Orientalism (Art History)

"The Russian Gérôme" – thus was Vereshchagin dubbed by English critics in 1872 and the comparison was repeatedly to be made by contemporaries. This article looks at where the two artists really do reveal similarities and at the deep-rooted differences in their presentation of the Orient, with an emphasis on Vereshchagin’s first large work, his Turkestan series. Although Vereshchagin also took up Oriental subjects later in his career, in this author’s opinion the Turkestan series represents the most fruitful attempt to master the French model of Orientalising painting, above all that of Gérôme, not only in his own oeuvre but in Russian nineteenth-century art as a whole. As such, it provides us with ideal material to assess the individual and national features of Vereshchagin’s Orientalism.

The critical and fictional oeuvre of Théophile Gautier offers one of the most nuanced accounts of the idiosyncratic character of French Romanticism. In this paper, I explore Gautier's layered description of the artist's interiority during the Romantic period. In his necrology of the Orientalist painter Prosper Marilhat, Gautier continues his interest in a concept learned from Goethe: the "microcosm." He portrays Marilhat's microcosm through the interweaving of two images of interiors decorated with paintings - one, the expected image of the artist's studio, and two, the less expected image of a dilapidated Rococo interior painted in fresco by nineteenth-century artists and writers.

This article analyzes the representations of non-white identities in an HBO's fantasy show "Game of Thrones" (GOT). By specifically focusing on hegemonic relations between white characters and characters of color, the research scrutinizes the rhetorical strategies through which non-whiteness is enacted in relation to white "natives" of the "Westeros." Authors show that the GOT employs orientalist discourse in constructing the world of Westeros and contrasts it with the exotic lands of Essos. Westeros is rich, white and located in the western hemisphere, while Essos is a scorched and mysterious land located in the East. By associating the show's major characters with Westeros and the casting of white actors, viewers are encouraged to identify with their complex struggles and to embrace their intricate characterizations. On the other hand, Essos' characters of color typically include marginalized characters such as slaves, servants, and pirate...

This article analyzes the representations of non-white identities in an HBO’s fantasy show “Game of Thrones” (GOT). By specifically focusing on hegemonic relations between white characters and characters of color, the research scrutinizes the rhetorical strategies through which non-whiteness is enacted in relation to white “natives” of the “Westeros.” Authors show that the GOT employs orientalist discourse in constructing the world of Westeros and contrasts it with the exotic lands of Essos. Westeros is rich, white and located in the western hemisphere, while Essos is a scorched and mysterious land located in the East. By associating the show’s major characters with Westeros and the casting of white actors, viewers are encouraged to identify with their complex struggles and to embrace their intricate characterizations. On the other hand, Essos’ characters of color typically include marginalized characters such as slaves, servants, and pirates. Their story arcs are glazed over and their characterization serves not to enhance the narrative but to emphasize the uniqueness of a superior cultural entity, i.e. Westeros. The essay discusses the implications in which GOT perpetuates long-established relations in a re-imagined system of power, which its writers and audiences have identified as female progressive and noted for its narrative complexity.

Maqolada O'zbekiston davlat san'at muzeyining "O'zbekiston kulolchiligi" kollektsiyasini tartibga keltirish, zahira ishlarining o'ziga xoz jihatlari o'rganilgan. Avtor o'zining shaxsiy ish tajribasidan kelib chiqqan xolda, ayrim tavsiyalarini beradi

"Alberto Pasini, un orientalista italiano al Salon" in Pasini e l'Oriente. Luci e colori di terre lontane, exh. cat. Parma, Fondazione Magnani-Rocca, March 17 - July 1 2018, Paolo Serafini & Stefano Roffi (ed.), Milan, Silvana Editoriale, 2018, p. 43-49

The 19th century fascination with culture and art of the Orient was revealed not only in painting and literature but also in interior design. Among oriental decorations one can single out a few style tendencies, with Moorish style inspired with art of Islamic countries as one of them. Fashion for this style affected both royal residences, public edifices and bourgeois apartments. Moorish style was applied in decoration of theatres, circuses, concert halls, casinos, restaurants, cafes, baths, swimming pools, and brothels as well. In private interiors oriental decoration was used in living rooms, billiard parlours, smoking rooms and bathrooms. Collector’s houses and artists’ ateliers too were arranged following Moorish mode. In the 19th century Moorish style was associated with ease, leisure and entertainment originated in Eastern countries; it also expressed fascinations, sentiments and memories of the Orient. Eastern ornaments encouraged irregular, asymmetric, bizarre and surprising arrangements, and combinations of various materials and colors. Interiors decorated this way created atmosphere of extraordinariness and wealth, and surrounded their owners with the impression of mystery or prestige.

One of the most famous antique carpets, the Dragon and Phoenix rug now in Berlin: Museum fur Islamische Kunst, inventory # I. 4, has been unconvincingly and vaguely attributed to the 15th century as the work of Qaraqoyunlu Turkmen Dynasty.  This is in part due to late 19th and early 20th German scholarship that assumed rugs from the Near East were automatically the work of Islamic craftsmen and women, particularly Turkmen and later Ottoman, but with no precise documentation.  This general undocumented supposition also applied to Oriental carpets depicted in hundreds of Renaissance Italian paintings, although all of them are presented in a Christian context, particular associated with the Virgin Mary.  The author presents firm documentation involving both historical but especially earlier iconographical examples of the dragon-phoenix motif in Armenian art of the late 13th century, borrowed directly from the source of this coupling of animals, China during the Yuan Mongol Dynasty.  He suggests that its most convincing provenance is Armenia perhaps as early as the 14th century.

If one wants to summarize in one brief sentence three centuries of Egyptian radiation throughout the Middle East and Northeastern Africa, the following is quite sufficient:

A permanent strife between two priesthoods for prevalence and authenticity.

The two opposite priesthoods permeated the temples' personnel, the court, the administration, the army and the society. They viewed their rightful rejection of one another in terms of human authenticity and orientation. Their views were diametrically opposed, and each of them considered their perception of the world as the only reflecting the purpose of the Creation, and of the existence of the Mankind.

This spiritual – religious – intellectual – ideological clash did characterize other countries as well; Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Canaan and other parts of the Middle East and the world have become the theater of similar debates and strives. In Egypt and Kush / Ethiopia, we identify the beginning of the opposition in the 4th millennium BCE.

It all reflects an opposition between a monotheistic approach to the perception and description of the Divine and a polytheistic system that highly personalizes the aspects of the Divine, and favours the use of pictorial representation of the Divine. The monotheists are virtually aniconic, which means they reject / oppose the use of icons, idols, statues and bas-reliefs. Polytheism and idolatry are identical.
First published on 19th March 2010 in AfroArticles, Buzzle and American Chronicle
Republished in the portal of Oromo parliamentarians:
https://www.oromoparliamentarians.org/English/Facts%20about%20Oromo/Oromo%20Kushatic%20nation-Egypt.htm

In several previous articles, I examined the parallel characteristics of the fake colonial states of Sudan (real Ethiopia) and Abyssinia (fake Ethiopia) that have been the end result of the Freemasonic Orientalist fallacies of Pan-Arabism and Ethiopianism.

In this article, I will examine a bogus-historical term that has been constructed by the Freemasonic Orientalist ateliers and academia of France and England to further spread confusion in the wider region, and – more importantly – consolidate the two fallacies in the area, namely the pseudo-doctrines of Pan-Arabism and Ethiopianism: Nubia.
First published in:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/143394

Republished here:
http://www.oromoparliamentarians.org/English/Facts%20about%20Oromo/Ethiopia%20Kushati%20land.htm
and
http://www.egyptsearch.com/forums/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=006830;p=1

The article focuses on the drawings and oleography of Ferdinand Quiquerez titled Crossing the Sava River at Brod (1878/79), a visual metaphor of the Austro-Hungarian occupation (and administration) of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The composition shows the citizens of various religions and confessions in Bosanski Brod, festively awaiting Josip Filipović, commander of the Austro-Hungarian army, in the afternoon hours of July 29, 1878, the day when the occupation began. Even though Quiquerez’s composition has been considered as construed and untruthful, a figment of his imagination rather than a depiction of the actual event, a report of a correspondent of the official gazette Narodne novine shows that this is not the case. Wishing to eternalize the occupation of Bosnia, Quiquerez did not focus on the warfare between the Austro-Hungarian troops and the Muslim population of Bosnia and Herzegovina, like the illustrators working for the European (especially German and Austrian) magazines of the time. He did not choose as his motive the heroism of Austro-Hungarian soldiers or the cruelty of Bosnian-Herzegovinian rebels, but decided to show how the Austro-Hungarian army, after three years of bloody uprising against the Ottoman Empire, brought peace and concord between the three religious groups living there, and eventually the European, Western civilization. Even though treating the Bosnian people as the Others with regard to the Austro-Hungarian army, and even though stereotyping and exoticizing them, he also showed sympathy for them and emphasized the need of unity. The oleography made after Quiquerez’s work was published by Bothe in Zagreb. Its publication should be seen in the context of military propaganda, which was omnipresent at the time: it celebrated the victories of the Austro-Hungarian army as a rare institution that remained common to the entire monarchy after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. It also celebrated General Josip Filipović, who came to be considered as a sort of Austro-Hungarian national hero for his successful occupation.

Članak govori o crtežima i oleografiji Ferdinanda Quiquereza Prijelaz Save kod Broda, nastalima 1878. – 1879. godine, koji predstavljaju vizualnu metaforu Austro-ugarske okupacije (i uprave) Bosne i Hercegovine. Kompozicija prikazuje kako građani Bosanskog Broda svih vjeroispovijesti svečano dočekuju u popodnevnim satima 29. srpnja 1878., na dan kada je počela okupacija, zapovjednika austrougarskih trupa Josipa Filipovića. Iako se pretpostavljalo kako je Quiquerezova kompozicija konstruirani nevjerodostojan prikaz, proizašao iz slikareve mašte, a ne stvarnog događaja, izvještaj dopisnika zagrebačkog službenog dnevnika Narodnih novina, odaje nam da to ipak nije slučaj. Odlučivši ovjekovječiti zauzimanje Bosne Quiquerez se ne usredotočuje, poput ilustratora koji su radili za onovremene europske (ponajprije njemačke i austrijske) ilustrirane časopise, na borbe između austrougarskih trupa i muslimanskog dijela stanovništva Bosne i Hercegovine, ne odabire za svoju temu junaštvo austrougarskih vojnika, niti svirepost bosanskohercegovačkih ustanika, već odlučuje prikazati kako nakon tri godine krvavog ustanka protiv osmanske države Austro-Ugarska nosi Bosni mir, slogu između triju glavnih konfesionalnih skupina koje u njoj obitavaju te, konačno, zapadnu, europsku civilizaciju. Iako tretira bosansko stanovništvo kao Druge, u odnosu na austrougarske trupe, iako ih donekle stereotipizira i egzotizira, nesumnjivo s njime i simpatizira, te naglašava važnost njihova zajedništva. Oleografiju je prema Quiquerezovu djelu izdao zagrebački izdavač Bothe. Njezino izdavanje treba promatrati u kontekstu u to vrijeme široko raširene vojne propagande. Djelo je veličalo uspjehe austrougarske vojske, jedne od rijetkih institucija koja je i nakon Austro-ugarske nagodbe bila zajednička za cijelu Monarhiju. Veličalo je i generala Josipa Filipovića koji će postati svojevrsnim autrougarskim narodnim junakom zbog uspješno provedene okupacije.

This paper aims at exploring the hegemonic colonial discourse Orientalist paintings bestow. It provides a re-reading of these western paintings employing a post-colonial approach, mainly they theory of Orientalism in which the Palestinian-American literary critic Edward W. Said has established. The project puts these paintings under harsh criticisms; subverting the colonial agendas they manifest and challenging accepted norms and aesthetic values in which they carry. Thus, based on counter-narratives that debunk the authenticity of orientalist artistry, this research paper calls for a re-evaluation of the representation of the exotic other in western paintings.

Since the capability for Europe to travel abroad for trade and exploration, East Asia has served as inspiration for Western art. From Claude Monet’s La Japonaise to films like Broken Blossoms and Madama Butterfly, the allure of the “Fast East Orient” and their people and culture have been inspired Caucasian Europeans and eventually Caucasian Americans to create their own fantasies of the Far East. This is not to say though, that all depictions have been culturally accurate and respectful. Subsequently, this has also lead to the people of those countries represented, and their cultural values, practices, and of course, their men, to also face judgment and oftentimes caricaturization. Specifically in the United States of America, this has lead to the development of stereotypes of Asian American masculinity that often times damage and culturally emasculate Asian men.

Thought my research, I will be analyzing East Asian American masculinity portrayed in first-European, then spanning into modern and contemporary American media starting from the early 20th century, and observing how their portrayal and physicality directly conveys the Western attitude towards East Asian American men.

At the end, I will provide a conclusion of where Asian masculinity in America stands in 2019, and the continued obstacles that Asian American masculine identity faces now.

Due the end of the 19th century, exotic idea of East that the Western has, ranked among fictional compositions which was formed by eastern style figures, accessories and the art of painting. Our ‘‘The reflections of Ottoman Tiles in Orientalist Paintings and Comparisons with Originals’’ work proves the effect of Ottoman in these compositions.
As the post-graduate thesis should be limited, the evaluation has been done with only fifty paintings. In this evaluation, the question that is answered is whether the artists painted these pictures by considering social-economic reasons or they were concerned about esthetical design.
While choosing these artists in the catalogue, it has been considered that if the artist is well-known in Orientalism, if he/she shows tile decoration in the painting and if she/he had ever visited the Ottoman lands before.
The constructions which included the Ottoman tiles in chosen paintings have been defined, the tiles have been compared in terms of technique, design and composition with the original ones and according to the data, the tiles have been evaluated in terms of authenticity.

This presentation suggests that this design carried a series of religious meanings when employed within an Islamic context. That the "zigzag" design was "read" in the literal sense, in the combination of the written Arabic numbers 7 and 8 joined together. These, when added together total 15, with these two numbers summed, thereby a repeat design read as representing the repetition of the number 6. The number 6 representing the letter wav meaning "and", as in "and Allah"; and, as also representing the sum of the total number of Sura in the Holy Quran, 1+1+4=6. The repeat of the number 6 being read as both representing and repeating the numerical equivalent of the Name Allah, 66, visually read as zikr, wav=6 +Allah (66), as also reminding of the traditional total number of letters forming the Holy Quran, 6,666. Further, there is the association of this design with light, as it has been employed to represent the reflection of sunlight from the surface of water, as also employed to represent the reflection of light from a polished mirror, as also a design on candlesticks, thereby reminding of the relationship between sun and sunlight and The Light of the Almighty, employed by the designers-nakkaş as a sign, to remind in this temporal world of the nur illahi, of the Light of the Almighty. Hence the use of this design on the Kaba kiswah, on minarets, as on flags and tombs as on tomb coverings etc.

ÖZET Bu bildiri "zikzak" motifinin İslami bağlamda kullanıldığında bir seri dini anlam taşıdığını önermektedir. Motif "metin" olarak okunduğunda Arap rakamları olan 7 ve 8'in birleşiminden oluşur. Bu sayılar toplandığında 15=6 sayısını verir ki Arapça 6 sayısını gösteren şekil aynı zamanda "ve" anlamına gelen "wav" harfinin de şeklidir. "Wav" "ve Allah" olarak okunabileceği gibi, aynı zamanda Kur' an' daki surelerin sayısının da toplamına da işaret eder (1+1+4=6). Allah'ın adının rakamsal ve görsel tekrarı olarak kabul edildiğinde zikzak motifi (wav Allah=66) zikir olarak okunabileceği gibi sayısal olarak tekrarı da Kur' an'ı oluşturan harflerin toplamını (6666) betimliyor olabilir. Öte yandan, zikzak motifinin su yüzeyinden ya da aynadan yansıyan ışığa benzerliğinden yola çıkarak ışıkla bağlantısı da kurulabilir, ki motif şamdanlarda sıklıkla kullanılmıştır. Güneş ile Allah'ın ışığı bağlantısından yola çıkarak, motifin nakkaşlar tarafından geçici dünyada Nur'u İllahi'yi sembolize etmek üzere tercih edildiği önerilebilir. Bu okuma ile desenin Kabe Örtüsünde, minarelerde, sancaklarda ve mezar örtüleri gibi dini bağlamlarda kullanılması açıklanabilir.

Among the most interesting episodes in art history of the late 19th
century Osijek is undoubtedly the sculpture of mythological Hindu
queen Sakuntala (Shakuntala), placed in 1892 in Le Maitre park in
Osijek, which at the time was situated in an undeveloped area of
the city between the Capuchin street to the west, the Fortress to the
east, the Jäger street to the south and the Drava River to the north,
but which soon became one of the most important urban parks /
squares in the city. The legend of Queen Sakuntala was dramatized
in 4th or 5th century AD, by one of the greatest Indian writers, Kalidasa. The legend has since become one of the common places of Indian cultural history. The English translation introduced the story
into European art in the late 18th and 19th century and Sakuntala
became the character of numerous literary works, operas, paintings
and sculpture.
The reasons for selecting Sakuntala as the topic for public
sculpture in Osijek undoubtedly lie in the complex circumstances of
ethno-religious settings and fluttering political arena of the city. In
the late 19th century Osijek was, in fact, a highly multinational, multiconfessional city with a high proportion of German, Hungarian
and Jewish population. The city never accomplished the ambition to
become the capital of Slavonia (Landeshauptstadt), and not only the
capital of one of Croatian counties. The city government of that period regularly sided with the Khuen regime in Zagreb, trying to take
advantage of the economic power to strengthen Osijek’s political position, which suited Khuen’s policy because conflicts within Croatian
political scene helped him control the land. Under such circumstances, memorials and parks dedicated to prominent individuals
from any of the ethno-religious groups would provoke the opposition
from other groups and so the choice fell on the Indian queen who
represented a sufficiently universal theme from the Far East mythology that nobody could object to. Finally, a copy was purchased of
the work of the Berlin sculptor Gottwald Kuhse (originally created
in 1881), made in terracotta by the factory Ernst March'Söhne,
Thonwaarenfabrik from Charlottenburg / Berlin in 1892.
It is not easy to establish the immediate cause for placing the
statue in one of the city’s parks, or why it was exactly Sakuntala
that was selected. The key role in ordering the sculpture was played
by teacher Bogdan Penjić the Older and City Captain Peter (Peter)
von Modesti, in charge of communal parks. It is hard to tell what
inspired them, but it could be one of the performances of Kalidas’
play or one of the operas. Peter Modesti, who had an important role
in the cultural life of his city at the time as head of the Society for
the Embellishment of Osijek, probably played a more prominent role
in the initiative. In Croatian art history he is better known as the
uncle of Bela Csikos Sessija, who played an important role in guiding
his nephew to painting.

This article explores the use of photographs in Moritz Levy’s book dedicated to the history of Sephardic Jews in Bosnia, published in Sarajevo in 1911. While the photographs accompany the historical narrative and aim to prove the preservation and continuity of the unique Bosnian Sephardic identity throughout the centuries, they were, as the article argues, distinctly modern creation. Visually prominent and imbued with an aestheticized quality, they relied on Ottoman official albums of promotional photography, Austro-Hungarian orientalized images of occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the new Jewish art.
As a result of this novelty, Levy’s book became a model for the way in which later Yugoslav Jewish publications presented Bosnian Sephardim. Due to the turbulent historical events in the region these images became politicized, assumed a memorial role, and have also recently inspired a renewal.

This article analyses one aspect of the early historiography of Eastern carpets: namely, how carpets from Persia were acquired, studied and presented in the context of late nineteenth-century British responses to the Orient and industrialization both in Europe and Persia. The discussion centres on the scholarly output and the collecting activities of the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) – an institution that emerged within a landscape of orientalism, capitalist-imperialism, design reform and exhibitionary spectacle. By examining the works of key figures connected to the museum, such as Owen Jones, George Birdwood, Robert Murdoch Smith and William Morris, the present study discusses how the Victorian art establishment shaped discussions on taste, authenticity, taxonomy and commodification. It argues that such activities have helped to entrench a hierarchical and evolutionary understanding of ‘Oriental’ carpets that privileges imperial Safavid specimens over market-led Qajar and machine-made British examples.

This paper sets out an ambitious critique of contemporary political scientists, political historians and others concerned with the history of democracy. It argues that overwhelmingly the history of democracy relies on an overtly Eurocentric narrative that emphasizes the keystone moments of Western civilization. According to this narrative, democracy has a clear trajectory that can be traced from ancient experiments with participatory government in Greece and to a lesser extent in Rome, through the development of the British parliament, the American Declaration of Independence and the French Revolution, and then finally onto the triumphant march of the liberal model of democracy across the globe over the last 200 years, particularly under Western tutelage. Histories of democracy that focus exclusively on these events not only privilege Europe and its successful colonies, but also miss the broader human story of the struggle for and achievement of democracy.

This presents us with a distinct challenge. For those whose heritage does not include a direct link to Greek assemblies, the American Congress or the French Revolution, the 'standard history of democracy' provides a distant and exclusive narrative, which limits one's ability to embrace democracy. This paper concludes by noting that, as democracy spreads out across the world today, political scientists not only need to break down the intellectual orthodoxy that democracy has exclusively Western roots, but also to embrace a more global view of democracy as a political practise that has been present at various times and in sometimes unfamiliar ways in the complex histories and rich cultural traditions of most of the people of the earth.

In his epitome Justin related Pompeius Trogus’ story, who apparently wanted to convince his readers that Attalos III, who was insane, accused his relatives of poisoning Berenike and Stratonike. Before he died he had bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. Sallust adduced the words of Mithridates VI, who considered Attalos’ testament a Roman forgery. What we know from Justin’s version is the Roman version, which was produced to justify the annexation of a foreign country and the seizure of the Attalids’ immense treasures. Attalos was one of the best educated Hellenistic monarchs, a lover and patron of the arts and sciences, a sculptor and a man of letters. With the slaying of Attalos III and his closest relatives the Roman senators also terminated the last great project of patronage over the Hellenic arts, letters and sciences.

Fake Term "Nubian" – Why?

To clarify that the non-Egyptian antiquities of the Egyptian South and the Sudanese North cannot be called Nubian, I initiated a series of articles, presenting the historical interaction among the Hamitic – Kushitic Egyptians, the Kushitic Ethiopians (ancestors to today´s Arabic-speaking Sudanese, Oromos, Sidamas, and other Eastern African Kushites), and the Medjay – Nubians, who are ancestors to the modern Nubians.

The latter may now well be the quasi-exclusive inhabitants of a vast part of the territory of Upper Egypt (Kemet) and of North Sudan (Kush - Ethiopia), namely south of Luxor to Wadi Halfa and thence further to Debba, but in the Antiquity, their ancestors were only a minority among the Egyptians and the Kushites (Ethiopians) who inhabited the said territory (and the rest of Egypt and North Sudan).

More importantly, the Ancient Nubians never formed a state of their own in the pre-Christian times. So, the royal monuments, temples, palaces, military camps and outposts, administrative buildings and private homes that have been unearthed in the land where today's Nubians live were not built by their ancestors and consequently, they are not their own historical heritage, but mainly the heritage of today's Egyptians, Arabic speaking Sudanese, Oromos, Sidamas and eventually other, minor, Kushitic nations.

Today's Nubians therefore cannot be considered as either the only or the primary heir to either the Egyptian Past or the Kushitic / Ethiopian Antiquity, History, monuments, and Heritage. In other words, the Egyptian temple of Isis at Philae cannot be characterized as a Nubian temple, and the Kushitic / Ethiopian temple of Amun of Napata (in today´s Karima, North Sudan) cannot be labeled "Nubian temple"; the latter is valid for even one more reason, namely that there is no Nubian population living there today as well.

The term "Nubian" cannot be given to the kings of Kerma, Napata and Meroe – the three most important capitals of Pre-Christian Kush / Ethiopia – because these kings were not Nubians but Kushites / Ethiopians. Considering both, the ethnic and the linguistic levels, the Nubians were as different from the Egyptians and the Sudanese Kushites / Ethiopians as the Ancient Greeks from the Ancient Babylonians.

The fake term "Nubian" has been introduced in order to effectively detach the Arabic-speaking Sudanese from the search for their identity, prevent them from properly assessing their tremendous historical heritage, further engulf them into the Pan-Arabist fallacy, and definitely disconnect them from their brethren, namely the tyrannized Oromos, Sidamas, and the other subjugated Kushitic nations. These Kushitic nations have been comprised within the non-Kushitic, non-African, Semitic colonial state of the racist Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians, who are totally unrelated to the Oromos, the Sidamas, and the other subjugated Kushitic nations of Abyssinia. 

For the above reason, the Amhara and Tigray Abyssinians are absolutely irrelevant of the historical name of Ethiopia, which belongs only to he Arabic-speaking Sudanese, the Oromos, the Sidamas, and the other subjugated Kushitic nations of Abyssinia. The criminal colonial state of Abyssinia has to be forced - by any means - not to use the fair name of Ethiopia anymore in the future.
First published in AfroArticles, Buzzle and American Chronicle on 24th March 2010
Republished in the portal of the Oromo Parliamentarians:
https://www.oromoparliamentarians.org/English/Facts%20about%20Oromo/Kushatic%20_%20Oromo%20Nation%20Part%20VI.htm

Goethe’s statement: ‘I shall never rest until I know that all my ideas are derived, not from hearsay or tradition, but from my real living contact with the things themselves’, seems to be the leitmotif of 19th century landscape painting.  It also explains the driving force behind the fascinating personality and career of Ippolito Caffi. A fervent patriot and visionary, Caffi stood by the cause of Venetian independence throughout his life, was exiled, travelled extensively, and exhibited his work in London and Paris.  His death in 1866 was symbolic of his life-long activity and beliefs: his project to commemorate in painting the first Italian naval engagement against the Austrians remained frustrated when the Rè d Italia, on which he travelled was destroyed at the battle of Lissa, drowning him along with his comrades. This was his last tribute to Goethe’s axiom, his reporter’s ‘real living contact’ with the event at hand.
Caffi’s paintings were not unlike his life, the product of a deeply personal search for unexpected sensations and an expression of intense patriotic sentiment.  Often described as the natural descendent of the great Venetian landscape painters  from Canaletto to Gaurdi, his invaluable contribution was to enrich that tradition with all that the nineteenth century stood for, from political insurgence to technological advancement.  He used whatever means available to achieve the end he had set himself, never disdaining to use new technologies, including photography, as aids for his work.  His desire to document as accurately as possible reality in all its visual aspects made of him an exceptional artist-reporter, an unprecedented witness of special atmospheric phenomena, historic social and political events and transient effects of natural and artificial light on his favourite urban landscapes. Caffi ‘s uniqueness stems from his position on the junction between the pre-industrial world and the advent of modernism and his work should be judged with this particular world view in mind.
When, true to the educational imperative of every artist worth his salt, Caffi decided to extend his repertoire of perspective and landscape in the Orient, his vision was that of a modern reporter: non-sentimental and objective albeit personal; for there is no denying that his tranquil and unaffected depiction of monuments and street scenes in Athens, Cairo or Constantinople are subtle and subconscious evocations of his native Venice, a kind of voyage into his own personal history. 
Caffi’s trip to the Orient is riddled with many uncertainties that have been the obsession of art historians for a long time, in particular the inconsistent quality of his work, the discontinued correspondence with his mentor Antonio Tessari and the curious inspiration derived from the work of David Roberts.  His visit to Malta on his way to Athens in the winter of 1843 may unlock several of these problematic questions.

This thesis analyzes Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Details of the Alhambra (1836-1842) by British Architect Owen Jones in relation to British conceptions of Spain in the nineteenth century. Although modern scholars often view Jones’s work as an accurate visual account of the Alhambra, I argue that his work is not only interested in accuracy, but it is also a re-presentation of the fourteen-century monument based on Jones’s ideologies and creative faculties. Instead of viewing the Alhambra through a culturally sensitive, historical lens, Jones treated it as an Imaginary Geography, as Edward Said called it, through which he could promote his interests and perspectives.

Although there were many British views of Spain in nineteenth-century, this thesis will focus on two sets of seemingly contradictory conceptions of Spain that were especially important to Jones’s visual and ideological program in Alhambra: Spain’s status as both the Catholic and Islamic Other, and its frequent interpretations through both romantic and reform-oriented lenses. Through a closer look at Arabian Antiquities of Spain by James Cavanah Murphy and the illustrations from The Tourist in Spain: Granada by David Roberts, I show the prevalence of these mindsets in nineteenth-century reconstructions of the Alhambra. Then, I compare portions of these works to plates from Jones’s Alhambra to illustrate Jones’s similar adaptation of these perspectives despite the visual peculiarity of his work as a whole.

Taking cue from Dmitry Sarabyanov's seminal publications on the Stil' Modern and turn-of-the-century Russian visual culture, the present article resituates Mikhail Vrubel's oeuvre " between East and West " by demonstrating that the artist moved beyond the narrowly circumscribed nationalist agenda typically attributed to the work he produced at the Abramtsevo and Talashkino artistic colonies. In addition to indigenous sources, Vrubel also assimilated a number of external artistic influences such as Jugendstil, medieval Gothic and Renaissance ceramics, Japanese and Chinese porcelain , and Egyptian and Assyrian art. Through a close analysis of Vrubel's orientalist paintings, as well as his cycle of folkloric works such as Mikula Selyaninovich and the Volga (1896), I demonstrate that his aesthetic program crossed multiple boundaries: geographical, temporal, material, and institutional. Through a complex renegotiation of the global and the local, the past and the present, and the traditional and contemporary , Vrubel arrived at a strikingly modernist visual syntax, which paved the way for an entire generation of avant-garde artists such as Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Liubov Popova, Vladimir Tatlin, and Naum Gabo, among others. Using Vrubel as a case study, this article thus proposes to rethink the opposing binary categories of avant-gardism and revivalism, historicism and innovation, Orientalism and Occidentalism, regionalism and cosmopolitanism, as they have been applied to the trajectory of modern Russian art—a set of ostensibly fixed dichotomies that Dmitry Sarabyanov had repeatedly and successfully challenged in his own work.

Résumé

La présente étude traite de la contribution des photographes français au développement de l’art photographique dans l’Orient méditerranéen et des leurs collaborations avec les photographes locaux. Plus précisément, nous nous référons à l’influence exercée par Philibert Perraud sur l’œuvre de Philippos Margaritis, professeur à l’Ecole royale des arts à Athènes et nous examinons l’installation réussie des photographes grecs (Athanase Calphas et Solon Vathis) à Paris. De plus, nous étudions le séjour des photographes français à Constantinople et leur contribution à la diffusion de la photographie en Orient. En outre, nous présentons des cas des photographes locaux comme Abdullah frères, membres de la Société de photographie de Paris, qui après avoir voyagé en France, ont maintenu leurs contacts avec les photographes européens. Nous nous référons également aux photographes du Moyen Orient comme  Yessayi Garabedian, futur patriarche, qui a visité Manchester, Londres et Paris en 1863 et nous abordons la collaboration de Félix Bonfils avec  Henri Rombau et Georges Sabounji, qui ont contribué au développement de la photographie en Orient. Après plusieurs années de recherche, nous avons découvert le différent judiciaire entre les photographes  Hippolyte Arnoux et Constantin Zangaki qu’il a accusé de vol intellectuel. Notons qu’après une période d’apprentissage auprès des photographes occidentaux, les photographes de l’Empire ottoman, qui appartenaient en général aux communautés religieuses, ont gagné leur autonomie ouvrant leurs propres ateliers et qu’au début leurs photographies étaient conçues dans le même esprit orientaliste que celle des photographes occidentaux.
Abstract
Initially introduced by traveler photographers and local photographers, photography was gradually adopted by local artists in the Mediterranean Orient. Trained in France or associated to French photographers, Oriental photographers became progressively independent, even able to compete technically and artistically with their European colleagues. Moreover, clichés by photographers such as Philippos Margaritis, Abdullah frères, Paul Sébah were exposed at international exhibitions and gained theirs authors reputation. And installation of photographers such as Bonfils in the Middle-East contributed to the diffusion of the photographic art in the region.