BEST AMERICAN ART by Alexandra Jopp

By Alexandra A Jopp This post is for people interested in European Orientalist painters. The next series of posts will offer a quick tour of Orientalist art as it developed in Europe during the 19th century (1798-1914.) I will focus on the following collection of images: Odalisques depicted in all their sensuality, bathers, and other harem scenes surrounded by myriad colours and fabrics. My aim is to create a central online place for images and resources on the topic. This includes the material I added/wrote myself and images that I found on the web. For the purposes of this blog, I will refer to the Orientalism as to an art-historical term. In this restrictive meaning, the term will be related to a small French group of artists of the 19th century who took the Maghreb and the Middle East as their subject matter. Orientalism, Victor Hugo observed, had a major impact on French and English culture in the 19th century. “There is more interest in the East nowadays than there has ever...

By Alexandra A. Jopp.  This post is meant only as a resource for further internet information about Brassaï. "There are many photographs which are full of life but which are confusing and difficult to remember. It is the force of an image which matters." Brassaï. The photographer of 'High Society.' Brassai (1899-1984), in addition to his photographic metier was a journalist, sculptor, and author of literary works. From the moment of his arrival in Paris in 1924, Brassaï (who took his name from Brasov, his Transylvanian birthplace) was stunned by the city "under cover of darkness." "When you meet the man you see at once that he is equipped with no ordinary eyes," comments writer Henry Miller on French photographer Brassai. And the sharpness of vision and depth of insight noted by Miller are revealed in Brassai’s lifelong admiration and photographic exploration of the City of Lights—its people, places, and things. Jules Halasz was born in Br...