Visions of Egypt is a blockbuster having a breakdown. It argues that modern racism towards Egypt began with the Battle of Actium in 31BC when Octavian defeated Mark Antony and his lover Cleopatra, the ruler of Egypt, and annexed it. The Romans looted Egypt’s art, “demonised” its queen, and “laid the groundwork for western perceptions … that still persist today”.
But to claim that ancient Rome still influences perceptions of Egypt is just bad history. It ignores the complexities, changes and contradictions of such a huge stretch of time. Anyway, why don’t they start with ancient Greece, which borrowed Egypt’s art in Kouroi statues, while Herodotus saw it as a mysterious, exotic other? By lumping 2,000 years into one unbroken wall of western prejudice, this show kills the art it conspicuously fails to love. Surely it’s obvious that when, say, Andy Warhol portrayed Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra and Kenneth Williams mugged it up in Carry On Cleo they were saying something about the 1960s, not the first century BC? Not that they’re in this show, which instead slops together some Victorian art and so-so contemporary work to make its tenuous point about Cleopatra.
