Building The Exotic?
Integration, Exhibition, and Imitation of Non-Western Material Culture in France and Switzerland (1660-1800)
This research project explores how, during the 17th and 18th centuries, foreign material culture was introduced into France and Switzerland and integrated into European interiors and decorative arts. Scholars have emphasized this era’s emerging taste for the exotic in order to explain the unprecedented craze for lacquer, porcelain and textiles that imitated non-Western techniques and iconography. Others refer to Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism in order to politicize such interest in Asia, India and the Americas. What constituted the exotic during the age of Enlightenment? How was the place of foreign material culture negotiated, at various scales and in various contexts? And how did it impact European identities? This project intends to move from questions about the nature of exoticism to explore exoticism in practice. The physical relocation of material fragments in European interiors will be at its core. Finally, the raise of disciplines such as anthropology and ethnology, in particular in the west part of Switzerland during the second half of the eighteenth century, through collection, publication, and print culture, will be of major interest.
