Frederic Leightons Arab Hall - Om nostalgien i rum

Sammanfattning: This study investigates the nostalgic aspects of Frederic Leighton’s Arab Hall. Through analysis of the room and collection, the aim is to identify how the nostalgic feelings are visualized in the hall and what this might say about the nostalgic meaning. Arab Hall serves to function as beautiful surroundings for Leighton’s significant collection of middle-eastern ornament, especially tile works from the 16th and 17th century. The hall is created as an Arabic scene, inspired by the Sicilian palace La Zisa, and Moorish architecture and is therefore not just a display case of exclusive and exotic souvenirs, but provides a context to the collection. This context creates an impression of an escapist dream, placed in London, but longing for the East. The theoretical approach to the nostalgic aspects of Arab Hall is founded in Susan Stewarts On longing, where the nostalgic longing is attached to objects, and these objects then portrays a fragment of a whole: a desired, but always imaginary place, created within. A part of the study is therefore also applied to Jean Baudrillard’s ideas of simulacra and the hyperreal, a world that exists as a representation with no references. The study leads to a discussion of the nostalgic aspects in Arab Hall and concludes that imaginary qualities are essential in order to create nostalgic feelings in physical space. Arab Hall’s many symbols and dreamy atmosphere may create an individual nostalgia, which looks for sincerity, beauty and spirituality, more than a nostalgic interpretation of the East as a geographical place.