5.2 Going Primitive: The American West, Opening of Japan, Colonial Capitals, Oriental Odalisque

Question 1

Answer 1

Edward S. Curtis, The Vanishing Race (1904)

Question 2

Answer 2

Jean Auguste Dominque Ingres, The Turkish Bath (1862)

Question 3

Answer 3

Paul Gauguin, Spirit of the Dead Keeps Watch (1862)

Question 4

Primitivism

Answer 4

1. Primitivism: A western art movement that borrows from tribal or non-European cultures, assigning to them an authenticity or elemental nature perceived to be missing from modern European culture. It arose partly as a result the influx of art objects arriving from other continents through the newly opened trade routes. In rebellion against the European art academies, which saw non-European cultural production as “not-art”, Primitivists were interested in the different methods of perception and representation evident in the Chinese, Japanese and tribal works. They viewed these other cultural products as being more expressive, and more representative of human spirituality. They also looked to art made by children, which they viewed as being closer to the unmediated emotional truth of art. Paul Gaugin’s Manaotupapu (Spirit of the Dead Watching) (1892), is an example of the artist’s pursuit of a more spiritually truthful style.

Question 5

Odalisque

Answer 5

2. Odalisque: A member of a harem, or a concubine, the odalisque was a favorite subject of renaissance painters. These are products of the male western imagination of ‘oriental’ culture, in which female concubines lay about waiting to be called upon by men. Ingres’ Grand Odalisque (1814) is typical.

Question 6

How were Native Americans depicted in the ninetheenth-century in photographs and film? How did this finluence the political agenda?

Answer 6

dignified, or noble than they had been represented in the past decades. For example, William Henry Jackson, who travelled west with the U.S. Geological Survey in the 1860s, made thousands of photographs of native people dressed up in their finest clothing. These images, many of which were circulated in books and newspapers, humanized their subjects, an important counterpoint to their portrayal as savages throughout the period of the Indian Wars, the U.S. Government campaign to extricate indigenous people from their lands. It should be pointed out, however that that Jackson’s photos of the vast, seemingly unpeopled western landscape only added to the removal of indigenous people from their lands, when great swaths their territory were designated as National Parks. Timothy O’Sullivan also made images of indigenous people in their daily lives, such as in his 1873 photo, Canyon de Chelly. While these, and other films and photos, such as those made by Edward Curtis, are useful from a documentary standpoint, the photographers were not beyond manipulating the scenes they photographed for dramatic effect, or according to tropes of “indianness”. For example, in his 1903 photo of Chief Joseph, Curtis posed the Nez Perce chief wearing a Plains Indian style headdress.