(upbeat jazz music)
- [Steven] We're in The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
looking at a painting that's usually in the Louvre in Paris.
This is Delacroix's "The Women of Algiers
in Their Apartment."
- [Beth] We're looking at the inside of a harem,
an area in a Muslim household reserved for women.
- [Steven] But seen through the lens of Western European.
- [Beth] On a trip to North Africa,
he did see a harem briefly.
But nevertheless, this is still very much a Western fantasy
at a time when in Paris, there was huge interest
in French imaginings and fantasies of North Africa.
- [Steven] Part of what fueled that interest
was France's military forays into North Africa.
France had violently seized Algeria.
In fact, the reason that the artist went to Morocco
and then briefly to Algeria
was as part of a diplomatic mission.
- [Beth] So a place of indulgence, a place of luxury.
- [Steven] A place of leisure,
an idea that the French accorded to all peoples
that they saw as inferior to them, a kind of laziness.
- [Beth] This was a culture to the French
that didn't progress the way things did in Europe.
It was a place where time stood still.
- [Steven] Orientalism in its narrowest sense
refers to a European or Anglo-American view of North Africa,
perhaps the Middle or Near East.
It was a look at cultures that were seen as exotic
and slightly dangerous.
It's important to remember
that this is before the era of photography.
So in the absence of photography,
paintings like this were seen as a kind of documentation,
even though we understand it
as a construction of the desires of the French public.
- [Beth] So we see three figures seated on the ground,
relaxing, smoking, not interacting with each other.
The light streams in from the left.
And we feel as though we're looking at something
that we're not really allowed to look at.
- [Steven] So ours is a privileged view.
- [Beth] We do have one standing figure,
who seems to be pulling back the curtain
to reveal these figures.
And this figure has much darker skin.
We often see black figures in European paintings
from this time to set off what the French saw
as the greater beauty of the lighter skinned figures.
- [Steven] So here we have the only active figure
pulling back the curtain,
who might then be seen in the role of the servant.
The surface is sumptuous.
The women are dressed in these fine fabrics,
strewn below them are these extraordinary
carpets and tiling.
There's this cacophony of pattern and color.
- [Beth] We can see North African furnishings.
We can see what looks like Arabic script.
Everything about their jewelry, the textiles,
the interior would have been fascinating
to their audiences in Paris.
The composition is interesting
because there is no single focal point.
The three women who are seated on the ground
equally draw my attention.
There's no action taking place.
- [Steven] There's no narrative.
- [Beth] Just this profound sense languorousness.
But the color, the color is where we really see
all of the Delacroix's energy going.
The oranges, and greens, and blues, and purples
just vibrate against one another.
And the surface seems almost jewel-like.
- [Steven] Look, for example, at the pattern green cloth.
If you look at the shadows,
that green is contrast against red.
The shadows are the complimentary color of the green.
- [Beth] Delacroix's thinking about complimentary colors,
about the way that colors blend in our eye
when they're next to one another.
So instead of thinking about chiaroscuro,
of the movement of light to dark
in a traditional academic way,
he's adding color to the shadows and to the light.
The contours of the figures, the outlines are not precise.
There's a softness to the edges of forms.
And in so many places, we can see the artist's brush work.
For example, in that gauzy white fabric
worn by the figure in the center.
- [Steven] The painting is dizzying in its color,
in its pattern, in its forms.
- [Beth] And all of this feeling very exotic
and compelling to an audience in Paris in the 1830s.
(upbeat jazz music)