That’s actually closer to what I meant by “message”. The message conveyed by a work of art should be an emotional response of some sort.
And it’s fine for a work of art to depend on some context so long as, first, that context is known to the intended audience, and second, that the art connects somehow to the context. The catalog is trying to claim that this piece connects to odalisques, but the essential thing that makes an odalisque what it is, the harem setting, is missing in this piece. Maybe the naked woman is in a harem, imprisoned by the “cage of flesh”, but maybe she’s just getting out of the shower in the privacy of her own home-- The art doesn’t say. It’d be like if Rockwell had painted The Problem We All Live With, and just shown the little black girl walking against a blank background, without the National Guard escorts around her. It doesn’t work.
Well, I disagree with that, too. There is absolutely a space for the intellect in the arts, as well as emotions.
Actually, I think a picture of a young black child, alone against a blank wall, entitled “The Problem We All Live With,” communicates a much, much more viscerally strong message than the actual painting Rockwell did. A repulsive message, one that’s diametrically opposed to the message of the actual painting, but a potent message none-the-less.
Anyway, getting back to the painting. Does it suggest, on its own, an odalisque? Hard for me to say, given that I’d never heard the term before today. But Googling the term, and checking out some of the other paintings mentioned in that blurb… yeah, I can kind of see it. There’s a sort of languid eroticism in these sorts of pictures that I can see echoed in the painting. Googling Taner Ceylon’s paintings, I can see a lot of paintings where the Eastern imagery is a lot more obvious. Lots of self-portraits of him in a fez, for example. (Also, lots of self-portraits of him having graphic gay sex, so probably best not to do your research on this from your work PC.) Knowing that he likes to incorporate eastern imagery into his paintings, and knowing that if there’s going to be a nude in his paintings, it’s almost always going to be a guy, and being familiar with this particular historical subgenre of paintings, I don’t think it’s a huge stretch for someone familiar with both his body of work, and his influences as an artist, to make the leap to this painting being a commentary on odalisques.
But the art does say, or at least imply, the setting. Miller and Prof. Pepperwinkle both highlight some of the important aspects of the art - depicting the figure as a nude torso rather than a whole woman is a reference to the sexualization of women, and her hair covering the face recalls a veil. The piece’s title refers to both imprisonment and sexuality, reinforcing those references. It’s easy to miss, but the piece does offer some context.
I like it, and I’d like to see it in person - I’d really like to see how the texture of the oils works with the photorealistic depiction.
I interpret it to show that a woman is “incomplete.” She isn’t a full member of human society, but dependent upon her body for admission to that society.
A picture of someone in a wheelchair could be used to say something similar.
Shrug: everyone interprets what they see, at least in part, for themselves. Without an audience, there is no art.
The quoted analysis reminded me a bit of very overblown wine-connoisseur writing. “A piquant and daring nose drives the arrogance of this challenging and haunting offering from the vineyards, combining the engineering texture of a high-revolution engine with the bravado of a savage cockerel fight.” Uh… Huh?
By the same token, though, I could also take a message out of the piece linked in the OP that’s diametrically opposed to the one described in the catalog. Maybe the artist is saying that the only really important parts of the female body are the genitals and legs, and that the upper half of the woman, including the head and arms, are just a useless cage that restrains the important parts (and the artist himself). Is there any reason that interpretation is any less valid?
A couple of posters have said that odalisque paintings are middle eastern in origin and part of the culture there, but they aren’t. Read the wiki article they were european in origin and were a kind of fantasy of what people thought the middle east was like(I think it was just an excuse to hang up a naked chick and look cultured and worldly while doing it.)
I have to assume the average middle easterner would be just as baffled, or even more trying to divine artist intent without the text explanation.
It reminds me of similar fads in euro art for Chinese royal court scenes and Egyptian stuff, neither was based in the culture in question.
I don’t think anyone said that. What’s being said is that if you’re from the Middle East you are more likely to be sensitive to depictions of Middle Eastern cultures – especially mistaken ones. I assume that if you’re from Texas you’re more likely to be sensitive to redneck stereotypes.
I unfortunately read the description before seeing the painting so I can’t say if I would have been able to pick up on the odalisque reference on my own, but once it’s been pointed out I can see it.
Yes, you could do that, but do you really believe it?
When you say that art should or must evoke emotions you’re essentially stating your personal tastes. There’s nothing wrong with that but if other people enjoy art differently why deny them their pleasure? What is so objectionable about people who like to use a painting as a starting point for a discussion?
I’m not sure how that’s the same token. I just described how the meaning of a painting would change if you remove two-thirds of the significant imagery. You’re talking about drawing contradictory messages from the same painting without changing any of its elements at all.
That being said, I don’t believe there’s such a thing as an invalid interpretation of a work of art. If that’s what you really get out of the painting, then that’s what you’re getting out of the painting.
Miller: True that! I once wrote a story about cats and dogs. A reader wrote to tell me how the story was obviously a metaphor about blacks and whites in U.S. society. I never intended it that way…but he isn’t wrong!
Obviously, there is a kind of “fuzzy set” sense to this. There will be some goose-eyed ninnies who will see sex in everything; every picture will be dirty to them. But somewhere beyond the very center of the “ostensible” interpretation will be alternative interpretations, perhaps a little inventive, perhaps based a little on projection. They have validity.
Probably, but we’re not talking about the average middle easterner, we’re talking about a professional artist who has attained a significant degree of success in a specifically western art form. Given that background, he’s likely more sensitive to the history of how his culture was portrayed in the field he’s pursuing.
Also, while ethnically Turkish, Taner Ceylan was born in Germany.
Fair enough, I misinterpreted comments on someone with a middle eastern cultural background being more likely to recognize a connection with odalisque paintings as suggesting it is part of ME culture.
In any case I do like the painting(but using google image search you can find a HIGH resolution scan where the fingernails are…odd) it was only the commentary I found absurd. Whatever else it does I don’t find it really comments in any real way on orientalist or odalisque painting fetishistic art etc. And in fact the body type of the woman doesn’t even resemble the plump type in the art it is criticizing.
What is the point of the piece? That odalisques in reality were sex slaves with lives as virtual prisoners? That the original paintings were classic male gaze objectification? That is so self evident but it doesn’t even really make an effort.
The point is what you get out of it. I’m sure the artist was aiming for something, but you don’t have to relate to it in the same way. You say you like it. Why? That’s your answer.
If you can look at a piece and see different things, that’s usually a good thing. Art is one of the few fields where ambiguity is a desirable. If you want clarity you should do math or science.
Someone with a background in art history can look at this painting and see parallels with 19th century orientalist paintings. They’ll likely do so because they’re “primed.” They see a somewhat erotic nude and it reminds them of all the (many) other erotic nudes paintings they’ve seen. They know that at least since the 19th century, artists have been fond of turning old ideas around, so they’re going to look for hints of something like that happening.
However, you might have been primed differently. Maybe you can see something in there that the art historians cannot see.
It doesn’t have to be just about odalisques in 19th century art. It can also be about gender and cultural perceptions in the present day. Or whatever you genuinely read into it.
Exactly. You can have your own relationship to an art work.
I have a print of *La Cellule D’Or*on my wall. I really like it for the colours etc, but another thing that I like is that Tolstoy hated it, and saw it as an example of all that was wrong with modern art. It hangs opposite the shelf of Russian literature, partially because it looks nice there and partially because I, personally, find it funny that Tolstoy must look out on this painting from my bookcase forever more. Nobody visiting would see that. Nobody would ever know. It obviously was not Redon’s intention. It’s just me: I like it. So for me that painting is different and has different meanings than for other people. (Fuck you, Tolstoy! And your little dog, too! :D)
Regarding the “getting of” or the “gettability” of an art work: I have to walk through a shopping mall every day to get to uni. For a while there was a sort of art exhibition with pieces all around. My favourite was a life-size, realistic statue of Tank Man, standing against (apparently) the mall itself, instead of the tanks in Tianamen Square. He was so real and close you could see the veins in his hands. He had no sign, and every day as I stopped there to admire him, I would hear people make derisive comments about “modern” art (contemporary, but they usually called it modern art).
One day I decided to explain it to a group of teenagers who were saying: “well it’s clever that he looks so real, I guess, but really, what the fuck?!” I explained about the photo, what the photo means to people and how you could think about what he might be “standing against” in a shopping mall with no tanks. I could tell it really appealed to their teenage anti-establishment sensibilities, and they immediately looked up the picture on their phones and decided the statue was “really cool”.
After that I ended up explaining to other people who didn’t understand occasionally. Every time I did, they ended up really liking the piece. Going by the criteria that “everybody” should just immediately understand something would really lower the standards for everything. For one thing, they would never learn about the original Tank Man picture, and then they would never understand the power in standing right next to him in a shopping mall. That’s just sad.
I have passing familiarity with European-viewpoint Orientalism, mostly from the literary perspective but I’m not unacquainted with the art.
This image does nothing - at all - to make me think of Oriental influences. I’d like to see three or four supposed precursor or influential works to give the description credence… otherwise I still call it pretentious smoke-blowing.
I didn’t need to change any of its elements, because the original artist had already removed most of the significant imagery. It’s his fault for not putting it in, not mine for not inferring it.
And jovan, I say that art should convey emotion because that’s what art is. Of course it can stimulate discussion, too: There’s no conflict in something doing both. But if something doesn’t convey emotion, then it’s not art, it’s something else. It might, perhaps even be a very good something else (a diagram, perhaps). But things don’t get to be art just because their creator (or even finder) says they are, because if that’s what “art” is, then the entire concept is worthless.
Without the background I’ve learned reading the thread, I can still see a “Cage of Flesh” in the painting. I see the tension in her arms and hands, the way she’s pulling her hair up; one could see that as a moment of ecstasy. but then one sees she’s missing half her body and her hands look so angry. I see someone fighting and trying to break out of something.
I do appreciate the comments made, however, because now I can understand the reference to veils and other background discussed.
It’s nice to be able to understand a work at first look, but I enjoy getting to understand on a deeper level over time as I learn more. To me a work that could be interpreted and fully understood in five minutes is shallow and not worth any more of my time.
By the way, gracer, thank you for that look of the Tank Man statue. It’s beautiful.
No it’s not. Art is a thing where the process of engagement is more important than the outcome of engagement.
Looking at this painting in isolation and trying to judge whether it succeeds or fails is pointless. Taner Ceylan, the guy who painted it, is working within a particular critical community. It’s part of a conversation. It plays off his earlier works, and his deliberate (I assume) appropriation of an older European style of painting. Orientalism was about the eastern “other” and here’s someone who technically IS the eastern “other” using Orientalism as a self-conscious mirror. It’s a very subtle and nuanced space he’s navigating – or rather that I’m guessing he’s navigating since I’m as much an outsider to his critical community as everyone else in this thread.
Judging the work in isolation is like trying to critique a game of soccer when you don’t know any of the rules:
“Well, the running around is very vigorous … it’s lively … it’s like a festival celebrating life … and they’re all dressed in shorts … which reminds me of how children dress … so its a celebration of … immaturity, maybe? Well, that’s how it interpret it anyway … .”
argument for Sufism?
To me a work that could be interpreted and fully understood in five minutes is shallow and not worth any more of my time.