Art, Awakening, and Modernity in the Middle East

This edited scholarly volume offers a perspective on the history of the genre of the nude in the Middle East and includes contributions written by scholars from several disciplines (art history, history, anthropology). Each chapter provides a distinct perspective on the early days of the fine arts genre of the nude, as its author studies a particular aspect through analysis of artworks and historical documents from the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. The volume examines a rich body of reproductions of both primary documents and of works of art made by Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian artists or of anonymous book illustrations from the nineteenth century Ottoman erotic literature.

Octavian Esanu is Assistant Professor of Art History at the American University of Beirut.

Introduction: The Arab Nude: A Genre of the Fine Arts as a Tool of Modernization [Octavian Esanu] 1. Necessary Nudes: Hadatha and Mu'asara in the Lives of Modern Lebanese [Kirsten Scheid] 2. Early Representations of Nudity in the Ottoman Press: A Look at Nineteenth-Century Ottoman and Arab Erotic Literature [Hala Auji] 3. Ideal Nudes and Iconic Bodies in the Works of the Egyptian Pioneers [Nadia Radwan] 4. The Nudism of Sheikh Fouad Hobeiche [Hala Bizri] 5. The Feminine Nude as an Expression of Modernism Through the Works of Mahmoud Moukhtar [Elka Correa] 6. Unveiling the Nude and the Crisis of Manhood [Nadia Bou Ali] 7. Musallekhah, or the Anti-Nude [Saleem Al-Baholy]