by Todd Porterfield



Editorial Reviews

Neil McWilliam, University of Warwick
"In this important new study of orientalist imagery in early
nineteenth-century French culture, Todd Porterfield advances an original
and provocative thesis. . . . Porterfield's incisive understanding of the
historical forces which fostered the colonial enterprise, together with
his close reading of the catholic body of art works, produces a study
which avoids the scholarly cliches of Orientalism and succeeds in
demonstrating the extraordinary depth and ideological resonance of eastern
themes in the cultural and political life of post-Revolutionary France.

Book Description
From monumental battle paintings to the public display of archaeological
spoils to the decoration of urban vistas, visual culture promoted modern
French imperialism. So argues Todd Porterfield in this provocative look at
the forces of art and politics in France's military conquest of the Near
East. In challenging the conventional wisdom that France happened into
imperial venture, Porterfield explores interactions among artists,
generals, journalists, curators, and politicians from the time of
Napoleon's Egyptian campaign to the invasion of Algeria during the
Restoration and July Monarchy. Together they forged an official culture
that provided a rationale for imperialism--based on images of France's
moral and technological superiority--and an enduring project for Frenchmen
of all political persuasions during an era of domestic instability. The
allure of empire derived in part from its function as an alternative,
surrogate, mask, and displacement of the Revolution.

Porterfield reveals the interlocking strategies, the historical,
scientific, moralistic, and gendered judgments, that imperial art conveyed
in a strikingly rich variety of media: the obelisk at the Place de la
Concorde, battle paintings of the Egyptian campaign, the first Egyptian
Museum in the Louvre, and Delacroix's Women of Algiers. Not only do his
analyses engage a wide range of urgent debates within cultural studies,
but they also shed light on a troubling question. How in the age of
libert,, egalit,, and fraternit, was visual culture enlisted to fabricate
a sense of national superiority that led to the subjugation of others?

Product Details

Hardcover: 232 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (November 30, 1998)
ISBN: 0691059594