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Orientalism and the Reality Effect: Angkor at the Universal Expositions, 1867–1937

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Orientalism and the Reality Effect: Angkor at the Universal Expositions, 1867–1937 Orientalism and the Reality Effect: Angkor at the Universal Expositions, 1867–1937 Isabelle Flour I found this reproduction of Angkor extremely moving, and then, straight away, I told myself: “Is it accurate? Is the reality more or less grand?” — René Benjamin, 19221 In his report on the 1922 Exposition coloniale at Marseille for the French populist weekly magazine L’Illustration, the reactionary novelist René Benjamin echoed the sentiments of most visitors to universal expositions, who had, since 1867, witnessed the trend of reproducing emblematic architectural monuments through the building of ephemeral national pavilions. As has been analyzed in Saidian terms specifically by Tim Mitchell for Egypt and by Zeynep Çelik for Islamic architecture, the question of the accuracy of these architectural reconstructions was central to the representation of nations or cultures that were considered integral parts of the essentialist category “the Orient.”2 In most cases, the construction of a fantasized Orient at the universal and colonial expositions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was a constituent of an imperialist nar- rative seeking to demonstrate the inferior, preevolutionary, and premodern condition of an exoticized “Other” in order to legitimate the Western civilizing mission. This intellec- tual construct was mediated by pavilions or urban quarters of native architecture — built in many cases by European architects — and supplemented by indigenous people whose role was to authenticate the fictional settings in which they performed. Whereas much ink has been spilled on the phantasmatic nature of the reproduction of Islamic architec- ture at the universal expositions, the case of Cambodia has been somewhat overlooked in recent literature despite its remarkable documentation in the Getty Research Institute’s vast collection of related visual materials.3 In fact, Cambodia shared a common fate with all things “Oriental,” and the his- tory of its representation in Europe was deeply embedded in French colonial institutions. From the signature of the protectorate in 1863 forward, explorations commissioned by French ministries made extensive surveys and brought back material evidence of the Khmer ruins. This comparatively late rediscovery of Khmer architectural heritage by Europeans had swathed Angkor, the capital city of the Khmer empire (802–1431) and pres- ent-day Cambodia’s most emblematic site, with an aura of mystery. This mood infused Getty Research Journal, no. 6 (2014): 63 – 82 © 2014 Isabelle Flour 63 picturesque travel accounts written by authors ranging from pioneer explorers — such as Henri Mouhot, Francis Garnier, and Louis Delaporte — to such novelists as Pierre Loti and André Malraux, through journalists writing in the popular press.4 The shroud of mystery thickened with the representation of Angkor at the French universal and colonial exposi- tions, where successive pavilions from 1889 to 1906 interpreted original Khmer monu- ments with unbridled imagination. However, the so-called authenticity of these often deceptive reconstructions was paradoxically supported from 1889 to 1937 by the faithful- ness usually granted to the plaster cast medium, whether taken on site or copied from the collection of the Musée Indochinois (Indochinese museum) at the Trocadero in Paris. Indeed, plaster casts dramatically contributed to the “reality effect” of these architectural reconstructions, to use the terms of Roland Barthes’s analysis of modern literature.5 Whereas in literature this reality effect was to be obtained by accumulating insignificant descriptive details that were apparently detached from the narrative’s signifying structure, in the representation of architecture it was to be reached by reproducing its ornamented surface (rather than by a synthetic emphasis on its structure), by virtue of the plaster cast’s “resemblance by contact,” as it was termed by Didi-Huberman.6 Plaster cast as a medium, therefore, acquired a status as a trace or imprint of the direct contact of the plastic material with an original referent actually existing or having existed. But this article will show that plaster casts were also subject to montage, assemblage, and alteration, which could easily go unnoticed without knowledge of the original referent. Of course, this reality effect of plaster casts can be considered as analogous to the tricks used in illusionistic devices of fin-de-siècle mass culture spectacles, such as dioramas, in which real objects were sometimes integrated to simulate seemingly immediate experience.7 Yet, it might as well be argued that this reality effect was also an integral part of the usual regime of Orientalism: as Edward Said and Homi Bhabha have noted, respectively, Orientalism is “a form of radical realism,” and colonial discourse “employs a system of representation, a regime of truth, that is structurally similar to realism.”8 It will not be surprising, then, to learn that plaster casts were also used to enhance the reality effect of other such Orientalist representations. For example, as early as the 1867 Exposition universelle in Paris, plaster casts were part of the reconstruction of the temple of Quetzalcóatl at Xochicalco (Mexico), right after the failure of the French inter- vention in Mexico (1861–67): after the Commission Scientifique du Mexique (1864–67) aborted its display project at the exposition, one of its members, Léon Méhédin (1828– 1905), who had taken plaster casts on site, initiated the monument’s reconstruction, which significantly diverged from its referent.9 Likewise, plaster casts of various monu- ments from Java (some of which were afterward offered to the Musée Indochinois by the minister of the colonies of the Netherlands) were used to assemble and authenticate the composite pavilion of the Dutch East Indies built for the 1900 Exposition universelle in Paris by E. von Saher, director of the museum and school of decorative arts at Haarlem, who had led a casting expedition for that purpose.10 64 getty research journal, no. 6 (2014) Furthermore, despite the abundant literature on the famous Street of Cairo set up by Baron Alphonse Delort de Gléon (1843–99) for the 1889 Exposition universelle in Paris, it is little stressed that plaster casts were used in its making, as is highlighted by heretofore unnoticed archive material documenting the later offer of such casts to the Musée de Sculpture Comparée (Museum of Comparative Sculpture).11 Most likely, the plaster casts’ authenticating power was exceeded by that of the fragments of actual buildings inserted in the facades as well as the display of indigenous donkey-drivers.12 In the case of Cambodia, as in that of the 1889 Street of Cairo, illusionistic displays were further enhanced from 1906 to 1931 by the presence of the royal Cambodian dancers, who served to further authenticate the setting, which by 1922 reflected unprecedented accuracy. The reality effect resulting from the combined “authenticity” of plaster casts and native people was only to be disrupted when the modernity achieved by the colonies broke through the Orientalist prism of primitivism at the climax of the French colonial empire, embodied by the 1931 Exposition coloniale in Paris. Highlighting the use of plaster casts and their reality effect to represent Cambodia in France through the colonial period hopefully sheds more light on the political implications of Orientalist discourses while also taking stock of the visual turn to unravel the paradoxes of representation at work within the visual regime of Orientalism.13 Unlike the world-famous reproduction of the Angkor Wat temple of 1931, the first appearance in Paris of artifacts from Angkor — at the 1867 Exposition universelle in Paris — went completely unnoticed. True, these objects were of limited scale and scope: they consisted only of a bunch of fragments and of casts of sulfur, cement, or clay taken on the temples most accessible to contemporary pioneer explorers. These makeshift casts were made in March 1866 during a one-month mission at Angkor by Ernest Doudart de Lagrée (1823–68), a French naval officer who had played an influential role in negoti- ating the French protectorate over Cambodia with King Norodom I in 1863.14 This short reconnaissance trip was preparatory to a later one-week stay in the Angkor region in June of the same year, a mere detour within the context of the Mekong Expedition (1866–68) organized by the navy. Although this long-standing mission eventually concluded that the Mekong was not the navigable road to China the French were seeking, it had led, inci- dentally, to the first archaeological survey of Khmer monuments, which was published within the expedition’s official report of 1873.15 The making of casts and the architec- tural survey had been prompted by Doudart de Lagrée’s encounter with two British men, H. G. Kennedy and John Thomson, who were busy taking the first photographs of Ang- kor that would soon be published in Britain.16 Doudart de Lagrée feared his competitors would outdistance his own men in the race to China, and within this fiercely competitive context, his casts rivaled — as did many markers of imperial appropriation — Thomson’s photographs. Within the framework of the imperial competition raging between France and Britain for colonies in India and Indochina, it is noteworthy that from 1866 onward, Henry Cole, director of the South Kensington Museum, studied how to bring casts of Indian monuments back to the center of the British Empire. In 1869–70,
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