FINDING FICTIONS (3:02)

I’m Robert Warrior, I’m a member of the Osage Nation, and I teach in the American Studies department and in English at the University of Kansas.

I’m Soukayna, and I’m an art historian and multi-disciplinary artist who lives between Montreal and Morocco.

Robert: One thing that I always keep in mind, especially with these Bath paintings Gérôme would have never been inside one of these women’s baths, right? He certainly would have never seen Muslim women being bathed, you know, this is something that is a fantasy. The other thing that’s interesting to me on the other side with the Brush painting, is that this was supposed to have taken place in a Mandan lodge. And Mandan people are people that Brush never visited, and so this scene that is supposedly taking place in this lodge, of this young man being taught by this older man, or these two younger men being taught—also is something that Brush never did see. And probably never did see the inside of any of the Native people’s lives or interior spaces like this.

This bison hide that he’s actually pointing at is something that Brush borrowed from another painter down the street in New York. It wasn’t something he ever saw, it was just an object that somebody else had in their studio.

Soukayna: As you mentioned, Brush had never stepped into those spaces the same way Gérôme has never stepped into those spaces as well. There are a lot of elements in The Bath painting that I find very interesting because there are a lot of cultural elements that don’t actually fit together. That are not from the same places or from the same cultural identities (and geographically, culturally, historically, and such.) Here we have the sandals, the hammam shoes, they are called nalin. And these were usually used during the Ottoman empire. But the way the person, the woman who’s washing or bathing the other woman—the outfit, the scarf she’s wearing is like a keffiyeh which is mainly used in the Middle East, but the colors are very similar to Amazigh colors, who are Indigenous people of North Africa. And so the red, the yellow, the green, those are very specific colors to specifically the Sous region, but the way that she’s wearing it, and those shoes—there’s a lot of clashing elements. And that’s where you can say that he took elements that he thought were appealing, beautiful, and were creating together this image, a very Orientalist image. When you know these elements, you understand that they’re not realistic at all.

A BETTER VIEWER (3:04)

Robert: So much of the painter in both Brush’s case and in Gérôme’s case, is built upon them being able to announce their authority. That “I have traveled so much that I know this. I know what I’m painting about, I know this subject. I know my subject because I’ve seen it in so many places. But these are not ethnographic paintings, right? These are not actually intended really to be records of this particular place. And yet part of the artifice of it, part of what the painter is going for is actually reliant on us giving some sense of authority to the painter to say they know what they’re doing, that they know this scene. And then to find out that it doesn’t really exist is really fascinating, but also troubling, right?

Soukayna: Well I feel that it does speak a lot about colonialism in general, the fact that the people, in both paintings, the ones who are telling the story, are not the people who have lived those stories in the way that they want to portray them.

Robert: And I guess one of the things that I always think is important in thinking about “what do I do with these paintings?” and “What do I do with these painters?” is that I mean I want to be a better viewer, I want to be a more critical viewer. I want to be able to appreciate and admire a painting, yet at the same time, think about its history, think about where it came from, think about who the painter was, and what they knew and what they didn’t know. I’m also pushing myself to say, what is it that I can’t see by looking at this painting? What’s to the right and to the left of this scene? Or if the scene doesn’t actually exist, what do people who are from this part of the world have to say about themselves when they paint themselves? What is it that they see? And this is always my worry, is that somebody will just see the Brush painting, or the Gérôme painting, and this is what they see of that world. And I think that that’s the sort of anxiety that people have from a community, a marginalized community, an underserved community, in going to any sort of art exhibition, in going into an institution, and saying “that’s all people are going to know about my world, is somebody else’s view of it—somebody else’s flawed view of it.” I want people to have my flawed view of it too! I want them to have the flawed views of many many more people, adding up to something different. To give people a different way to think about these parts of the world.