Exotic Naked Ladies.

Another day, another Nochlin, this one titled "the Imaginary Orient."

I love Oreintalism. It's some of my favorite work, to be quite honest. There is something so NOT real about it. In this regard I completely agree with Ms Nochlin- it's more like a gallery of taxidermy than a trip to the zoo. She calls it (and I like this term) "the apparent absence of art" meaning that there are some, not many, instances, especially within these paintings that tend to be of slave girls in exotic locals, of actual observation without embellishment. Certainly the tile work that is ubiquitous is actually taken from real details.

But here are paintings, especially the Gerome "Slave Markets", where French men are hiring French (or recent immigrant) models (read PROSTITUTES, lest we forget the real vocation of these yummy looking creatures according to most art historians) to pretend to be Persian girls being traded in an open air market. These are fairly accurate and very sexy paintings of hairless white girls being poked and prodded and bid upon by "oriental" (read "Moslem") men. And yet, in this article, we didn't have to talk about male dominance? I guess because it's obvious here, as opposed to being implied by Picasso and the like. Here we have detailed women against detailed backgrounds of exotic locales, and because the objectification is obvious it is not noteworthy. And that is just fine with me!