![]() What I want to do in order to research our theme “The Eroticization of Tourist Sites”, is to extract and analyze the erotic evocations introduced in nineteenth-century painting, especially embodied by the smoking odalisque. Thorton’s “Women as portrayed in Orientalist Painting” (1994), has a theme useful for this research as I focus bothon the role of the female model like the femme fatale and the femme fragile, described in my “Wild Women” (2003), and its reception in contemporary art. ![]() De Delacroix à Matisse ” (2011).There are also appealing thematic publications about the harem (Peyraube, 2008) or oriental dancing, the effective “Serpent of the Nile” (Buonaventura, 1989) or the anthropologically researched “A trade like any other” (Van Nieuwkerk, 1995). In the context of Orientalist painting, numerous publications describe the art chronologically like Lemaire (2000) or Sweetman (ed) (1988), focussing in British and American culture, or beautifully illustrated exhibition catalogues such as the important “ Europa und der Orient (800-1900) ” (1989) or more recently “ L’orientalisme en Europe. I will unveil, so to speak, this process in this article, which reflects a rather extreme variation in the status of smoking.Ĥ I approach the iconography from my background as an art historian, specialized in Egyptian art and its influences on modern art. This process of erotizing the Orient was partly done with the help of tobacco even more so, it was also, with a new notion I want to suggest, “nicotinized” by the West. And by bringing its lure back home, these concepts are taken for granted and firmly established. During their tour, travellers were (and are) searching for preconceived ideas of a highly sexualized society that the orient is supposed to be. In his opening of the conference “The Eroticization of Tourist Sites”, Bernard Debarbieux related eroticism to imagination: his conclusion also forms an essential first answer why Fatima smokes. Fatima continues a tradition set a century previously, in which western tourists discovered the Middle East as the exotic hot spot to forget the western daily life. Yet, she answers our gaze directly and at second glance her red mouth invitingly burns through the voile, “never disappointing” as the text explains.ģ The origins of the image are more complex, though. She might look unapproachable behind the carpet over her balcony, veiled and all. The rhetoric of this Fatima advertisement not only combines the two elements, it suggests the availability of the female herself. ![]() But also sex sells, as prove especially dozens of legendary car girls draped over the car hood over the years. Here two appealing marketing tools are combined: the exotic, which not necessarily has to be related to the item to be sold, like an immense tube of toothpaste and a bottle of mouth water of the brand “Kalodont” are hanging on a camel’s saddle against the backdrop of a pyramid in the desert (1914). Why are Turkish notions -the name, the origin of the tobacco and the image- used to sing the praise of this western product? The answer is simple, it works. Which is remarkable, realizing it is an American brand. In holding up a miniscule package, the oriental beauty actually offers you a cigarette. Haut de pageġ “Always satisfying”, the Turkish blend “Fatima” promises us, in the years 1917 to 1919(fig.1) (McDonough, 2002: 943). ![]() Yet after the emancipation of tobacco in the west, the historical queens Cleopatra and Nefertiti invited tourist to the dream world of Egypt. Sold in eye-catching tin boxes, the Egyptian landscape illustrations soon changed into better selling eastern beauties, obviously tempting potential male users. Indeed, Egyptian tobacco was famous and used in the production of western cigarettes. Zooming in on Egypt, a pinch of pharaonic elegance could be added. Even when photography came into fashion, these dream worlds were presented on postcards, rather than what was actually experienced. But above all, it created an image of otherness since European women were not allowed to have a cigarette between their lips this was the emblem for prostitutes. The Orient was “nicotinized”: fumes evoked dreams and hallucinations, as well as steamy sexual suggestions. Hidden in the harem, the painting made the odalisque available for western eyes: lounging, dancing and above all, blatantly smoking. This promising image is a sign board inviting tourists to the worlds of the Orient, developed by the occident to escape daily life, eroticized by the tales of The Arabian Nights. “Smoking concubines reveal to us the secret of the harem”, Professor Luthmer explained in 1894.
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