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THE QUOTABLE
EGYPTIAN REVIVAL
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The appeal of ancient Egypt [in the early 19th century] was more than just exoticism. It had to do with the mystery
of hieroglyphs, the spookiness of tomb culture, the precious materials
and impressive buildings. Nothing on the scale of ancient Egyptian
pyramids was then known; they were like something from outer space.
--Philip Hewat-Jaboor,
quoted by Wendy Moonan,
"When London and Paris Looked to the Nile
for Inspiration." New York Times, 11 July 2008
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In 1989, when I.M. Pei’s Glass Pyramid was installed in the courtyard of the Louvre Palace in Paris,
[2.2] 200 years after that building was transformed into one of the
great art museums of the world by the revolutionaries of 1789, it was
not without its critics. They focused on the dissonance between the
original ornate building from the period of high feudalism of France and the glass pyramid somewhere between New Age and Pharaonic Egypt. But to my mind, both buildings sit well together, the original palace as one of the Ancien Regime’s most
outrageous (which rage came out in 1789) creations, and the pyramid as
a summary comment on the structure of the regime itself.
Ian MacDougall, "The Fourth Transition."
<<http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/2345>>, 26 April 2008
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Thus did kitsch pictures such as "The Procession of Cleopatra," by the
19th-century Orientalist painter Ernst-Ferdinand Eichler, come to be
offered in the same sale as Abstract compositions by Miró and Cubist
works by Juan Gris and Henri Laurens.
Souren Melikian, "Drouot raises
Paris's profile in the auction world."
International Herald Tribune, 4 January 2008 |
| For this doctor, plastic surgery is "a way of promoting
happiness and healthy function, not self-indulgent
vanity." He does not promote plastic surgery in a
"carnal, worldly way, no Egyptian goddesses or
unattainable supermodel images here."
--Gregg L. Parker, "Plastic Surgeon Tries to
Keep his Practice Personal,"
The Huntsville Times, 10 October 2007,
quoting Dr. Patrick Lappert
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"'Why
do they come 'ere, what for? Look at it, there's nothing here, the
place is a dump. Why would you bother? I mean, Houses of Parliament?
Big Ben? Just a building. If you were gonna go somewhere you'd go to
Egypt wouldn't yer? See them things, what they called?' He made angry
triangular shapes in the air with his hands before finding the word he
was after.
"'Pyramids! What are they for, bruv? What are they about?'
"'Tombs, innit?' said his mate, but the man was undeterred.
"'Big Ben!' he shouted. 'What is it? It's just a clock on a stick, innit? A bleedin' tower!'"
--Michael Holden, "Some of My Best Quotes
Come from Builders," The Telegraph (London)
Telegraph.co.uk, 7 October 2007,
observing two construction workers in London
remarking on passing German tourists
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"Karaoke Room" is a neatly equipped domestic shrine to unrecognizable talent. The room bears trompe l'oeil murals of ancient Egyptian temples and pyramids. Delusions of grandeur, anyone?
--Lea Ollman, "Brian Mains at Hunsaker/Schlesinger
(Also reviewed: Exhibitions by Charlene Liu,
Koo Sung Soo and Pipo Nguyen-duy),"
Los Angeles Times, 21 September 2007,
regarding the exhibit of Sung Soo's
large-scale photographs
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"I had
waited so long to see such decadence and was stunned," she told us. "I
loved his youthful wild indulgence and although the young king died
young he burnt brightly. The collection is not Egyptian-inspired, it is
a homage to immoderation and luxury."
--Dolly Jones, "Packham's New Woman,"
Vogue.com, 7 September 2007,
quoting fashion designer Jenny Packham,
who spoke of the Tutankhamen exhibit
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Darren
Dahl, a marketing professor at the University of British Columbia,
doesn't see any harm in appropriating references from other cultures or
historical periods for the names and designs of condo developments.
But if it's
done tactlessly, he says, it could take on the irrelevant ersatz of the
Las Vegas strip, with its fake Eiffel Tower and Egyptian pyramid.
--Kerry Gold, "The Name Game,"
The Globe and Mail (Canada), 31 August 2007
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How
does the Discovery Channel gauge what is good enough to film? Aside
from lions, sharks and Egyptian tombs, which have gained “cool
status” through years of commercial worship, how does the famed
documentary TV channel rule on content?
--NÁ, "WWID- What would Indiana do?"
Iceland Review_Online, 25 August 2007
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Every year there are new names for this heavy-lipped, heavy-lidded look. [...]
The
question is whether a retro look befitting Norma Desmond or an Egyptian
mummy could work on a contemporary woman who spends her working day not
in a West Hollywood swimming pool or on a Nile barge but in a Midtown
office.
--Natasha Singer,
"No, I haven't been Mugged. Why Do you Ask?"
New York Times, August 23, 2007
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By stripping the pyramid of
its kitschy icons and replacing loudly themed restaurants and stores
with those bearing stylish, hushed ambience, the pyramid "isn't a
symbol of Egypt but a symbol of "sexiness, of nightlife," Schadler said.
--Liz Benston,
"Luxor to Shed its Egyptian Image."
The Mercury News.com, July 29, 2007
(quoting John Schadler of the marketing firm
hired to "transform" the Luxor hotel and casino in Las Vegas)
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| Art furniture leapt whole from
the head of maestro Ettore Sottsass, a Milanese architect who, with his
merry band, launched Memphis (a riff on both Elvis's hometown and ancient
Egypt), a collection of pieces hardly anyone could afford or even
get their hands on. Memphis was so fanciful and so arch, people are
still arguing about it.
--Dorothy Kalins "Design
of the Time."
Newsweek 147.12, March 20,
2006, p. 58
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| "... Our biggest act this summer
died 3,000 years ago." AEG's big show? King Tut, which has sold 1.2 million
tickets in Los Angeles alone. No pyrotechnic midgets, no strippers.
--Jennifer Ordoñez,
"The New School of Rock: promoters cut prices
and add perks." Newsweek
146.6, August 8, 2005, p. 38
(quoting Randy Phillips, chief executive
officer of show promoter firm AEG
Live)
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| The couple exchanged vows on Sept. 21 at the Old Whaler's Church in Sag
Harbor, N.Y., an Egyptian Revival structure that resembles a big,
square wedding cake.
--Jennifer Tung, "Weddings/Celebrations: Vows;
Cynthia De Vivo and Seth Berkley."
The New York Times, September 29, 2002
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| Much has clouded our view of
this once mighty civilization. "Egyptomania," or the craze for things Egyptian,
did not help further understanding of the genius of the art.
--Joanna Shaw-Eagle,
"Everlasting Beauty of Egyptian Creation."
The Washington Times, October
30, 1999
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Obelisks, pyramids and all the other Egyptian-derived forms, which for
centuries, even before the great excavations of the 19th century,
permeated Western art and architecture (the Egyptian Hall in London,
the original Tombs in lower Manhattan, the old suspension bridge over
the Neva in St. Petersburg, the Pyramid at the Louvre in Paris and on
and on) proved that the Egyptians succeeded, to a degree probably even
they didn't anticipate, in leaving a legacy to outlast themselves.
--Michael Kimmelman,
"Old Friend, Forever Mysterious."
The New York Times, September 17, 1998
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Egyptomania rules.
--Wendy Moonan,
"The Enduring Attraction of Egypt."
The New York Times, September 4, 1998
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"One of the reasons I got involved with Egyptomania as a collector was
as an attempt to understand some of the strange things the public asks
me in relation to my serious work,'' says Richard Fazzini, chairman of
the Egyptian, classical and ancient Middle Eastern art department at
the Brooklyn Museum, which houses one of the finest Egyptian
collections in the country. ''Questions kept popping up, like 'Did
ancient Egyptians have really long fangs?' When you are curating a show
or writing a text, you have to deal with certain misconceptions.''
--Marina Isola,
"Curators, Too, Can Be Collectors, Within Limits."
The New York Times, September 1, 1996
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Where you find contemporary artists seriously engaged with Egyptian
art, you sense the private struggles for meaning and the degree of
artistic resistance to the noise and commerce of the art world. You
sense the kind of silent currents that are always flowing through the
art world away from the mainstream. And you encounter some of the
personal responses to a moment in which the meaning of art seems
severely tested by mortality and money.
"Egyptian Art is Alive and Well in the West."
The New York Times, December 31, 1989
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| In November of 1908, Picasso
and his mistress, Fernande Olivier, organized a banquet in honor
of Le Douanier Rousseau, at which the guest of honor is said to have
told Picasso: "We are the two greatest painters of our epoch, you
in the Egyptian style, I in the modern." As the banquet took place
in Picasso's studio, where as far as I know Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
was still on view to Picasso's pals, there is a certain crackpot
acuity tantamount to wit in Rousseau's seeing Picasso as part of an Egyptian
revival.
Arthur C. Danto, "Georges
Braque."
The Nation, August, 1988
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Looking back upon the nineteenth-century
stylistic revivals from our vantage point of a hundred years and
more, we may be inclined to think them pedantic or puerile, uninspired
or lacking in creative genius...
This was true of
the Egyptian revival...
--Alice Winchester,
editor, Antiques 90.4, October, 1966, p. 481
(in an introduction to the Antiques
section, which in this issue
featured three major article on
Egyptian Revival topics)
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Elvis
wore what appeared to be a heavy, expensive ankh on a chain around his
neck. An ankh is a cross with a loop at the top; it is worn as an
Egyptian symbol of enduring life.
[...]
At 10:30, Elvis, his cape outstretched with his arms, bowed and left.
The man in the serge suit announced:
"Elvis has left the building."
Gene Miller, "Screams, Squirms and Song:
Elvis Aron Presley, 21, Offstage is Quiet, Likable."
The Richmond News Leader, July 2, 1956
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| Modern interpretations of Egyptian costume
have an air that is dashing and bizarre; in reality the Egyptians
were conservative in costume as in all else.
-- Mary McAlister,
"Ancient Costume and Modern Fashion,"
Art and Archaeology 15, April
1923
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| Her viewpoint was that of the
average person, and the average person cannot see the importance of the
scarab in the scheme of things. The opinion she formed of Mr. Peters was
of his being an eccentric old gentleman, making a great to-do about nothing
at all. Losses had to have a concrete value before they could impress Joan.
It was beyond her to grasp that Mr. Peters would sooner have lost a diamond
necklace, if he had happened to possess one, than his Cheops of the Fourth
Dynasty.
--P.G. Wodehouse, Something
New, 1915
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| Egyptian architecture will do
nowhere but in Egypt. There, its cold and gloomy ponderosity ("weight"
is too petty a word!) befits the hot, burning atmosphere and shifting sands.
But in such a climate as this [in England], it is nothing but an uncouth
anomaly. The absurdity, however, renders it a good advertisement.
--Leigh Hunt, "A Saunter
through the West End,"
The Atlas, 1847, p. 43
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| 'Then, for the little room, I
recommend turning it temporarily into a Chinese pagoda, with this Chinese
pagoda paper, with the
porcelain border, and josses, and jars,
and beakers to match; and I can venture to promise one vase of pre-eminent
size and beauty. Oh, indubitably! if your la'ship prefers it, you can have
the Egyptian hieroglyphic paper, with the ibis border to
match! The only objection is, one sees it everywhere--quite antediluvian
--gone to the hotels even....'
--Mary Edgeworth, The
Absentee, 1812
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| It cannot but be highly gratifying
to every person of genuine taste, to observe the revolution which has,
within these few years, taken place in the furniture and decorations of
the apartments of people of fashion. In consequence of this revolution,
effected principally by the study of the antique, and the refined notions
of beauty derived from that source, the barbarous Egyptian style, which
a few years since prevailed, is succeeded by the classical elegance which
has characterized the most polished ages of Greece and Rome.
--The Repository
of the Arts 2, 1809 (August), p. 132
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| Everything now must be Egyptian:
the ladies wear crocodile ornaments, and you sit upon a sphinx in a room
hung round with mummies, and with long black lean-armed long-nosed hieroglyphical
men, who are enough to make the children afraid to go to bed. The very
shopboards must be metamorphosed into the mode, and painted in Egyptian
letters, which, as the Egyptians had no letters, you will doubtless conceive
must be curious. They are simply the common characters, deprived of all
beauty and all proportion by having all the strokes of equal thickness,
so that those which should be thin look as if they had the elephantiasis.
--Robert Southey, Letters
from England, 1807, p. 449
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| Let me however avail myself of
the description of this room, to urge young artists never to adopt, except
from motives more weighty than mere aim of novelty, the Egyptian style
of ornament. The hieroglyphic figures, so universally employed by the Egyptians,
can afford us little pleasure on account of their meaning, since this is
seldom intelligible; they can afford us still less gratification on account
of their outline, since this is never agreeable; at least in as far as
regards those smaller details, which alone are susceptible of being introduced
in our confined spaces. Real Egyptian monuments, built of the hardest materials,
cut out of the most prodigious blocks, even where they please not the eye,
through the elegance of their shapes, still amaze the intellect, through
the immensity of their size, and the indestructibility of their nature.
Modern imitations of those wonders of antiquity, composed of lath and of
plaster, of callico and of paper, offer no one atttribute of solidity or
grandeur to compensate for their want of elegance and grace, and can only
excite ridicule and contempt.
--Thomas Hope, Household
Furniture
and Interior Decoration,
1807, p. 36
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While the nation was in this
distracted situation, there arrived the prince of Quifferiquimini, who
would have been the most accomplished hero of his age, if he had not been
dead, and had spoken any language but the Egyptian, and had not had three
legs. Notwithstanding these blemishes, the eyes of the whole nation were
immediately turned upon him, and each party wished to see him married to
the princess whose cause they espoused.
The old king received
him with the most distinguished honours; the senate made the most fulsome
addresses to him; the princesses were so taken with him, that they grew
more bitter enemies than ever; and the court ladies and petit-maitres invented
a thousand new fashions upon his account -- every thing was to be á
la Quifferiquimini. Both men and women of fashion left off rouge to look
the more cadaverous; their cloathes were embroidered with hieroglyphics,
and all the ugly characters they could gather from Egyptian antiquities,
with which they were forced to be contented, it being impossible to learn
a language that is lost; and all tables, chairs, stools, cabinets and couches,
were made with only three legs; the last, however, soon went out of fashion,
as being very inconvenient.
--Horace Walpole, "The
King and His Three Daughters,"
Hieroglyphic Tales, 1785
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