Egyptomania! - Western art that is inspired by Egyptian art, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

Art in America, Nov, 1994 by Todd Porterfield

Louvre and Michael Pantazzi of the National Gallery of Canada. In the catalogue's introductory essay, Humbert explains that he and his colleagues selected objects based on two primary criteria: they must contain motifs taken from ancient Egyptian art, and they must have been made for a new, contemporary use. (The suggestion is that direct copies of ancient Egyptian works do not a Humbert goes on to distinguish objects directly inspired by ancient Egyptian works and those that borrow motifs from later Egyptianizing sources. However, the implications of this notion went largely, undeveloped in the exhibition for the real purpose of "Egyptomania" was to restage a kind of mythic encounter between the modern Western artist and the ancient Egyptian motif. As Humbert puts it the Western artist, struck by the brilliance and beauty of the pharaonic original, is attracted in an irrational way, is "bewitched." The Egyptian original submits to the artist's creative impulse and to modern needs.[2] In short, the exhibition celebrated the imagination and ingenuity of the West in the face of a once brilliant now isolated and compliant ancient Egypt.

While Humbert allows that Egyptomania "is always tied closely to political currents,"[3] the exhibition throughout seemed determined to disassociate it from France's invasion and occupation of Egypt from 1798 to 1801. In the opening line of the catalogue's first essay, Ziegler asserts, "Egyptomania is not the daughter of the Egyptian campaign."[4] Instead, the organizers describe the encounter of Western artist and Egyptian motif as apolitical, natural, nearly eternal. In the catalogue's defining essay, Humbert insists on the inherent appeal of Egypt: "In fact, there is not a Western country that has not been tempted to incorporate Egyptian aft."[5] This claim curiously echoes the greatest official cultural product of Napoleon's campaign, the 21-volume Description de l'Egypte (1809-28), whose initial pages frame France's intellectual conquest of Egypt as following from its military triumph: "No considerable power was ever amassed by any nation, whether in the West or in Asia, that did not also turn that nation toward Egypt, which was regarded in some measure as its natural lot."[5]

The rationale for Egyptomania" rests on a similar tautology: Western artists looked to ancient Egyptian motifs because ancient Egypt itself was intrinsically so alluring. Several questions are therefore begged: Did pharaonic art actually reach out from the tomb and cast a spell which seduced Western artists? Or did Western artists participate in a culture which pictured, captured, fantasized, studied, in short gave meaning and purpose to a distant culture so as to further its own insular needs and global ambitions?

Efforts to pose this kind of question were thwarted by the organization of the exhibition, which was by turns chronological, thematic and national.[7] The first section, "The Italian Voyage," began with works made in reference to Egyptian or Egyptianizing works in Italy in the early 18th century; the exhibition then proceeded to mostly decorative arts made in England by Wedgwood, Thomas Hope and others. For reasons that were not evident, three of the show's sections - on Dominique-Vivant Denon (Napoleon's art czar, chronicler and celebrant of the Egyptian campaign), on Egyptian themes in opera, and on Cleopatra - were said to be major divisions. However, no direct or satisfying link was made between these sections and the seven minor ones. Moreover, the wall texts were placed ambiguously vis-a-vis the objects, further obscuring the relationship between the works and the vague historical categories which often neither contained nor explained them.

Similarly, the rationale for the chronological bracketing of the show was never explicitly discussed. The exhibition picked up in the early 18th century, when Egyptianizing works, the organizers posit, moved away from the esoterisme of the Renaissance. The effect was to cut off Egyptomania from the textual tradition of which it was always a part: the words and pictures which explored the historical, philosophical, political and religious stake that Europe had in the East. Instead the exhibition suggested that "true" Egyptomania was the product of a direct artistic encounter with authentic Egyptian objects, through travels to Rome and Egypt and consultation with modern (read: unbiased) scientific works. At the same time, the 1730 starting date helped deemphasize the association with France's Egyptian campaign, while the decision to downplay the textual and esoteric side of Egyptomania resulted in virtual silence on Jean-Francois Champollion's decipherment of hieroglyphs in 1822, although this feat inspired, among other things, more accurate renderings of Egyptian writing as artistic motifs.

The exhibition's final room took Egyptomania to 1930 - but without ever mentioning that this end date coincides with the beginning of Egyptian independence from colonial rule, finally achieved in 1936. Instead, within a section titled "Cleopatra, or the Seductions of the Orient," a small video screen played and replayed a scene from Mario Matolli's 1954 film Due notti con Cleopatra (Two Nights with Cleopatra), starring Sophia Loren.