Arabesque: Julia Morgan, Jules Bourgoin, and Rayyane Tabet at Storefront for Art and Architecture

Arabesque: Julia Morgan, Jules Bourgoin, and Rayyane Tabet at Storefront for Art and Architecture12:39

The "Arabesque" represents a global cultural formation linking together a diverse array of architectural patterns, motifs, geographies, ideologies, and histories. In the exhibition "Arabesque" held at Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York in Spring 2020, contemporary artist Rayyane Tabet explores alternative understandings of the Arabesque by weaving together the narratives of two relatively little known, but highly important, historical figures: Jules Bourgoin (1838–1908) and Julia Morgan (1872–1957).

Jules Bourgoin was a French theoretician of Islamic ornament whose prolifically illustrated publications on art from the Arab world sought to systematically analyze ornament into its elements through rigorous description and drawing. Julia Morgan was one of the most prolific American architects in history, the first woman to graduate from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and long-time architect to the Hearst family castle in California which deployed an Arabesque decorative style.

In this film, SCI-Arc History + Theory faculty John Cooper and Rayyane Tabet discuss the interlinking of Bourgoin's and Morgan's shared entanglement in the Arabesque via their overlapping presence in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. Drawing on the context of colonial cultural appropriation through "universal exhibitions," and the narrative of Tabet's own encounter with the two figures, the Arabesque emerges as a powerful principle of inter-cultural connectivity. Looking in detail at Tabet's own appropriations and interventions with Bourgoin's publications and Morgan's architecture, the film also draws out a parallel between the work on display and the operable "cut-out" facade of the Storefront gallery.

Crew Credits -

Production:
Creator and Executive Producer - Hernan Diaz Alonso
Producers - Marcelyn Gow/Reza Monahan
Director - Reza Monahan
Director of Photography - Lauren Murphy
B Camera - Tyler Marchewski
C Camera - Nelson Smith
Sound Engineer - Tyler Killer

Post-Production:
Story Producer - Cal Crawford
Editors - Cal Crawford/Reza Monahan

Soundtrack: "Diversion" by Transfolmer
Attribution: ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Image Credits: -

All exhibition opening photos by Zeina Zeitoun

https://www.flickr.com/photos/storefront/albums/72157713015601861

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https://rawi-magazine.com/articles/bourgoin/

FLORA BABIN (http://shpfq1.org)

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