Art and Identity in Spain, 18331956: The Orient Within

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Richly illustrated, this is the first study in English to explore the longevity of Orientalist art in Spain over a period of 120 years.

It highlights how artists in Spain shaped perceptions of Al-Andalus (Iberia under Islam 7111492) and northern Morocco, from Spains liberal revolution of the 1830s to the end of the Protectorate of Morocco in 1956. Combining art history with a cultural studies approach, and using exemplary case studies, Hopkins foregrounds the diverse issues that underpin Orientalist expression: reflections on history and the nation, cultural nationalism, gender and sexuality, aesthetics and art commerce, colonialism and racial thinking. In the process, the book challenges over-familiar understandings of Western Orientalism.

Beyond Fortuny and Sorolla, many unfamiliar artists and exhibitions are introduced, amongst them Villaamil, whose nostalgic landscapes evoked the loss of Andalusi culture; Bcquer, who celebrated Spanish-Moroccan peace-making through the lens of Velzquez; the Symbolist Rusiol, whose images of the Alhambra are infused with melancholy; Morcillo, whose extraordinary camp images opened a new space for male subjectivity; Tapir and Bertuchi, who dedicated their lives to Morocco, and the Moroccan Sarghini, who participated in the state-funded Painters of Africa exhibitions in Francos Madrid an annual exhibition that served the colonial concept of a Hispano-Moroccan brotherhood under the dictatorship.

This book traces the shifting impulses and meanings of Orientalist expression in Spain. It makes an original intervention in the field of Spanish art studies and contributes new material to the ongoing debates about Western Orientalism.

Author Bio

Claudia Hopkins is Professor of Art History at the University of Edinburgh, UK. She served as the Director of the Zurbarn Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art at Durham University between 2020 and 2023, and is Editor of Art in Translation. Recent publications include Romantic Spain. David Roberts and Genero Prez Villaamil (2021), which won the Jonathan Brown Award of the Society of Global Iberian Art (SIGA) for exceptional achievement in an exhibition catalogue, and the co-edited two-volume Hot Art, Cold War-European Writing on American Art 1945-1990 (2020).