From orientalism to "bore-ientalism"

Written for Kosovo Online by Srdjan Garcevic, founder of The Nutshell Times

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of seeing, for the first time, the "Rest of the Bashibazouk". Despite its small size, it is a magnificent painting of an Albanian Ottoman-era irregular smoking hookah and drinking coffee, reclining in a katana. It was painted by Paja Jovanović, one of the best Serbian realist painters.

The painting, like many others painted in the 1880s by Jovanović, is peak "orientalism" in terms of its "exotic" subject matter and the context surrounding its creation.

Bashibazouks were not only visually striking due to their dress and ornate weapons, but were also risqué for European audiences. They were infamous for violence and aggression as they partook in many raids on behalf of the Ottoman Empire, terrorizing and enslaving the local populace. Indeed, the painting was made a decade after a detachment of bashibazouks massacred several thousand Christian Bulgarian civilians during the Batak massacre, which made the European news and, in a way, confirmed the standard European view of the exotic, brutal "East".

Like is the case of many of Jovanović's orientalist paintings, the commission for this one came from a Western; in this case, a British gallerist, who knew his Victorian audience, would be thrilled to have a piece of the mysterious, brutal "Orient" hanging on their walls.

It is precisely this fascination with the exotic that was the subject of study by Edward Said, almost a century after Jovanović painted his Bashibazouk. Said saw orientalist art as going hand in hand with Western imperialism as it tended to depict non-Westerners in outlandish contexts, such as leisurely brigands, and thereby make them seem in need of a Western civilizing influence.

Said's analysis influenced art criticism and art since it was written in 1978. Current debates around "cultural appropriation" and fair representation of various cultures rely heavily on his work, as do the artworks that somehow "challenge" and "appropriate" stereotypical depictions of cultures.

His work has also shaped my worldview ever since I first leafed through his book in the late 2000s. While Said focused on the Middle East, Bulgarian historian Maria Todorova used his insights on the depictions of the Balkans in her 2009 book "Imagining the Balkans", which, in turn, inspired a lot of my writing and outlook, especially my attitudes towards "west splaining" the Balkans.

Still, standing in front of Jovanović's brilliant "Bashibazouk" and then, a week later, going through London's museums made re-think my attitude towards "orientalism" and related bugaboos of the current critical and art scene.

Going through a very underwhelming and overpriced exhibition about life in the Roman military at the British museum, I was stunned by the amount of effort made by the curators to explain how much they disdained the subject of their exhibition. Rather than explain how it managed to conquer and control large swathes of land, much of the exhibition focused on how the Roman imperial military failed to live up to the ideals of 2024 liberals.

These ahistorical, drab attitudes were present not only in the texts but also in art. Going around Tate Britain, there was so much effort to "challenge" and "diversify" with little care to ensure the new works didn't look ridiculous next to the masterworks they were allegedly challenging.

While Jovanović and other "orientalists ", such as Frederic Leighton, whose "orientalist "house is one of the most magical places I visited, took great care to depict and replicate the beauty of other cultures, albeit with dubious goals, the current anti-orientalism tries to make everything bland and unappealing, even if it is out of good intentions.

If Jovanović had the attitude of current artists, his portrait of the Bashibozouk would probably be some tortured piece of video art, where his subject would have to talk about the economic reasons behind his decisions to leave his family in Shkodra and engage in brutal warfare, probably without any of the beautiful weapons and clothes (they promote consumerism!).

Similarly, an increasing number of analysts of foreign cultures seem unwilling to engage with their peculiarities but want to understand them purely in relation to the current (Western) mores, as if they are performing a corporate gap analysis. Stating that things simply work differently in different cultures can now come across as "essentialist" and "orientalist", which has led to much money being spent on costly interventions that yield little result or backfire. Engaging with locals who do not believe in infinite cultural malleability is also off bounds, leading to only groups of like-minded "locals" and "foreigners" stimulating discussions. Don't even get me started on various local art cottage industries that try to package their own "trauma" and "lived experience" mixed with popular global themes, such as drab, for-export art. 

Ironically, this approach is not dissimilar from the attitudes of 19th-century artists and politicians. Isn't this overcautious presentism also a belief in the superiority of own worldviews, but only infinitely more boring and without any allure and panache? Maybe it is time for a new Said to write a critique of this new "Bore-ientalism"?