See the market place in Old Algiers, Send me photographs and souvenirs.
-Patsy Cline
Most French souvenirs of Old Algiers, not to mention all those nude harem photographs, are fraught images these days, post-Pontecorvo and following Fanon, of critiques of the male gaze, commodifications of exoticism, and the colonial prerogative writ large. But Picasso apparently hadn’t gotten that message back in 1954 when he painted his series Women of Algiers. And certain Gulf Arabs still haven’t gotten it. Version O set the most expensive painting auction record in 2015, sold to a Qatari shaikh for almost $200 million, only to be eclipsed by twice that two years later when a straw buyer fronted for the Saudi crown prince to purchase a questionable Leonardo, Christ as Salvator Mundi. Both are pigs in a poke of sorts, for neither dare be shown publically in their home countries. Which one, we might ask, is more offensive to local tastes, a breast and bum-baring Odalisque or a triumphant Jesus? Let Patsy decide for us in her next verse, But remember when a dream appears, You belong to me.
Version O