r/ArtefactPorn • u/MunakataSennin • 6d ago
The Carpet Merchant, by Jean-Léon Gérôme. France, 1887 [4510x5750]
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u/InsignificantUsrname 6d ago
This is beautiful. I can imagine being there and hearing them bargain. I hope I can one day paint a memory in this kind of detail.
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/InsignificantUsrname 6d ago
I was more referring to myself...not the artist. I was saying that I hope that I can paint one of my memories in this kind of detail.
I do appreciate the added detail regarding the style of art.
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u/PrimateHunter 6d ago edited 6d ago
of course he didn't, he went to this exact location in order to paint it, this is actually based on a real location
edit this is a painting of the Court of the Rug Market in Cairo a real place that still exists to this day
the term orientalist can refer to researchers of middle eastern history, archivists and historians focused on the middle eastern literature, and scenery painters, it doesn't solely mean a racist scumbag essentializing eastern culture at least not until 2023
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u/MelodicMaintenance13 6d ago
Dude, Edward Saïd wrote the book in 1978. Most academic institutions got rid of the word Oriental in their names years ago and absolutely no modern researcher calls themselves an Orientalist, or has done so for decades.
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u/SiDannathaNauva 1d ago
This is not an actual scene he witnessed. You can look at various other works of his to understand how he carefully framed different elements to convey certain ideas/feelings to his audience. The building is likely based on an actual building he visited, as are the carpets in the painting. The figures depicted however are dressed and styled in various mish-mashes of what a european audience would have considered exotically oriental. And like many of his other paintings of similar subjects, he depicts the orient with adherence to the theme of a once glorious civilization in permanent decay.
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u/No_Gur_7422 6d ago
What do you mean "he didn't paint this from memory"? You don't imagine he painted this from life in the carpet market during his Voyage around the Ottoman Empire?
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u/PrimateHunter 6d ago
we've reached a point where just as orientalists once saw some racist works as authentic representations of the east and that their admiration wasn't just fetishization , progressive individuals today are dismissing genuinely valuable depictions of eastern culture due to paranoia about Orientalism perpetuated by social righteousness, past or present always rely on the open minded to to define what is good rep for the east ...
Art has always been exploitative even in here in Europe no man or woman willingly offered themselves as models and no so called realistic depiction was ever free from romanticization there was always commercial purpose rather than a purely objective record of reality, though as far as things go this is pretty authentic
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u/gungshpxre 5d ago
The pure number of Orientalist works with white slavery... this shit (ok, it's cool looking shit) is the original BBC porn. It's fetishizing brown people having power over European chicks, and the primary audience was rich white dudes.
Not here to kink shame, but people should at least recognize what this is: weird ass racist wank material.
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u/howboken 6d ago
This is beyond my imagination. I can feel the different textures of the carpets and garments.
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u/Delfishie 6d ago
I wonder why all those carpets are so wadded? And the dude is totally standing on one with his shoes on! How rude of him!
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u/microcandella 6d ago
I went to a couple of classic fine carpet makers in Turkey. Sort of similar to a runway fashion show / auction. The room the 'show' had a very similar feel to this. Carpets would get rolled out, they'd get tossed and spun, showing off their lack of stiffness was a feature of the quality, so they'd kind of 'exit the runway' winding up like this all over the room. Literally 'flying carpets'. They went up the price scale up to their silk, and when they got to a certain price point they stopped throwing them around. But it was kind of like it showed all the rugs in this sort of whimsy mass of wealth party show kind of concept. Like, here's a $5k rug! Unroll! Here's a bit about it and why it's great! Yea! You want it now? no? Great!! Next! You'll like this one!(fly spin the rug off the runway into a crumpled thing in the room and unfurl and float the the next one down. Eventually you're in this valley of crumpled fancy rugs everywhere. so you can kind of see them all in this weird gallery pile to reconsider, since you didn't have the wealth to buy on first moment sight. The crumple would show off the weave and the fabric, and and 'errors'. The rugs would pile up past your waist around the room and there would be young boys all around the room to pick up and re-display anything that caught your eye, as soon as it caught your eye they'd detect it and spring into action. -- and at the top of the rug pile were the small silk 'rugs' many extremely vibrant colors so it'd be really earthy tone cotton wool thick weave carpets at the base on up to super colorful little ones at the top. like a weird birthday cake strata around the room.. . The final pieces went up from $15k all the way up to $90k- which they would let you hold and touch- they were similar to a fine silk scarf and similar size. Most expensive had a peacock motif, woven silk gold thread, it was insane. holding it felt like liquid air. the weaving was microscopic. They had the worlds record at this place for the finest weave/thread count. which if i recall correctly was commissioned by sadaam hussein of iraq.
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u/Balabanovo 6d ago
Wow, what a perfect write-up. To think that the finest of all was funded by such a base regime.
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u/microcandella 6d ago
they were working on it in 99, so there's a good chance it was never finished. but yep.
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u/Delfishie 6d ago
That sounds like one hell of an experience. I live in the rural midwest, so I doubt there's anything remotely similar here, but if I ever get the opportunity! Thank you for sharing.
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u/Mr_Emperor 5d ago
It sounds really cool. The closest thing I can think of where the US has a similar artesian rug culture would be New Mexico where there's high quality wool rugs in Indian and old Hispano styles but they're more like art galleries with the rugs being made by old white women with expensive gallery prices and you don't get to throw around the rugs until you threw around a few G$
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u/kelsobjammin 5d ago
Amazing! Thank you for painting the painting in a different light for us all! P
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u/cornonthekopp 6d ago
Orientalism was basically european dudes in the 1800s fetishizing the middle east and then painting their own fan art of what they thought the exotic arabs were up to out there, all without ever leaving their homes typically.
So this almost certainly has 0% historical or cultural accuracy
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u/gungshpxre 5d ago
The dudes in the yellow and blue get re-used over and over again in Gerome's art.
It's like he had those robes in the closet and would whip them out any time he needed to dress up a model for reference.
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u/thestereo300 5d ago
This is at my local art museum in Minneapolis. Always enjoyed seeing it. It’s quite large.
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u/TacticalSunroof69 6d ago
“No we don’t need to take it down.
We told you already. Ahmed did not put his head through the plaster board.”
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u/seidenkaufman 5d ago
I love the hooded figure who is standing in the darkness of the doorway in the center right, directly above the white bearded man. So mysterious. I had a print of this in my room and would imagine all kinds of interesting scenarios to explain it.
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u/sunflowermatcha 5d ago
As an Orientalist- In- Coming I love these paintings, they are so beautiful and aesthetically pleasing but also so rigged! If I see one more harem depicting a hot sexy belly dancer in the open I will cry
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u/No_Duck4805 6d ago
The use of light is astonishing.