privilege that would have been utterly inconceivable to any of the people whose minds he was supposedly able to read.
@@DaveM86 Hm, that's certainly a take. Care to elaborate on what those assumptions are? Yes, I do assume that not many commenters have read Said, but beyond that? Also, a significant proportion of "criticism" directed towards Said _was_ racist nonsense, so treating it as such is a pretty reasonable response.
When Julian mentioned the name Gordon Coutts I thought "Why does that sound familiar?" When he mentioned Palm Springs, I went "AH!" Living in the Palm Springs area, I've heard his name and of Villa Dar Marroc many times. He's considered one of the founders of the city, and was one of a couple dozen artists who lived and worked here in the early 20th century before Palm Springs became famous as a movie colony.
Julien, I was disappointed by your dismissal of the well-known problems with European gaze being directed at non-European subjects. As someone who has faithfully watched (and will likely STILL watch) your restorations for 3 years, my hope for you is that you re-read and reconsider your conclusions about this subject.
I hope everyone yelled out Hi Kit just like I did! :) how much more stunning is that now that it's been cleaned and properly taken care of just beautiful.
I TOTALLY did!!
I was a bit perturbed, maybe jealous, when Julian first introduced his intern. Now I miss Kit! She's cool. Would love to know how she's progressing and see what she's working on!
I let out an audible groan.
@@projektkobra2247 😂😂
@@britaggies2365 I'm hoping to see a Kit exclusive video on this channel one day ^^
Stick to the art, not the analysis. You critiqued Said without providing any evidence for your argument except that “these artists were certainly not fetishing these people.” Give any evidence whatsoever if you want to have a productive conversation. “They painted with care” is not enough to support your claim.
'Glasgow' is pronounced 'Glaz-go' not 'Glass-Cow'............Apart from the mispronunciation of my home town's name, I loved this wee video, stunning painting brought back to all it's reflective subject's glory ❤
Aw man... I only got a few minutes in, but idk if I can keep watching :/ It's hard to decode this as simple naivety or ignorance, but more as a wilful misunderstanding. Did you just not read it? Might not be too keen to hear Julian's thoughts surrounding Israel's latest war crimes. When you've got such a broad audience of people who adore you, man you gotta be more responsible
that was definitely a racist reductionist opinion of said's work
Go fart in a jar.
You mean, Palestinian crimes, such as kidnapping, killing and raping young women?
I see this as a beautiful representation of what the artist saw. Artists, most often, tend to document what is seen, not the politics behind it.
@lauraw3117 as an artist, academic, and lover of art theory, I actually couldn't disagree more! Politics and art have always been deeply connected, for better and for worse. Nazism couldn't have risen like it did without mass media, and I'd argue that nothing challenged them quite like theorists and art movements at the time
I think to post this now after the massacre in Israel is tone-deaf. Not the usual Julian.
Jesus, the beginning argument is honestly unbelievable. To boil down Said’s work to “any and all statements by westerns about the Middle East as worthless and racist” removes all the nuance of his position and is a gross mischaracterization of his work. You even then call it reductive as if your “summation” of his thesis is not the very thing you accuse it off.
You then move on to talk about the intent of the artists, which you can only assume. Moreover, this romanticization of the Middle East quite literally is an issue of orientalism. And to say it’s not fetishization but reverence and respect, but then to go on and say that the artist of this painting built a Moroccan styled home that later became a HOTEL and not see that contradiction is shocking.
This intro is a failure on many fronts and is deeply disappointing. It feels as though you don’t understand Orientalism at all. The video truly would be better off without the beginning for just how deeply ignorant it is.
the way you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the comments criticising your racist opinion about Orientalism is interesting.
but if I have to comment under every comment here ill do just that.
Are you suggesting that Morocco is in the Middle East when you started talking about Orientalism? Because Morocco is in North Africa, south of Scotland where this artist came from, and south west of most of Europe. The discussion about the colonial infatuation with all things they saw as "exotic" is definitely one that needs to be had, but bundling North Africa in with the Middle East is exactly the kind of thing that they would have done. For example: the author bundled middle east and far east stereotypes together when he wrote Aladdin.
I love everything you do, and this is the first time I've seen something in one of your videos that concerned me. I know you don't mean to do any harm. Keep up the work dude.
honestly it was so disappointing to start this video and immediately get blasted with a reductive, colonialist take on edward said's incredibly important and salient work. i'm very glad other people in the comments have pointed out how harmful your POV is, and it's pretty telling that the only people getting defensive and agreeing with you are the stereotypical 'lol you triggered snowflake liberals racism isn't real you just wanna be offended' folks. fun.
i really hope you read said and other literature on cultural appropriation, orientalism, colonialism, and racism. i really REALLY hope you make a video in the future addressing your misconceptions and making it clear that you don't support oppressors and racists, because it seems like there's a group of people who love that stuff who assume you're with them. and if you are, you're not the kind of person whose work i want to support anymore.
I hadn't time to watch this video and was looking forward to it... But I was massively disappointed at the reductionist and wildly incorrect summary of Said's thesis.
That mini history lesson was painful. I’m sorry Julian. It just comes off as so reactionary, as if someone told you this painter held racist views and the idea of that made you determined to argue not just he but all western artists making “Oriental” art weren’t in fact racist, participating in a racist system or benefitting from a colonial fad. Which on its face is so broad and reductive my jaw dropped. I usually really enjoy your videos, but that section just made me cringe even with my basic art history background.
Especially coming from a white guy deciding his opinion is more correct than that of people directly affected by orientalism
Thats a good way to put it.
@@nadeen3157 Riiiiiight !!! left a similar comment because I just can't believe what I heard
Exactly! @@nadeen3157
@@nadeen3157 Is he white?
Unbelievably reductive and insulting assessment of one of the most acclaimed Palestinian academics review of western Orientalism. I’d recommend you actually read the book before you dismiss his well accepted critiques
Said’s commentary is pure racist, simplistic BS.
Came for the relaxing viewing, stayed for the hilarious passive-aggressive jabs at the previous restoration.
lol! I often imagine him in 1000 years, being reborn as restorator, swearing at his own doing! 😂
Pleasently surprised by this comment section tbh
Really gross commentary at the beginning. Really gross! Painters/artists were not racist, ever? Twain too was an artist. gmaFb!! Disappointing. Without some kind of explanation/apology in a future video about propagating this crap I won’t continue watching.
Do you mean Mark Twain? He was an anti-racist if anything. His works satirize and critique attitudes towards race at the time. He was a very outspoke anti-imperialist, and supporter of women's rights.
@@skyn3817 Despite all of these things Twain somehow managed to also be violently anti-native american. While it's safe to assume that he abandoned his literally genocidal views on them from his earlier works, he did leave some very nasty remarks on them well into his late years
I'm still shocked by an extremely reductive discussion of Said and orientalist art. It would be more responsible to be objective when showing this to first time audiences. Your work is great, but this decision was unwise
This is one of the most striking paintings I've ever seen. Among all the paintings I've seen you do, none has captured an emotion so strongly, nor light interaction so vividly, in so much detail with so few strokes. I see why so many artists fell in love with the sun in this part of the world.
I have to agree. There is something about this particular painting that makes it stand out.
Totally agree, I fell in love with this painting, wow!❤
The only time I've ever had issue with you Sir, it's Glaz-go not Glass-cow in Scotland. Wonderful video and work that is a lesson in not accepting second best. Regards from Scotland.
Also, it's Mel-bun, not Mel-borne. I grew up there.
as a moroccan i’m not sure how i feel about the portrait itself HOWEVER you slayed
Why would you object to this marvelous painting?
The subject does not seem to have been disrespected. And it’s from the 1800’s so his clothing, etc is correct.
What the hell is wrong with the painting at all, let alone to a Moroccan?
Nice painting.
Also, free Palestine.
From the rivers to the sea!!!!