Orientalism
Related: academic art - cultural studies - Arabia - East - Japan - Edward Said
Painters in the oriental style: Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824 - 1904) - Ingres (1780 - 1867)
By the mid-19th century Oriental Studies was an established academic discipline. However, while scholarly study expanded, so did racist attitudes and popular stereotypes of "inscrutable" and "wily" orientals.
The Cedars of Lebanon (1862) - Edward Lear
image sourced http://www.orientalistart.net/Page6.html
Definition
Orientalism is the study of Near and Far Eastern societies and cultures by Westerners. It can also refer to the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists. In the former meaning the term is becoming obsolete, increasingly being used only to refer to the study of the East during the historical period of European imperialism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Because of this, the term "Orientalism" has come to acquire negative connotations in some quarters, implying old-fashioned and prejudiced interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples. This viewpoint was most famously articulated by Edward Said in his book Orientalism (1978). --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orientalism [Jun 2005]
The White Slave (1888) - Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte de Nouy
image sourced here.
See also: 1888 - odalisque - white slavery trope
The Serpent Charmer (ca. 1870) - Jean-Léon Gérôme
Slave Auction in Rome () - Jean-Léon Gérôme
Hermitage, St Petersburg
image sourced here.
Phryné before the Areopagus () - Jean-Léon Gérôme
image sourced here.
Quaerens Quem Devoret (1888) - Jean-Léon Gérôme
image sourced here.
A Moorish Bath - Turkish Woman Bathing, No.2
image sourced here.
Le marché aux esclaves / Slave Market (1866) - Jean-Léon Gérôme
Achat D'Une Esclave / Purchase Of A Slave (1857) - Jean-Léon Gérôme
Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (1995) - Anne McClintock
Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (1995) - Anne McClintock [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From Library Journal
McClintock (English, Columbia Univ.) interprets 19th-century British imperialism as the focal point for that era's major "disclosures," including feminism, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. She describes Victorian urban space?including advertising?as being oriented to exhibit imperial spectacle based on racism and sexism. In turn, the colonies become stages for exhibiting a reinvented patriarchy, with Westerners symbolizing power and indigenous peoples a subdued domesticity. The text is an exercise in demonstrating preconceptions. While some of McClintock's evidence is original, the argument as a whole is conventional bien-pensant wisdom unlikely to convince anyone not already committed to the thesis. The presentation is further burdened by its reliance on the cliches and jargon of feminism, deconstructionism, and other currently fashionable academic ideologies. Imperialism was at once a simpler and a more complex phenomenon than McClintock's perspective allows. For large academic collections only.?D.E. Showalter, Colorado Coll., Colorado Springs
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