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Carola Grahn offers a critical reflection on the art world's sudden interest in Sami art and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leading foreign artists in the Nineteenth Century elected Spain as a destination during their travels, in pursuit of an exotic land. The image of Spain was recreated through their memoirs, travel guides, novels, librettos and paintings. While these travellers encountered the Spain they dreamt about, national artists depicted a specific iconography about what it meant to live “in the Spanish style", including the practice or the presence of music in their works. These art works included musical instruments to establish a dream of exoticism, even for the Spanish painters and writers. While these travellers discovered their own dreams about Spain, Spanish artists created a specific image of what “a la española" meant. The real world was transformed when the artist considered that it was not typical enough. In fact, they could be criticized if their canvas did not look “really Spanish". These images allow us to analyze the representation of music as a significant recreation of national identity and its cultural and social significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the heritage of textiles in architecture as a medium for a transformative architecture. It explores the means by which textiles act and suggests textiles as a main bearer of spatial imagination and meaning. Here, alternative architectural concepts of transportability, storytelling, propaganda, exoticism and the scenographic are situated and explored, presenting a framework in which transformation and richness are central themes. By presenting a series of studies - The Curtain Projects - the article aims to uphold this broader imagination of how textiles can take a real part in how we think, live and build architecture today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper explores the interconnections between early modern natural history and European visual culture by focusing on the representation of a single motif, the bird of paradise, in one of Peter Paul Rubens's most celebrated paintings: the Adoration of the Magi (1609; 1628-29), now in the collection of the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Portrayed as an aigrette in the Black Magus's headwear, the bird of paradise is interpreted as a symbol of exoticism and geographical diversity, in a painting of unmistakable Counter-Reformist facture, produced in a context of tense religious and political disputes and conflicting commercial interests. By considering the representation of this motif in the Prado Adoration as well as in other works by Rubens and his contemporaries, this paper studies the contribution of artists and paintings to the dissemination of natural knowledge, and examines early modern visual culture as part of a wider context shaped by religiosity, political interests, the cult of the exotic and global trade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Material Culture Review is the property of Cape Breton University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The second half of the 19th Century was in Florence a period of extraordinary and fruitful interest in the oriental world when the philological and oriental studies were promoted. Thanks to the fervour of these studies, in 1878 Florence was designated to host the 4th Congress of the Orientalists. The "Orient" excited curiosity and collecting passion to such an extent that we could argue that the legacy of the magnificent Medicean collecting was inherited by the private middle-classes. Moreover, the new cultural context contributed to transforming the taste, it gave rise to new styles in architecture as well as in decoration and generally in the applied arts. After examining these topics, we will focus our attention on a little known fact that we could describe as the rebuilt "Orient" for entertainment, that is to say the Florentine Carnival in 1886, an event of the "disquieting" exoticism by which Europe represented the Islamic world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role played by animals in the visual and material culture surrounding the 18th-century European toilette, or ritual of dressing oneself and applying cosmetics. The author connects the depiction of animals in artwork pertaining to the toilette to the increased popularity of keeping pets during this period. The erotic nature of toilette scenes is explained as well. Focus is given to the portrayal of exotic animals, such as parrots and monkeys, and domestic animals, such as dogs and cats, in toilette art.

An essay is presented on the works of the Orientalist painters Henriette Browne and Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann. It uses the concept of the exotic as a critical paradigm for examining the representational tension in these artists' methods and works. Particular focus is given to conflict, volatility, and instability in Orientalist art. Other topics include social theorist Edward Said's concept of Orientalism and the critical reception of Browne and Jerichau-Baumann's paintings.

Paul Gauguin has earned his place as one of the most significant artists of the European avant-garde. His works have also traveled to the postmodern Pacific, taking on roles outside his original artistic project. As an index of the tourist fantasy of Tahiti, adorning postcards and advertisements for cruise ships, Gauguin's paintings in a popular context underscore the intertwined histories of colonialism and exoticism. As a powerful symbol of imposed identities, they have also become one site of many for politicized response through the production of creative works by indigenous scholars, artists, and activists. The critical discourse on the artist, therefore, needs to shift: while continued art historical analysis of the artist's work is still needed, scholars should also account for the various sociopolitical arenas that Gauguin's work inhabits in the twenty-first century. Considering Gauguin's relationship to a variety of nineteenth-century vernacular productions, both written and visual, as well as the current popular reproduction of his works and appropriation by indigenous artists and writers, the language of photography and its role as material culture provides a rich model through which to re-examine his work. This essay argues that Gauguin's work and legacy are both productions of travel, and objects that have traveled to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores two primary concerns in the art and artistic practice of contemporary Iran, namely “identity” (i.e. local, historical, imagined and collective identity and also self-identity) and “exoticism” (which appears inevitably related to the first), both of which (identity and exoticism) involve challenges relating to the “self” and “other” and the issue of “expectation”. It suggests that these issues see broader contextual socio-political parallels. The first apprehension relates to the concept of identity which addresses how artists have interpreted contemporary aesthetics in the light of national and indigenous ideology. The second refers to the ever-present obsession with cultural and frequently social concern with which Iranian artists are engaged within the country. The two concerns are integrated, in the way that the second is seen to be the outcome of the first. Some critiques are based on the issues of cultural commodification, anti-canonical West, cultural formulation, and also the stereotypes rooted in the preference and interest of the market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines tropes such as exoticism and heterotopia in relation to the beach. Discussing these issues from a practitioner's perspective and with reference to his own work, the author explores the extent to which the beach might offer a way of rethinking boundaries and categories. His paintings deal with the beach as exotic space and with how issues such as alterity and Otherness manifest themselves in the gaze of the beholder. The article explores the ambiguity of the site of the beach and how this is reflected in a variety of contexts. These often contradictory meanings, worked through in his paintings, reflect not only on the diverse interpretations of the beach, but also on the characteristic ability of the beach to unite opposed elements. Finally, the article investigates the possibility of creating by destroying as an intrinsic aspect of the beach. In the analysis of his paintings and aspects of the beach in relation to its ephemeral character of creation and destruction, this article shows how categories such as creation/destruction can be problematised. The article seeks to propose the beach as a model for a new understanding of this apparently contradictory visual economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the ways in which the 1917 Ballets Russes production of Parade functioned as a critical commentary on society and the social order. Rebecca L. Walkowitz's writing on "critical cosmopolitanism" (actions characterized by self-reflection, aversion to heroic tones of appropriation and progress, and a suspicion of epistemological privilege) frames the discussion. Popular entertainment and avant-garde art, together with the techniques of vertigo, flânerie, and the representation of exoticism and of identity more generally, reveal that Parade's authors (Cocteau, Massine, Picasso, and Satie) constructed a critically cosmopolitan, modernist entity. This adds a further dimension to the understanding of Parade, a work that also figures prominently in the dawning of realist ballet and that led to the first appearance of the term surrealism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary institutions and practices in the Middle East are developing a new creative economy. This essay describes the “archival impulse” that has developed over the past decade among photographers and culture workers in Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories. The focus is specifically on those groups along the edges, or outside, of the art world who are assembling various types of photographic archives. The essay suggests that the appropriation of archival practices may be partially a response to a lack of collectively agreed upon narratives of the nation's or community's past and the dearth of institutions of communal remembrance. The archival impulse is also an attempt to deliberately reshape the region's image. Much of the Middle East's history since 1914 has been shaped by outsiders. Over centuries, Western artists and media have created a potent visual archive of the Middle East that is largely made up of cliches of violence, chaos and Orientalist tropes of exoticism. Contemporary photographers and culture workers are crafting new mechanisms for memorializing history through photography as they and their fellow citizens experience it, effectively creating an archive where they belong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Figurative art made in Central and West Africa for the global market is a form of tourist art – a category that has been plagued in art historical research by misconstrued concepts such as the authenticity of traditional/precolonial art. Following its categorisation as a commodity, studies focused on the decontextualisation of the object, thus marginalising the producing culture. In this article I investigate the role of the artist in preserving tradition and the role of the trader who, as cultural broker, exoticises the object. Since it can be argued that these are acts of decolonising, African tourist art can be regarded as a product of the postcolonial exotic, as defned by Graham Huggan (2001). Accepting the inescapability of postcoloniality, tourist art can be repositioned as a successful attempt to preserve and promote African cultural traditions and identity in the new era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The description concerning the foreign affairs and exotic imagination in the vernacular fiction of the Ming and Qing dynasties, in a way, reveal the Chinese people's vision of the world, which does not only lend a vivid note on the contemporaneous Sino-foreign relationship and its challenge to the traditional society, but also provides an interesting proof for attesting the "others' perspective" found at the core of contemporary culture theory. This text expounds the historical and cultural contexts of such description and imagination, especially those of Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Thailand. It makes clear that the exotic areas described in fiction do not necessarily equal to those of real countries existing now. Only after the Qing dynasty, did Chinese fiction begin to give clear features of foreign countries and fully exhibit their literary values. So the change of exotic imagination is the landmark between ancient and modern fictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Music is a problematic medium in which to carry out representations or evocations of exotic lands and cultures. The present article explores the limits of applying to music the kinds of observations that are generally made about literary representations of the exotic (as in a statement by Stendhal) or about exoticist paintings (such as Le bain turc, by Ingres). It also reflects on the function of early museums devoted to natural history and foreign cultures Despite music's inaptness for representing objects (such as a Japanese teacup), musical exoticism exists, proliferates in concert life, and is constantly being carried out in new works and in new performances and productions of older ones. This paradox is resolved—the impossible becomes possible—through two different means: 1) the music echoes or imitates certain (real or imagined) aspects of the music of the exotic culture; or 2) the music allies itself with words, visual images, stage action, and other extra-musical features. The resulting works more often than not have a tenuous relationship to the distant locale that is purportedly being portrayed. But the works can be immensely revelatory about the passions, yearnings, and anxieties of the culture that produced and, originally, received them—and of the music-loving communities that revive and receive the works today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the creation of collages by artist Maz Dixon. It relates on the wallpapers based from natural environment depicting the scenes of fauna, flora, and people considered to be exotic. It says that the collages are the interpretation of colonial landscapes presenting an anxiety on each layer as believed by George Alexander. Alexander notes that there are levels of anxiety reflected in the nature such as the desire in controlling the nature by replicating the nature and the feeling of alienation from the environment. Among the collages created by Dixon include "Processional Way," "Pergola," and "Landfall."

The article focuses on the natural history illustrations by artist Ferdinand Bauer, which have importance to European society. It states that the works of Bauer are significant in the recording and dissemination of information on the natural history of new territories and countries being studied. It says that Bauer's Friarbird is based on a specimen captured on the northern tip of the Great Barrier Reef in 1802, with reference to the influence of exoticism on the decorative arts.

The author focuses on the conversion of domestic space from an ordinary site to an exotic and artificial site, a process thought by the author to be evocative of colonial objectives. The author believes that such a form of colonization requires only financial commitment rather than the physical activities of occupation and resistance, and therefore alters the colonial experience into an abstract and marginalized process. The article features highlights of contemporary decorative interiors featuring exotic objects and backgrounds.

The article discusses about the life and works of Canadian artist Norval Morrisseau. According to the article, Morrisseau was born in 1931 at Sandy Lake Reserve in the northwestern part of Ontario. He grew up alongside his Anishnaabe grandparents. It was the Midewiwin society's trait of making sacred drawings on birchbark panels that depicts and record their oral traditions and initiation rites that became Morrisseau's pictorial influences in becoming an artist. It says that Morrisseau was criticized by local elders for exposing their sacred images to mainstream art. Certain works of Morrisseau were reflected including, "White Man's Curse", "The Gift" and "The Land", paintings which expresses meaning through bodily form and aesthetics reflecting Midewiwin influences.

The article presents the perspectives of the author on the emergence of alternative Russian art. The author presents the perspectives of Orientalism in Russian art. Several artworks presented at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art were examined and criticized.

The article presents information on the effect of modern technology on cultural imagery. Computing, Internet, and televisual technologies have had a significant effect on the conditions of the production, reproduction, circulation, and consumption of cultural imagery. These technologies have not only made particular and specific local traditions more available, but have fueled an economy based on notions of specific, authentic situated-ness and rarity. In fact, attempts to clearly delineate between real cultural objects and mere appropriations have tended to follow and draw on the logic that governs the trade and traffic of exoticism.

The paintings The concert on the Oriental court (1786) and The lute concert (ca. 1786) by Johann Josef Karl Henrici (1737-1823) - both at the Akademija za Glasbo in Ljubljana - depict musical life in European aristocratic society of the second half of the eighteenth century and in their details are tuned up on exoticism. The first painting presents the allegory of music, while the second can be understood as the allegory of hearing or the allegory of five senses. In the Dornava mansion, which used to be owned by Austrian aristocrats and today is considered to be one of the most exceptional mansions in Slovenia, on the painted wall canvas are preserved Chinoiseries from about 1750, which belong among the most distinguished European examples of this genre. Represented scenes are produced after seventeenth-century fantastic and grotesque engravings (one source was the series Balli di Sfesania by Jacques Callot from ca. 1622), in the details comparable to Chinoiseries produced for the European market of the second half of the eighteenth century. Among motifs of the Italian comedia dell'arte and scenes of imaginary life in China, are depicted two figures, one playing a stylized lyre and the other a bowed string instrument. The instruments seem to be European, but their fantastic shapes make it obvious that their symbolism overcomes strictly musical meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cuban Manuel Serafín Pichardo, the author of "La ciudad blanca: crónicas de la Exposición Colombina de Chicago visits the Columbian Exhibition held in 1893 in Chicago. The list of Cuban entries awarded medals and certificates at the Chicago Columbian Exhibition of 1893 represents a similar mixture of the progressive and the exotic. Models of "hygienic" corsets, photographs detailing the work of the Sociedad Protectora de Niflos de La Havana and the Escuela Provincial de Artes y Oficios-both of them instances of the preoccupation with warehousing and employing "the deserving poor" so typical of late nineteenth century social thought and copies of such journals as "El Pro greso Medico" and "La Abeja Médica, shared space with studies on current methods of police investigation, pamphlets on the island's meteorological conditions, and naturally, archaeological treatises on Cuba's earliest inhabitants, although, unlike Mexico, Cuba could not put any such actual native inhabitants on display. In Pichardo's description of the contents of the eleven-acre behemoth that was the centerpiece of the Chicago Columbian Exhibition,

Provides an insights on the nature of aesthetics of exoticism. Origin and cultural significance of modern aesthetic theory; Birth of consumer society; Development of the aesthetic of the Chinese taste.

Examines the commission, execution, and reception of a series of exotic tapestry cartoons by Amedee Van Loo in the early 1770s. Framework for reading the pictorial exoticism of the later eighteenth century; Genesis of Le Costume turc; Reading the critical response; Reuses and revisions of Le Costume turc.

Situates Roland Barthes relative to three interconnected strands of Said's Orientalism: colonialism, the West/East binary and sexuality. Early Barthes as an exemplary demystifier of Orientalist discourse; Entry of sexuality into his writing as a theme; barthes as an Orientalist exhibit for analysis; Barthes' grappling with his own perception of a wider problem.

An essay is presented on the interaction of gender and exoticism in William Hodges' painting "A View Taken in the Bay of Otaheite Peha." It presents the similarities and differences between the painting and another of his painting, the "View of Matavai Bay in the Island of Otaheite." It discusses the representation of women in the foreground of Hodges' painting. It talks about the implications of the tattoos marking the seated woman on the right side of the painting.

Describes the exhibition of French paintings that depicts orientalism in art at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester in New York State. Paintings of Leon Belly, Alexandre Cabanel, Jean-Leon Gerome and Prosper Marilhat; Depiction of both violence and sex; Artworks that use water colors as a medium.

This thesis focuses on the study of the Palácio da Pena interiors between 1839 and 1885, from its construction to the death of Ferdinand II, his mentor. The data collected and analysed allowed to profound the knowledge of the technical and artistic aspects of coatings, finishes, decoration and furnishing, but also organizational issues of the compartments of the house, taking into account the time and context. In this sense, in addition to the artistic analysis and historiography of the rooms, it was possible to date the different phases of its decoration and identify the masters and suppliers involved. At the same time, proved to be crucial for understanding the monument to differentiate between the time of design and construction, before the death of Queen D. Maria II, the period of widowhood of Ferdinand II, when the interior of the first rooms was concluded, and, finnaly, the time from which was established the monarch's relationship with Elise Hensler, coinciding with the campaign of overall decor of the palace and later reformulations. In fact, the different passages of the King-artist biography are mirrored in his palace, which thus appears as a true nineteenth-century house, or the house as a reflection of its owner or his particular and ideal cosmos. In the same sense of nineteenth-century house study, it was found that Palácio da Pena presents the values and characteristics concerns of this era, notably privacy, comfort and hygiene, associated with the tastes and interests that marked the decoration of this period, especially the revival and exoticism permeated by scenographic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]