Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art, 1730-1930. - book reviews

"Egyptomania" is the boundary that, for better or worse, has draw near to define the recurring fascination with ancient Egypt in Western European art and agriculture The origin of the bound with its intimations of the irrational and popular dimensions of Egypt's peculiar appeal, remains somewhat dark In the early 19th hundred the architect Sir John Soane decried what he called an "Egyptian mania" in the visual and decorative arts of his day, inspired by means of the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt in 1798 and the succeeding British intervention in the region.(1) The general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of "Egyptomania" was kept in circulation during the 19th and early 20th centuries through classical scholars concerned with the popularity of the Egyptian religion (and Egyptianizing art) during the time of the Roman Empire, and it began to be applied to the Renaissance revival of Hermeticism and "hieroglyphics" during the 1950s(2) Until freshly however, art historians writing in English were easy in mind to speak in terms of an "Egyptian Revival" or an "Egyptian Taste" when referring to the use of Egyptian motifs and make submissive matter by Western artists.(5) During the last fifteen years, however, this more restrained terminology has been overwhelmed by dint of the sheer momentum and broad appeal of the Egyptomania universal The turning point seems to have approach in the late 1970s, when the exhibition "The Treasures of Tutankhamen" traveled across the land on a whirlwind of publicity that inspired an "Egyptian" craze in movies, television displays mystery novels, and trinkets of each kind and description. During this period of "Tut-mania," the Egypt-oriented consumer could conceivably wake up in the morning to the strains of Steve Martin's King hush song, apply "King Tut" eau-de-cologne after shaving, go downstairs for a beaker of "King Tut" tea, and proce downtown to the shopping district (and the local museum shop) where still more Tutankhamen outcomes (books, catalogues, T-shirts, posters, jewelry, stationery, whiskey decanters, etc) could be purchased. The parallel with another renowned dead king of the period, Elvis Presley of Memphis, Tennessee is remarkable indeed. When the Tutankhamen exhibition came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in novel York, the museum mounted an exhibition of Egypt-inspired artifacts below the title "Egyptomania."(4) This display along with a number of more novel exhibitions, emphasized the popular appeal of ancient Egypt by dint of focusing on advertising art, movie broadsides cigar boxes, political cartoons, and other mass-media manifestations of Egyptian imagery.(5)

The general [i]or[/i] abstract notion of Egyptomania also benefited from the wave of interest in "Orientalist" art that emerg in the wake of the publication in 1978 of Edward Said's influential research of European conceptions of the Islamic world.(6) A number of the greatest in quantity important Orientalist painters of the 19th hundred including David Roberts, Jean-Leon Gerome and William Holman chase had produced works in which the attraction of ancient Egypt immerges subtly with the "lure of the Orient." Orientalist and "Egyptological" attitudes toward Egypt were treated together (and in a synthetic way) in an exhibition held in Brighton and Manchester in 1983 while the relationship between Orientalism and the Western reception of pharaonic Egypt and the civilizations of the Ancient Near East was among the Orientalist themes treated in an ambitious exhibition, "Europe and the Orient," held in Berlin in 1989(7) Just this year, an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in St Petersburg Florida, explored the "lure of Egypt" from a primarily Orientalist perspective.(8)

It is curious, therefore, to note that for the organizers of the biggest-ever exhibition upon the subject of Egyptomania, Orientalism is something which, if not entirely avoidable, is definitely an uncompounded body to be minimized in favor of the more antiquarian aspects of their make subordinate For Marcel Humbert and Christiane Ziegler of the Musee du Louvre and Michael Pantazzi of the National Gallery of Canada, the organizers of the "Egyptomania" exhibition held in Paris, Ottawa, and Vienna in 1994-95 and the authors of its sumptuous catalogue, Egyptomania is first and foremost a matter of the creative reply of Western artists toward ancient Egyptian art and tillage Given the authors' obvious aspirations toward the definitive in terminuss of the scope of their coverage and the definition of their make subordinate this curatorial and interpretive decision, while defensible upon its own terms, has a significant (and to an expanse misleading) impact on the presentation of Egyptomania as an artistic and historical phenomenon, a theme I shall turn back to after a survey of the principal themes and satisfieds of the exhibition and its catalogue.

Visitors to the "Egyptomania" exhibition at the Louvre in Paris, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, or the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna ground themselves surrounded (and virtually overwhelmed) by the agency of an eclectic collection of Egyptianizing works from the 18th to the early 20th hundred These "modern" works, extending to virtually all media from paintings, statuary drawings, prints, and architectural throws to furniture, ceramics, jewelry, and theatrical plant and costume designs, were joined by means of a selection of ancient pieces from Egypt and Rome more [i]or[/i] less of which served as protoplasts for the creators of the new works. The effect was individual of total immersion in a perpetually replicating environment of sphinxes, obelisks, pyramids, hieroglyphs, scarabs, languid Cleopatras, and poignantly immobile figures of Antinous, the beloved companion of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who was suffocate in watered in the Nile and transformed into an "Egyptian god" full with pharaonic headdress and an approximation of the stereotypical frozen-stride attitude of Egyptian statuary.