"This is not just about nostalgia. It's not just about wallowing in the beauties of the past, even though I'm very happy for people to do that; it's about seeing that what we experience today in terms of East-West relations fits into
a continuum across history..."
– Dr Stephen Deuchar,
director of Tate Britain
"I think artists are agents of the public. They act as provocateurs, as guides
to life itself. They challenge the assumptions we have of the world.
They are both our friends and our enemies. They reassure us and then they subvert that reassurance. I like the role they play. They stop us being complacent about our place in society and our relationships with each other. The best artists are the ones who contest the audience.
"My PhD focused on 18th century British art and that's where I began my association with British art as opposed to any other period.
"The Tate is one of the great collections and galleries in Britain and in the world. I admire not just the quality of the collections but also the ambitions of the organisation as a whole and it's been a great privilege to be there during a very important period of transition. When I joined Tate in 1998,
it was just the Tate Gallery. Since then we've opened Tate Modern, we've changed the old Tate Gallery into
Tate Britain and the whole organisation's structure has changed. We've become an international organisation as opposed to a British one and in some ways we have a very broad international outlook. The number of people visiting the Tate galleries has gone up from about two million to about seven million, so our reach has expanded tremendously.
"We've also established a website which gives us international impact of a kind that we never envisaged before. We now have a very big programme of touring exhibitions from all four Tates, particularly Tate Modern, which is why I'm in Sharjah today. To have the opportunity to work in a place like the Sharjah Art Museum is fantastic.
"We do about half a dozen touring exhibitions a year and have an existing network of museums that we work with. With this show, because of its subject matter, we made the deliberate decision to, if possible, showcase it in the Middle East. However, we had no existing exhibition relationships with any organisations here, so we had to explore the region for potential partners.
"I met by chance someone from the Pera Museum in Istanbul and they mentioned to me that they would be interested in hosting the exhibition so that's how the discussion began. I was then introduced to Sue Underwood through the British Council, who had recently arrived in Sharjah to set up the museums' department here.
"A discussion ensued between Sharjah and Istanbul. There were discussions with other countries in the Middle East but we felt that Sharjah seemed particularly appropriate. There was already an existing orientalist collection here and that meant the exhibition would be coming into an established context rather than something just parachuted in from elsewhere.
"We could have put on an exhibition in a hotel somewhere but there wouldn't be a context and this is important. Sharjah seemed to provide an especially suitable context because of its impressive cultural programmes, museums and exhibitions. In addition, Shaikh Sultan is an expert in the fields of 18th and 19th century history
that lie at the heart of the exhibition's subject matter. He also has
a background of publication and scholarly interest in the 19th century and is a collector of orientalist paintings. When I met him and talked about the possibility of an exhibition, there was an enthusiasm and a commitment which I found very exciting. And that's really
how partnerships are formed in
any industry.
"There are two levels that I think
you can approach the arts. You can approach art at a purely aesthetic level. The paintings are very beautiful, created by some of the most important British artists during the 19th century. There is a strong history of admiration in Europe and Britain in particular for Middle Eastern culture. Whether it's
the oriental textile or decorative style, there is a strong admiration for the way the Middle East looks in terms of its cultural output and so it is possible to relate to this exhibition purely on
a visual level. I think that a lot of our visitors in London enjoyed the kind
of aesthetic oriental experience.
That's fine and part of the role of the museum is to enable that kind of experience to occur.
"But of course secondly, you can see this art as part of a more testing cultural and even political debate. There is the question of the 'gaze' of one country looking in on another and forming a rather superficial impression of it – appropriating it at some level by gazing at it. We thought it was important in mounting the exhibition to draw attention to that bigger, more complicated contextual framework and so in the catalogues and the book we wrote and published to accompany the exhibition, we give a lot of prominence to the debate surrounding Orientalism as a subject.
"Edward Said's great work of 1978 was a reference point for the organisation and we were very clear about that. We asked European and Arab writers to contribute to the text.
In London when we showed the exhibition, we encouraged people from different professions and political standpoints to comment on what the works meant to them. In doing so we were saying to them that by all means, approach these works at a purely aesthetic level. But there is a bigger story as well and if you want to
explore that story and you want to
think about it in terms of East-West relations and their relevance to today's contemporary politics and contemporary cultural relations, then here are some ideas, thoughts and materials to go alongside it.
"For me, it is a project that succeeds at a lot of levels. The contemporary territory of political debate is a complicated and sensitive one. This is not just about nostalgia. It's not just about wallowing in the beauties of the past, even though I'm very happy for people to do that; it's about seeing what we experience today in terms of East-West relations and how that fits into a continuum across history. I personally have a strong interest in the Middle East, its culture and politics so it's been a great privilege and pleasure to work on a project that connects these interests so directly.
"I think there is probably a more potent and consistent interest in the Middle East as opposed to, say, the Far East. If you look back in history to the Crusades, there was a European desire to conquer but also a wish to absorb Middle Eastern culture.
"There was an innate fascination
and this is consistent – certainly from the 18th century onwards and more so in the 19th century. It was only in the
20th century that Britain's imperial relations with the Middle East became complicated.
"In the 19th century, which is the period from which most of the art in this exhibition originates, the relationship between East and West wasn't as complicated. A lot of 19th century orientalist painter's interests in the Middle East are of a really admiring kind. The artists themselves were deeply impressed by what they saw
and they wanted to paint pictures of
the Middle East and put them on the walls of the Royal Academy in London.
"It was a kind of marker of cultural sophistication that you should understand a culture so different from your own. It became a sign of distinction. That is what comes across so powerfully in the show. Artists such as John Frederick Lewis, who spent 10 years living in Cairo, Egypt and depicted himself as effectively an Egyptian had an unbounded admiration for the Middle East. I would say that the people who come to the exhibition have inherited that level of admiration. It's a curiosity of course and it comes from all kinds of complex cultural baggage, but in the end it's driven by admiration.
"There has been in the last 10 to 20 years an interest for Western orientalist painting amongst Middle Eastern collectors. The art market has been very buoyant. Middle Eastern collectors are very keen to acquire Western views of the Middle East. This is very interesting because it suggests that some of the worries people have about the nature
of these images as being possibly patronising or acquisitive are unfounded. In some sense these paintings offer an expression of national and cultural pride.
"I think when Middle Eastern collectors see a depiction of a scene or
a landscape, whether in Syria or Egypt, they are themselves experiencing a pride in those places. The art becomes
a kind of currency through which the Middle Eastern collector expresses his pride in Middle Eastern culture.
"I hope people will see this show here in the Middle East and enter into the spirit of admiration that I believe drove most of the artists represented. That doesn't mean you can't take a step back and say that they may have meant well but actually depicted it with a Western filter. In Istanbul I think most people absorbed the exhibition in a critical way but they also enjoyed the work. More to the point, they enjoyed the opportunity that the exhibition gave them to engage with some of these bigger cultural issues.
"I think that an exhibition, which does a little bit more than just give pleasure, is a good exhibition. It should provide a mental challenge and not just be an aesthetic experience. I hope the same will apply here. An exhibition that engenders debate is worth doing.
"There is a lot of important art
being produced in the Middle East at the moment. Tate Modern feels that it needs to play a greater part in that.
The Sharjah Biennale, which takes place every two years, is also taking place this month (March 19 - May 16). That gives us a connection between historic and contemporary art, which works well. The Dubai Art Fair (March 18-21) also coincides with the Biennale so it's a great time for us to be here."
– Alex Westcott is sub editor/writer, Friday.

By Alex Westcott is Sub Editor/Writer,

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