Classicism and Orientalism in Nineteenth-century British Painting

希腊和地中海沿岸的“古典之地”一度处于两大洲的交汇点，并被认为是欧洲文化身份的组成部分，但在构建“东方”和“西方”的二元关系方面，希腊和地中海沿岸的“古典之地”长期以来一直处于有争议的地位。我希望通过研究这两种话语交叉的艺术类别来探索这种界限状态：十九世纪英国绘画中“东方”和“古典”世界的表现。在“学院派”艺术的大标题下，东方和希腊罗马的过去成为投射幻想和创造艺术“现实主义”永恒场景的重叠空间。虽然这两门学科都是通过旅行和学术研究、考古学和文本来了解的，但它们通常都是从奢侈和懒惰、暴力和色情、暴政和非基督教神秘的平行刻板印象中构建出来的。一些艺术史学家（特别是罗斯玛丽巴罗）已经认识到古典和东方主义流派和油画之间的相似之处，我打算更进一步，通过研究艺术家前往与“东方”重叠的“古典之地”的含义-在东方世界发现的古典以及想象为东方世界的古典。通过承认许多艺术家同时参与两种话语，我想从世纪初的英国古典旅行家（与法国同行不可避免的对话）到后来的“东方主义者”埃德温·朗、大卫·罗伯茨和J. F.刘易斯和“古典”画家，如阿尔玛-塔德玛，莱顿和沃特豪斯。虽然这两种论述可以追溯到古代，但正是奥斯曼帝国在整个世纪的衰落，才使西欧政府、学者和艺术家对地中海沿岸的“古典土地”产生了更大的兴趣。对许多人来说，当代希腊给人的印象是“东方的”，有时甚至是令人沮丧的，更不用说更东方的古典考古学遗迹了。在过去的二十年里，像Stathis Gourmannis，PhirozeVasunia和Yannis Hamilakis这样的学者强调了古典学术和帝国主义或（菲尔）希腊主义和东方主义的历史和理论交叉。然而，这一宝贵的学术机构缺乏的是广泛而具体地与视觉来源的彻底接触：传统上留给艺术史学家的证据。对于我的博士学位，我希望继续我在哲学硕士学位上追求的跨学科道路，在那里我将接受研究与艺术史奖学金相结合，研究在希腊旅行的英国艺术家和19世纪绘画中的迦太基人狄多。从那时起，我继续为苏富比的毕加索和拉斐尔前派部门研究19世纪的艺术（尤其是东方主义绘画）。尽管我经常听到批评古典和东方的主题停留在它们的形式和一般的界限内，是人为的和陈词滥调的，但这些共同的界限让我感兴趣。通过将两者视为单一视觉文化的一部分，英国艺术家与古代关系中同时存在的“距离”和“接近”感可以与爱德华·萨义德所说的东方的“亲密陌生感”相比较。从围绕权力和东方主义艺术所产生的文化的争论中获得灵感，我想问一下，对于那些经常被视为西方霸权象征的非古典世界的表现，其意义何在。

At once situated at the crossover between continents and claimed as constitutive of Europeancultural identity, Greece and the 'classical lands' skirting the Mediterranean have longoccupied a contentious position in the construction of a binary between 'East' and 'West'. Ihope to explore this liminal status by examining an artistic category where the two discoursesintersect: representations of 'Oriental' and 'classical' worlds in nineteenth-century Britishpainting. Under the broad heading of 'academic' art, both the East and Greco-Roman pastbecome overlapping spaces for projecting fantasy and creating timeless scenes of artful'realism'. Though informed by travel and scholarship, archaeology and texts, both subjectsare often constructed from parallel stereotypes of luxury and indolence, violence anderoticism, tyranny and un-Christian mystery. While a few art historians (notably RosemaryBarrow) have recognised similarities between classical and Orientalist genre and landscapepainting, I intend to go further by examining the implications of artists travelling to 'classicallands' which overlapped with the 'East' - the classical discovered in an Oriental world aswell as the classical imagined as an Oriental world.By acknowledging that many artists engaged with both discourses, I want to draw a line fromBritish classical travellers from the beginning of the century (in inevitable dialogue withFrench counterparts) to later 'Orientalists' Edwin Long, David Roberts and J.F. Lewis and'classical' painters like Alma-Tadema, Leighton and Waterhouse. Though the two discoursescan be traced to antiquity, it was waning Ottoman power across the nineteenth century thatwarranted western-European governments, scholars and artists to take greater interest ineastern Mediterranean 'classical lands'. To many, contemporary Greece came across asparadoxically and sometimes distressingly 'Oriental', not to mention the vestiges of classicalarchaeology further east. In the past two decades academics like Stathis Gourgouris, PhirozeVasunia and Yannis Hamilakis have emphasised historical and theoretical intersections ofclassical scholarship and imperialism or (Phil)Hellenism and Orientalism. What this valuablebody of scholarship lacks, however, is a thorough engagement with visual sources broadlyand painting specifically: a body of evidence conventionally left to art historians.For my PhD I hope to continue the interdisciplinary path I pursued at MPhil, where Icombined reception studies with art-historical scholarship to research British artists travellingin Greece and Carthaginian Dido in nineteenth-century painting. Since then I have continuedresearching nineteenth-century art (especially Orientalist painting) for Sotheby's Victorianand Pre-Raphaelite Department. Though I have often come across criticism of classical andOriental subjects as artificial and clichéd for staying within their formal and generic limits, itis these shared limits that interest me. By considering the two as part of a single visualculture, the simultaneous sense of 'distance' and 'proximity' characterising British artists'relationship with antiquity can be compared with what Edward Said called the 'intimateestrangement' of the East. Taking inspiration from debates around power and culturegenerated by Orientalist art, I wish to ask what the significance is for representations of aclassical world all too often presented as a symbol of Western supremacy.