“a shot of red wine down the throat” - Delacroix’s “Women of Algiers”
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Women of Algiers. Eugene Delacroix, 1836.The Louvre. Paris.
“That bastard,” Picasso said upon seeing Delacroix’s painting. “He’s really good!”
Fascinated by its vivid color and opulent eroticism, Picasso began re-interpreting it cubistically, producing 15 variations started within a month of the Nationalist uprising in Algeria in 1954, which led to the eight-year long Algerian War of Independence.
Women of Algiers. Pablo Picasso, 1955.
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Cezanne’s admiring comment comparing the red of the painting to wine referred to the kicked off slipper, probably of the woman on the far left, on the floor beside her. And Renoir owed his highly esteemed “Odalisque” to the Delacroix work (although he only visited Algeria ten years after painting it and his model was French).
Odalisque, Auguste Renoir, 1870, National Gallery of Art, Washington
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As late as 1921 French artists’ obsession with harem women persisted, with Henri Matisse’s own version.
Odalisque in Red Culottes, Henri Matisse, 1921, Musee Nationale, Centre d’Art Georges Pompidou, Paris
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“Women of Algiers” is a hallmark of the Romantic art period (and, in particular, its Orientalist sub-genre). Today it is scrutinized in light of Western imperialism and colonialism in Africa and the Middle East in the 19th and early 20th centuries. With the collapse of France’s empire in the 1960s and 1970s, cultural theorists began to discuss Orientalism in this context. In 1978, Edward Said analyzed the representation of the Eastern Other as “a mode for defining the presumed cultural inferiority of the Islamic Orient...to justify and perpetuate European dominance..”
But, of course, the French of that era didn’t see it that way. To them, the practice of requiring women to wear veils and retreat into confinement as wives or in harems, was barbaric. Their “liberation” of women in the Middle East and North Africa was a plus in their minds as they tried to justify their clearly imperialistic designs on the resources of those countries. And it was a common practice for artists, not journalists, of the day to accompany the process. They would record it, adding local color for Parisians to see and enjoy the adventure of colonialism’s march.
Delacroix was fascinated by the north African women’s exotic dress and tried to sketch them on the streets. But they fled and fetched their husbands. So Delacroix persuaded a local Sultan to arrange a visit for him to his harem. Delacroix sketched there, and later painted this scene and others in his Paris studio.
The harem woman or odalisque was a popular Orientalist theme with the sophisticated Parisians who would flock to buy Delacroix’s and other Romantic artists’ work. In 1814, the Neoclassical artist, Ingres, had painted the famous “La Grande Odalisque,” setting in motion the harem woman in lush surroundings as widely enjoyed subject material. Note the elaborate pipe on the right of the woman in this painting and the woman’s strangely altered anatomy by the artist.
La Grande Odalisque, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. 1814. Musee de Louvre. Paris.
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Feminists today have fine-tuned Said’s conclusions, and art historian Joan DelPlato looks closely at Women of Algiers, writing about the way art history has treated “the cult of the artist-genius, a figure traditionally constructed as a daring risk-taker and transgressor of social convention...a presumptuous and masculine sexual prerogative...”
It is not difficult to see why DelPlato has seen “Women of Algiers” in this way. At the outset of looking at this painting we understand that we are in a harem where there is a silent clash between the women’s opulent room and the reality of their controlling world, a contrast of luxurious fabrics, gold and pearls, with a suffusing sense of imprisonment. The partial light seems to be an allotment, a portion of what you can see and feel under open sky. An older woman holds a narghile and we cannot know what it contains.
The artist has restated the color of pomegranate in cheeks, bodice and cushion. The kicked aside slipper implies that "barefoot, you will not flee.” You sense the burning of sandalwood. The women’s eyes, dark as figs, sense loss.
The departing woman has brown-black skin; her hair is hidden by a scarf and her skirt is knotted at her belly. The tassle of a gold sash at her waist swings as she walks. She creates tension in this painting, as if to say, despite the partially opened shutters behind them, “Do not try, he will be returning.”
The older woman, turning to the younger, pauses at her pipe. Her words are breath, desiring rest, sick of love.
The women languish, awaiting the ruin of time.
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Happy New Year CTyankee 
Nice start. 
As an art idiot, I learn more from these than I've ever known. My favorite art forms are opera and physics, arguably a difficult mix.
Your Friday posts both challenge us all (the sadly retired Friday challenge) and raise our intelligence. What is amazing is that you do so as gently as you do while simultaneously relating your love for the topic.
Those things are what brings me back, over and over again.
Happy New Year, my good friend. The good deeds you do here have no measure.
And I would welcome back an occasional Friday challenge. As many here will also. Recognize that we all understand the effort that goes into such a thing.
You are a spark of light on DU. Never forget that.
My fave is music, but I love visual arts as well, although I am much less educated about them.
Bach rules! As does Mozart (Sigh! Le Nozze di Figaro!). As does Wagner. And do not criticize Rach music (Rachmaninoff) in front of me. Then, there's opera. Ho boy! Where to start, or to end.
My usual introduction to opera is Tosca which has the economy of, when all the main characters are dead, the opera ends, the last, Floria Tosca jumping off the parapet of Castle St. Angeles into the Tiber. Only a few chords remain to finish it. Her last words, "O Scarpia! Avanti a dio". (Scarpia, who Tosca murders in the second act, "I will see you before God." As she plunges to her death.) It is a stunning drama.
For lighter fare, I recommend Mozart's always great sense of humor. However, undoubtedly as in the visual arts, there is both light and heavy. I also love Alban Berg.
As always, my fondest regards to you, a DU gem. Amongst the sturm und drang here I consider you to be one of the shining lights.
"I lived for life. I lived for love."
Nobody, NOBODY wrote opera like Puccini! Hey, I was at his house in Lucca in 2006 but I couldn't go in because it was under repair. Ah, the heart breaks...
Perhaps my favorite of all of your contributions. Thank you.
I have another and a few ideas for future essays here. Thanks for dropping by and being so nice...
Saw it in the Louvre in 2011. Now THAT's Orientalism 
