Gérôme based on copying plaster casts). Most interesting about this Orientalist sentinel is that he is not guarding some important mosque or mausoleum (for instance, Gérôme's sentinel in Philadelphia). Rather he seduces us into domestic consumption though a "pop up" store. Not situated in a suq or bazar, the ideology of this interaction between painter, sentinel, and viewer involves household goods (cloth, vessels, carpet, waterpipe).
The sentinel opens his house for us to purchase the touristic memorabilia that we will display us trophies upon our return in the West. He keeps a lookout for we know that there is something illegal happening in this illicit place of commerce. Suggestively leaning his body on the wall, the sentinel directs the axis of meaning from left to right, through his body, towards an invisible interior that might offer additional "experiences."The wooden shutter, precariously held, might close at any moment and return the scene into an ordinary corner rather than a locus of transgressive exchange.
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