In 1867 nineteen-year-old Brooklyn-born painter Edwin Blashfield traveled to Paris to study with Léon Bonnat whose studio attracted French and foreign students (John Singer Sargent was another American attendee).
The young painter enjoyed his apprenticeship and spent a considerable time exploring Europe and the Middle East before returning to the city of New York in 1881.
In 1893, he was commissioned to adorn the enormous Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. He then created a set of murals for the dome of the Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress.
One of these, entitled “The Evolution of Civilization,” suggests a special bond between Egypt as the world’s first, and America as the latest, great civilization. The work was created during a period that the Orientalist vogue gripped the nation and belly dancers conquered Manhattan.
Anglo-French Rivalry
Starting in the seventeenth century, a Grand Tour was the aristocratic custom of making an educational trip to Italy with Rome, Venice and Florence as key stopping places. Some tourists continued their trip by visiting Constantinople and Cairo. The British passion for Egypt dated back to the early the eighteenth century.
Clergyman Richard Pococke made two separate trips to Egypt. On his second tour in 1736 he visited Cairo, Rosetta and the tombs of the Kings.
His travel account (published in 1743) was appreciated not just for its drawings of ancient monuments, but also for his discussion of more recent history. In 1740, Jean-Etiènne Liotard’s painted his portrait being dressed in eastern costume.
John Montagu, future Earl of Sandwich, was nineteen when he toured Turkey and Egypt. In 1741, he had his portrait painted by Joseph Highmore complete with turban and dagger. Back in London in December 1741, using the name “Sheikh Pyramidum,” he founded the Egyptian Society.
The zeal to learn about ancient Egypt was initiated in France. Preoccupation with the nation was driven by politics. In a memoir of February 13, 1798, Foreign Minister Talleyrand asserted that “Egypt was a province of the Roman Republic; she must become a province of the French Republic.”
In May that year, the French dispatched a force under command of General Napoleon Bonaparte. Some 35,000 soldiers invaded Egypt, the first incursion of a European power into a Muslim country.
The objective of the campaign was to claim pharaonic civilization for the glory of France. Lasting until 1801, French occupation may have been short-lived, but its impact was considerable. Some hundred and fifty scholars executed a study of the country.
Never before had a single nation inspired such a scientific effort. The monumental Description de l’Égypte (published between 1809 and 1829) captured its civilization from every vantage point. The research results made an impact in art and architecture, inciting a vogue for all things Egyptian.
Troubled by the prospect of Egypt becoming a French colony, the British government sent out an armada commanded by Rear-Admiral Horatio Nelson that destroyed Napoleon’s fleet at the Battle of the Nile in August 1798.
In June 1801, a British Expeditionary Force defeated demoralized French troops. The balance of power may have changed, but three years of French presence sparked an unprecedented interest in Egypt.
Forbidden Pleasures
After the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453 and the foundation of the Ottoman Muslim regime, European diplomats began arriving in Constantinople. These representatives tended to invite artists to join the Embassy and create visual records of the time spent in the Empire’s capital. The public was intrigued, although Orientalism in art did not become fashionable until the nineteenth century.
The inauguration in January 1852 of the “Ligne du Levant” line offering regular departures from Marseille to Constantinople; the completion of the Alexandria to Cairo railway line in 1856; the digging of the Suez Canal; Thomas Cook’s first “tourist” trip along the Nile in 1869; the building of grand hotels together with Anglo-French politico-commercial involvement in Ottoman affairs, intensified fascination with the Orient.
The 1867 Universal Exhibition in Paris determined the orientation of Orientalism. On display were precious objects retrieved in 1859 by the Egyptologist Auguste Mariette from Queen Aahotep’s tomb that captured the public’s imagination. By the end of the century pharaonic-inspired designs were the height of a vogue driven by sophisticated jewelers such as René Lalique and others.
Just as intriguing were the displays of Ottoman living quarters. Even though major efforts had been undertaken during the 1860s to regularize the network of streets, to create squares and public places, exhibition planners turned to outdated urban images of a “colorful” past which were presented as an actual external reality. In the Western mind, the Orient was conceived of as a cohesive, but unchanging whole. It was an “anachronistic space.”
Artists who traveled to the Orient were struck by the discrepancy between real experiences and the stock images of the “world-as-exhibition.” They nevertheless persisted in producing postcard pictures in the by then familiar manner, painting women in traditional robes or poor peasants posed with water jugs along the Nile as if they were frozen in time.
Other painters cherished a more sensual projection, perceiving of the East as a region of forbidden pleasures. As a geographical expanse the Orient was described in terms of femininity. A metaphor for her region, she passively accepted the dynamic authority of the colonial West and succumbed to her male counterpart.
The American Gérôme
France was the birthplace of Orientalist painting. The genre did not present itself as an artistic school, but it figured as a theme in existing academic styles and was integrated in Romanticism and subsequent movements. The revolt against the stifling dominance of the “Académie Royale” had shifted the attention from Rome towards Constantinople and Cairo.
What was the lure of these cities? Painters and poets were obsessed with an unhurried serenity that contrasted with the disquiet of Western society. Their impressions tended to suggest that sexual encounters were less guilt-ridden there than in “puritanical” Europe. The Orient was an oasis of lassitude and lowered inhibition, an alluring place where young women (and men) were open to a plethora of sexual experiences.
Jean-Léon Gérôme visited Constantinople in 1856, the first of many trips he would make throughout the Middle East. Mesmerized by its settings, he exhibited “La danse de l’almée” (The Dance of the Almeh) at the 1864 Salon, portraying a dancer accompanied by three musicians before a small audience of soldiers. The term almée (learned woman) originally applied to a singer engaged to teach dance and music to the women of a household harem.
As the harem was a domestic space restricted to women, no strangers (let alone foreign artists) would ever be allowed to enter the domain. The dancer’s nudity caused controversy. The outcry did the artist’s career no harm: notoriety guaranteed success. In the French press, the expression danse du ventre (literally: dance of the stomach or belly), was popularized as an alternate title for the painting.
The theme became popular. Painters depicted Oriental dancers in flowing fabrics barely covering their bodies. Although public performances were a small part of dance practices in Ottoman society, they were interpreted as representative of the whole, thus creating a spectrum of heated perceptions.
The “Orientalist female” was a fabrication. By placing her in an “exotic” setting, the Western artist escaped sanctions for exposing her nudity and seductive appearance. Orientalism was an escape, an erotic fantasy.
Alabama-born Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-1928) had studied in New York before settling in Paris in 1866. A year later he entered the studio of Jean-Léon Gérôme, an artist he admired for his skills and choice of exotic themes.
Having made Paris his headquarters, Bridgman first explored Northern Africa between 1872 and 1874, dividing his time between Algeria and Egypt. There he executed approximately three hundred sketches as source material for future work and amassed a collection of costumes and curiosities that often would appear in his paintings.
A prolific artist, Bridgman was known as the “American Gérôme.” Although living in France (five of his paintings were exhibited at the 1889 Exposition in Paris), his work was popular in America.
At his 1890 one-man show at Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Art Galleries over four hundred pictures were on display, many of which were sold on the spot. Orientalism took hold of Manhattan.
By that time however the genre was tried and tired. Even dance or harem scenes had become domesticated and harmless. The theme had lost its steam.
Belly Dance of Politics
The fourth World Exhibition in 1889 was a prestigious one. Gustave Eiffel built his landmark tower in Paris for the occasion and there was ample room for “exotic cultures.” The creation of a Rue du Caire (Cairo Street) was popular with visitors for its camel rides and snake charmers.
The Fair was visited by an energetic and enterprising young American. Born in Pekin, Illinois, into a Jewish family of Polish immigrants, Sol Bloom had settled in San Francisco where he staged spectacular shows and boxing matches. The Exhibition in Paris was a defining moment in his career. He enjoyed the entertainment offered by a stage group introduced to the audience as the “Algerian Village,” a cast consisting of jugglers, sword dancers and danse du ventre performers.
Before leaving Paris, he contracted the group to perform in the United States. By the time his ship docked in New York Harbor, Bloom learned that Chicago had been chosen to stage the 1893 World Fair. The city was also preparing to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the New World. He was determined to become involved.
At the Fair, Bloom created a mile-long Midway Plaisance that offered not just amusement halls, but also the “street in Cairo” where American visitors first witnessed the danse du ventre. Performed by members of the Village group, the initial appeal was negative until Sol began using the term “Belly Dance” to promote the spectacle.
The show was soon swamped with curious visitors. Sol Bloom (1870-1949) composed a tune for his dancers as well: “The Snake Charmer Song,” also known as “The Streets of Cairo,” was emblematic of the dance.
Belly dancing became a craze and “Oriental theaters” were opened in various cities. Dancers dressed in loose-fitting costumes that were marketed to titillate audiences. Corseted Victorian ladies were alarmed.
It motivated US Postal Inspector Anthony Comstock to get involved. Author of an anti-smut law passed by Congress in March 1873 (the Comstock Act) and Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, he condemned the Belly Dance as immoral.
Comstock’s anger was aimed at Ida Craddock. At the Chicago Fair, the feminist had been charmed by the danse du ventre. She published a pamphlet promoting the “Dance of the Abdomen” as a means to increase sexual pleasure. In response, Comstock vowed to destroy her (which indeed he did: Craddock took her own life in October 1902 after relentless persecution by the Comstock lobby).
By the end of 1893 belly dancing had reached Manhattan. After a show at the newly built Grand Central Palace between 43rd and 44th Street, three Algerian performers were arrested for “barbarian indecency.” The trial was widely reported and publicity strengthened the vogue.
Thomas Edison shot numerous short dance films for his peep shows. New York City also produced the first celebrity practitioner of the danse du ventre. Known as Omene, she was a highly popular and publicized figure. Larger than life, her true identity and life story remain shrouded in mystery.
Sol Bloom settled in New York City in 1903, a rich man who dabbled in real estate. Having entered the political arena, he allied with Tammany Hall and was selected as a candidate for Congress. From 1923 onward, he represented a Manhattan district of mainly Jewish immigrants until his death in 1949. Bloom was an outspoken critic of Nazism well before America entered the Second World War.
In July 1939 he was chosen as Chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee in spite of isolationist opposition. Bloom was a member of the American delegation which, in June 1945, signed the Charter of the United Nations.
In 1948, he supported the Zionist case by requesting the British government to allow Jewish refugees to settle in Mandatory Palestine. The former “Baron of Belly Dancers” turned into a mission-driven politician, lobbying President Harry Truman for recognition of the state of Israel.
Illustrations, from above: Detail from Jean-Léon Gérôme’s “La danse de l’almée,” 1863 (Dayton Art Institute); Library of Congress Jefferson Building Main Reading Room, detail of Blashfield’s “Evolution of Civilization” mural (Library of Congress); Jean-Etiénne Liotard’s “Portrait of Richard Pococke,” 1740 (Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Genève); Joseph Highwood’s “Portrait of Joseph Montagu,” 1741 (National Portrait Gallery, London); Pavilion of Tunisia and Morocco at the 1867 World’s Fair in Paris; Frederick Arthur Bridgman’s “The Harem,” 1894; Neurdein Frères, “Exposition Universelle de 1889 – Rue du Caire,” 1889 (Musée Carnavalet); and sheet music for “Omene Turkish Waltz” composed by Theo A. Metz, and featuring celebrity belly dancer Omene.
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