Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism ed. by Jennifer R. Henneman (review)

Reviewed by: Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism ed. by Jennifer R. Henneman James P. Gilroy Henneman, Jennifer R., Near East to Far West: Fictions of French and American Colonialism. Yale UP, 2023. ISBN 978-0-300-26604-7. Pp. 285. This volume examines the influence of French Orientalism in art on representations of the American West by American painters of European ancestry. There are fourteen essays by art scholars as well as reproductions of paintings and sculptures from a Spring 2023 exhibition at the Denver Art Museum. The resemblances between the two bodies of art are impressive and genuine. Several of the painters who created depictions of the peoples and landscapes of the American West had studied in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and private academies under French artists like Fromentin and Benjamin-Constant. The latter specialized in artistic representations of French colonies and spheres of influence in North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. There was thus a direct influence of these French painters on their American students. This influence was so powerful that when the Americans came home and travelled to the western territories of their country they saw the indigenous peoples and the places they inhabited through the lens of French visions of the Orient. The essays explore the attitudes toward native peoples shared by artists on either side of the Atlantic. Both French and American painters visited these lands with preconceived notions of what they would find and saw only what they expected to see. They were attracted by the lure of the exotic. North Africa and the American West both provided an escape from an increasingly industrialized civilization into a pastoral world of primitive innocence. The problem was that the universe they thought they beheld and put onto canvas was a fiction of their own creation. Another shortcoming was that they did not fully recognize the equal humanity of their native subjects. The latter were depicted as colorful objects in a frequently stereotypical manner. Female figures were cast in the role of odalisques, provocative temptresses inviting the spectator to enjoy their sexual attractions. Male subjects were also sexually exploited by being painted as almost nude in poses sometimes reminiscent of Michelangelo's Adam. Another theme of the essays is the influence of the colonialist ideology on the French artists and their American followers. The depiction of native figures as alluring but less-than-human served as a justification for white colonialists to take over their lands and resources. The natives were described as in need of being civilized (Kipling's "White Man's Burden") and giving up their traditions in order to be assimilated into the modern world. At the same time, writers and artists pretended to bemoan what they considered the inevitable passing of these ancient cultures (Cooper's Last of the Mohicans), a passing they were in fact helping to bring about. These clichés filtered down into popular culture at World's Fairs and in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show, which featured both "Indian" and imported Arab horsemen. The authors of this catalogue assure their readers that native cultures in the U.S. and Africa are still very much alive. End Page 114 James P. Gilroy University of Denver (CO) Copyright © 2024 American Association of Teachers of French