Thawrah Des Odalisques at the Matisse Retrospective

Abstract

Odalisques feature prominently in western paintings of the secluded harem especially at the height of such paintings' popularity in the colonial nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Lewis, 2004). When a painter draws an Oriental odalisque, he is sure to draw an artistically scopophilic object. While indulging himself in his sensual art, this same painter exercises his masculine power to exploit the body of the woman whom the odalisque now represents. Noticeably, the presence of a harem odalisque, be it a presence in writing or in visual art, recalls the seminal The Arabian Nights, the mecca of odalisques' lovers; and its enchanting harems and harem women, on top of them is the arch-odalisque Scheherazad. It is drawing on the heritage of The Arabian Nights and its plethora of Orientalist images that the Arab American poet Mohja Kahf (b. 1967) is inspired to entitle both her poetry collection E-mails from Scheherazad (2003) and the poem under scrutiny in this paper “Thawrah des Odalisques at the Matisse Retrospective” (Kahf, 2003, pp. 64–69). In drawing on that heritage, Kahf, a writer who belongs to a racial minority and is a feminist herself, uses the renowned odalisques painted by the French artist Henri Matisse (1869–1954) as a mouthpiece that exposes the enduring Orientalist stereotypes and counterattacks them. Through Matisse's odalisques, Kahf narrates a story of how a past replete with misconceptions about the Orient and Oriental women continues to feed mainstream Western thought sabotaging the image of Arabs and Arab Americans (and the women among them in particular). It is in the heart of New York, one of the world's most modern cities, that those women-slaves of art inaugurate their revolution against the enduring stereotypes and liberate themselves.