The Politics of Spanish Orientalism: Distance and Proximity in Tapiró and Bertuchi

Abstract

The two Spanish artists José Tapiró y Baró and Mariano Bertuchi Nieto, have been neglected in English-speaking scholarship. They spent nearly half their lives in Morocco; they are not only significant for our understanding of Spanish Orientalism but also relevant to broader theoretical debates about Western attitudes towards Islamic cultures. This article teases out the nuanced subject positions, changing inflections and possible meanings of their representations of Morocco in the ten years prior to and during the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco (1912–1956). Tapiró’s ethnographic portraits have a distancing effect, ranging from suggestions of “primitivity” to “fanaticism,” which resonate with European calls for intervention in Morocco. Bertuchi’s varied practice intersects with Andalucismo ideology and the concept of a “Spanish-Moroccan brotherhood” that was used to justify Spain’s colonial enterprise, including under Franco. On the one hand, the relation between cultural expression and power recalls Said’s theory of Orientalism; on the other, Bertuchi’s visual rhetoric of cultural proximity and its continued appeal to Spanish and Moroccan audiences serve to refigure orthodox understandings of Orientalism based on opposition (us/them). The two case studies further demonstrate that it would be misleading to speak of Spanish Orientalism in the visual arts as a single, unified discourse.