What I would say about this exhibition is that I am glad I am a member. Because I would have been most miffed to pay £14 for this. It's full title was "Inspired by the East; how the Islamic world inspired Western art".
Nothing wrong with that and the exhibition had its interesting parts and attractive exhibits. But for the money was rather small and almost entirely made up of items from the British Museum plus an extensive loan from the Malaysian Museum of Islamic art. Pretty much exclusively. Which is explained by the fact that this is a swap deal. The whole exhibition transfers to Malaysia next year (and indeed if I was so minded I could see it all again as I will visit KL while it is still on).
The best parts were actually not what I photographed below but a series of paintings by 19th century European artists of Oriental scenes of Egypt and the Holy Lands. They were very well painted which explains why these artists were so popular at the time. What isn't so clear is why they have totally fallen off the radar. Possibly just got lost in modern art movements and yet not the classic names of old masters.
But the exhibition does have a very PC element to it, partly in emphasising how intertwined East and West was (well yes clearly there was some element of inspiration, as there is from almost every quarter you can imagine) and some slightly desperate attempts to paint the East into a bright light, notably a comment in the descriptions of the paintings portraying a misleading stereotype of leisurely life in the Far East. This just raised in my mind the question of why they felt it was misleading. Having just spent a a fortnight in Egypt I could easily have taken a thousand photos of locals doing very little, and can't see why the Victorian artists wouldn't have portrayed the same very accurately a century ago.
But the most appallingly stark bit of tokenism was a small section at the end described as a 21st century perspective from four female artists "who continue to question and subvert the ideas of Orientalism in their work and explore the subject of Muslim female identity." Okay, let me translate into reality. "This exhibition has absolutely zero work by women, because women were not allowed to do anything in the Islamic world, but its not PC to say so. Therefore we will tack on some utterly unconnected work, more than a century adrift from the rest of the exhibition and nothing to do with Eastern inspiration of Western art. And its not very good but if we call the odd not very special self-portrait "questioning and subverting" "exploring the subject of female identity" it can pass. We have to stick something in by a woman to fill our quota, and this is the best we can do."
If they had just stuck this little group in a room somewhere I wouldn't mind, but cluttering up an already small and expensive exhibition with what was most definitely "filler" and nothing to do with what the exhibition purported to be about was just taking the piss.
But of course a small exhibition means one has more time to explore the large permanent collection. I went down into the African art collection, which is relatively new and not really what the museum is known for.
Obviously the artwork is pretty primitive compared with most of the rest of the artworks in the museum barring the very most ancient of European/oriental artefacts, with the one glorious exception of the Benin Bronzes below. But this area is well worth delving into the bowels of the museum to explore.
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