A Harem in Africa (Un Sérail en Afrique)

Discussion

FROM THE BARNES FOUNDATION’S CATALOG

In this fantastic harem, groups of men strike drums and tambourines while women dance to the music. Another man lounges in the foreground, smoking a hookah. The landscape is generic—especially compared to Guiraud's intricately detailed cityscape of Bordeaux, also on this wall—but the title and the French flags locate the scene somewhere in colonial Africa. The artist's unscientific yet powerful style suited the colonialist imagery of the "exoticism" of non-Western locales.

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