I don’t expect
many people to be familiar with the works of Alexander Roubtzoof, first because
he was one of the last orientalists, and second because his style, especially in
his last works, diverged drastically from the line followed by most
orientalists, particularly when painting women. Between 1914 and his death in 1949,
Roubtzoff lived in Tunisia; does this make me have a soft spot for his works? Maybe.
But Above all, I particularly like his focus on motion which was more refined than the depiction
of stationary scenes that characterised oriental paintings in general. Before acquiring a French citizenship through
naturalisation, Roubzooff was born in Russia and was of Russian origins, but
this does not necessarily make of him a socialist , (sorry, the title of the post was meant to mislead you!!).
However, something in his paintings makes him an innovator.
Roubtzoff’s style
departs considerably from the style of early painters of the orientalist school
whose works were characterised by garish sensuality, something which also typified
some of Robtozoff’s earlier paintings. His more mature works tend to illustrate
realistic scenes in their naturalistic fullness and complexity. Roubtzoof, who
has resided for a long time in Tunisia, is known for his depiction of rural
women, Bedouins. The last of these pictures is Bedouin Alya, which he painted
in 1941.
Bedouin Alya presents
a very rich scene that embodies the maturity of the artist’s style. It also
presents something rare in the Orientalist paintings: women at work. The environment
around the Bedouin captures the intensity of the women’s toil. The earthenware
pot where couscous cooks on a canoun
of approximately the same colour as the pot next to the woman, the bowl between
her hands, her slim, brown arms with protruding veins, and the tattoos over her
arms and face. The earth’s presence is strong in the scene, in the colour of the
Bedouin’s skin that imitates the brown rich earth, the earthenware and clay material
around her, the vegetables, the fronds carpet covering the wall in the rear, and
the very posture of the Bedouin, that could have also been meditative.
Age is visible in
her parted lips and the veins in her arms; but she is by no means to be discarded
or treated as a useless accessory now that she has grown old. The harmony
between the colours, and the vividness of the materials, earthenware and
fabric, stunningly refer to times when women held the balance of the household’s
existence until the last breath. The weariness over the woman’s face is a story
of toil which is not necessarily romantic or unfair, for it imparts a suffering
that defies death through movement.
With her bare,
slim hands, and the scattered vegetables at the tip of her fingers, the woman
seems to generate a world of abundance and harness its elements in perfect
legerdemain despite age. You and I may have memories of the old world of
abundance; if not, we may at least have been told stories about it. A friend of
mine once told me how she was brought up in a traditional Tunisian household,
the kind of households that accommodated many families under its roofs, usually
brothers and their wives and offspring. She told me how her grandmother used to
cook the meal for the entire family, then divide it into several shares, and
put each share in a bowl which she would then give to the families living in
the house. Strangely, (perhaps even magically) the shares used to be sufficient
for all members of the big family. Fairytales telling about small portions of
food which, despite being shared with many people, last longer than bigger
portions of food that are kept selfishly to oneself, may have some truth in
them.
This thing has a
name, it is called ‘Baraka’ in Arabic, a word literally meaning ‘blessing’, but
which has a whole system of spirituality, wellbeing and wise management
attached to it. I am sure the word has innumerable equivalent terms in
different languages and belief systems. In most cultures women are
storytellers, midwives, herbalists, and they are the earliest doctors that
tribes had ever known. The kitchen we see in Roubtzoff’s painting (or it could
be any corner in the house) is more a laboratory where health and wellbeing are
controlled, than a place to signify women’s servitude. I am not defending the
kitchen, nor am I saying that women that Roubtzoff painted enjoyed freedom
because they worked inside the house instead of outside; but I am referring to
a belief system where women radiated beyond their personal boundaries. If you
think I am writing this to say that women are better inside the house than
elsewhere, then you are probably reading the wrong post, for this is not an article about
women fitting in or out of somewhere. Probably it’s time we shift
the focus back to values and to the lost spiritualities that condense the
meaning of existence. Roubtzoff’s Bedouin illustrates the first of these: Work,
Motion, Life.
