Monday, October 10, 2005

Orientalist Art

My office is really spartan. But, today I hung up a small picture. The book I got on European explorers in Arabia has a lot of good reproductions of fascinating Orientalist paintings. In particular it has a lot by David Roberts. One of which I especially like. I photocopied it and hung it on my office wall above my computer desk. It is called the "The Letter Writer." It shows a bearded man clad in a red robe and green turban writing something. Sitting to his side is a woman wearing a veil. Behind the man is a very cool looking narghile. According to the picture's caption illiterate people would come to the letter writer both to dictate letters and have letters read to them. For some reason I feel an affinity with the letter writer.

5 comments:

KRISTIN said...

http://www.crossstitchpatterngall.com/rob12.jpg

Why don't you ever put pictures into your blog? because you're a minimalist? spartan type? :D
Well the pic is one copy+paste away now ;) - for others :D

J. Otto Pohl said...

Kristin:

I don't put pictures on the blog because I do not know how to do it. Otherwise, I would have put a picture of my royalty check up. I tried, but I kept getting error messages from blogger.

KRISTIN said...

Oh! How many times did you try? Lately I had problems with getting pictures up, too. I had to try 6-7 times in a row for every picture!

J. Otto Pohl said...

I tried at least three or four times. Then I gave up. I am pretty sure I did something wrong.

KRISTIN said...

Just try again, otto, there's not many ways to do it wrong!