yer own moorish factual reality

i am just absolutely appalled. disgusted. if you click on the title of this blog, it should take you the the philadelphia museum of art's page about the eduard charlemont painting, the moorish chief . if you read on, you'll note, this title is a fictitios title. it is a title adopted who knows when and by who knows who.

why should i care? because i love this painting. i've been going to the pma since i was in diapers. i've seen this painting a thousand times. and ever time, it takes my breath away.

charlemont titled this piece the guardian of the seraglio . as that title, this painting has a very different meaning. he is not a chief!?!?!!! he is a guard!! guarding what???? a harem, people--A HAREM. in those times, the guard of a harem probably didn't have his genetalia anymore--conflict of interest, right? and they had very high ranking in the ottoman palace.

but chief, they were not. clans--tribes. no! "warlords" as our current societly likes to think of sultans he was certainly not. this was painted during the ottoman empire... maybe charlemont used the alhambra as a political gesture. maybe he used it as an exotic background. maybe he never traveled beyond europe & the us. who knows.

but when the phila collector got a hold of it in 1892--he didn't much like his collection including any reference to a harem--or a castrated guard. so he changed it from a seraglio guard to the alhambra guard .

and now... all hints of history are wiped from it.

it is now only the moorish chief. and so goes down muslim history. wiped away. stolen. taken. re-interpreted for the caucasian audience.

like most things will arc towards in the future.

dignity is in the hands of those who want to maintian their own.

fact is within the confines of interpretation and language. usualy the language of those who have done the interpreting.

and thus we go from the facts of the painting to an interpretation of what the painting *should* allude to. not at all fact--but yet FACT to all who have viewed this paining since it was in the phila museum of art--probably after the collapse of the ottoman empire and post ww1.