Turquerie and the Politics of Representation, 1728-1876

Abstract

NEBAHAT AVCIOGLU, Turquerie and the Politics of Representation, 1728-1876 (Farnham: Ashgate, c2011). Pp. 338. $124.95 cloth.Why is it that when Picasso finds inspiration in African art he is applauded, but when non-European artists reinterpret western cultures, their work may be derided as imitative? Why is it that when the Ottomans use western forms and motifs in their architecture it is taken as axiomatic that their own culture has run out of ideas, but when influences-turquerie-appear in European cultures, they are regarded as exotic frivolity? The answer is simple: it depends who is telling the story.In this richly illustrated book, Nebahat Avcioglu proposes new narrative to overturn the old. Her thesis is that retrospective interpretation of the Enlightenment as march towards rationality, liberty and progress, needs to be complicated. She posits that Enlightenment thinking was relativist where non-European cultures were concerned, leading to the characterization of the Ottoman Empire as Europe's 'other,' and to the view that its artifacts are inconsequential beyond their decorative function. The idea that Ottoman culture might have had an impact of any significance upon European culture is barely accepted-influences are usually seen as flowing in the other direction, as wafts of the currents of modernization originating in the West found imperfect echoes in the East.The evidence Avcioglu adduces in order to refute the prevailing wisdom are the foremost examples of Ottoman architectural forms constructed in western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She focuses in particular on the kiosks erected between 1737 and 1740 by Stanislas Leszczynski, twice-deposed King of Poland, on his estate at Luneville in Lorraine; the Turkish Tent pavilion built in Vauxhall Gardens in 1742, whose probable patron was Frederick, Prince of Wales; the Turkish-style mosque built in Kew Gardens in 1762 that Frederick initiated; and the Jermyn Street Hammam, realized by the British social reformer David Urquhart in 1862. None of these structures survives today, but each leftbehind paper trail that Avcioglu has mined to advantage.Far from being mere simulacrums, these buildings were inspired either by their patrons' firsthand knowledge of Ottoman architecture-in the case of Stanislas and Urquhart-or by the indirect knowledge afforded by close reading of travel literature. Far from being the ephemeral fantasies of eccentrics, these structures were designed to last; moreover, they were the product of dynamic and reciprocal, rather than static and dichotomous, cultural exchange. By analyzing the different building types over span of time, Avcioglu maintains, we become aware of the specific context within which each was conceived and can appreciate it on its own terms.Avcioglu writes that the individuals who decided to build alaturca were all in different ways alienated. Stanislas had lost his kingdom; Frederick was Hanoverian prince but his biological father was rumored to be the servant of his mother Queen Caroline, whose disfavoring of her eldest son inspired play about the hatred of Suleyman I's consort Roxelana for her stepson Mustafa; Urquhart was recalled diplomat at odds with the Establishment.Stanislas had an abiding interest in the Ottoman world, having accepted refuge within its frontiers after his defeat at Poltava in 1709. By 1737 he was under French protection at Luneville and soon commissioned Kiosque, with close stylistic resemblance to prototypes, to be built on his estate; this was not his first venture into Ottoman architecture, and he built second, very different kiosk the following year. Avcioglu argues that Stanislas's use of forms arose from the context of political marginalization to which he was consigned. Comfortable to embrace distant and respected culture, he could thereby represent himself as distinctive royal personage-rather than as a king without kingdom, an abject supplicant at the French court. …