Orientalism

In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the West. In particular, Orientalist painting, depicting more specifically 'the Middle East', was one of the many specialisms of 19th-century academic art, and the literature of Western countries took a similar interest in Oriental themes.Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte du Nouÿ, The White Slave, 1888Fernand Cormon, The Deposed Favourite, 1872Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), Pool in a Harem, c. 1876Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque, 1814Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, with the assistance of his pupil Paul Flandrin, Odalisque with Slave, 1839Ferdinand Max Bredt (1860–1921) Turkish ladies 1893Giulio Rosati, Inspection of New Arrivals, 1858–1917, Circassian beauties being inspectedJohn Frederick Lewis, The Reception, 1873AntiquityIran In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects in the Eastern world. These depictions are usually done by writers, designers, and artists from the West. In particular, Orientalist painting, depicting more specifically 'the Middle East', was one of the many specialisms of 19th-century academic art, and the literature of Western countries took a similar interest in Oriental themes. Since the publication of Edward Said's Orientalism in 1978, much academic discourse has begun to use the term 'Orientalism' to refer to a general patronizing Western attitude towards Middle Eastern, Asian, and North African societies. In Said's analysis, the West essentializes these societies as static and undeveloped—thereby fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced. Implicit in this fabrication, writes Said, is the idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior. Orientalism refers to the Orient, in reference and opposition to the Occident; the East and the West, respectively. The word Orient entered the English language as the Middle French orient. The root word oriēns, from the Latin Oriēns, has synonymous denotations: The eastern part of the world; the sky whence comes the sun; the east; the rising sun, etc.; yet the denotation changed as a term of geography. In the 'Monk's Tale' (1375), Geoffrey Chaucer wrote: 'That they conquered many regnes grete / In the orient, with many a fair citee.' The term 'orient' refers to countries east of the Mediterranean Sea and Southern Europe. In Place of Fear (1952), Aneurin Bevan used an expanded denotation of the Orient that comprehended East Asia: 'the awakening of the Orient under the impact of Western ideas'. Edward Said said that Orientalism 'enables the political, economic, cultural and social domination of the West, not just during colonial times, but also in the present.' In art history, the term Orientalism refers to the works of the Western artists who specialized in Oriental subjects, produced from their travels in Western Asia, during the 19th century. In that time, artists and scholars were described as Orientalists, especially in France, where the dismissive use of the term 'Orientalist' was made popular by the art critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary. Despite such social disdain for a style of representational art, the French Society of Orientalist Painters was founded in 1893, with Jean-Léon Gérôme as the honorary president; whereas in Britain, the term Orientalist identified 'an artist'. The formation of the French Orientalist Painters Society changed the consciousness of practitioners towards the end of the 19th century, since artists could now see themselves as part of a distinct art movement. As an art movement, Orientalist painting is generally treated as one of the many branches of 19th-century academic art; however, many different styles of Orientalist art were in evidence. Art historians tend to identify two broad types of Orientalist artist: the realists who carefully painted what they observed and those who imagined Orientalist scenes without ever leaving the studio. French painters such as Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) and Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904) are widely regarded as the leading luminaries of the Orientalist movement. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term Orientalist identified a scholar who specialized in the languages and literatures of the Eastern world. Among such scholars were British officials of the East India Company, who said that the Arab culture, the culture of India, and the Islamic cultures should be studied as equal to the cultures of Europe. Among such scholars is the philologist William Jones, whose studies of Indo-European languages established modern philology. British imperial strategy in India favored Orientalism as a technique for developing good relations with the natives—until the 1820s, when the influence of 'anglicists' such as Thomas Babington Macaulay and John Stuart Mill led to the promotion of Anglocentric education. Additionally, Hebraism and Jewish studies gained popularity among British and German scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries. The academic field of Oriental studies, which comprehended the cultures of the Near East and the Far East, became the fields of Asian studies and Middle Eastern studies. In the book Orientalism (1978), the cultural critic Edward Said redefined the term Orientalism to describe a pervasive Western tradition — academic and artistic — of prejudiced outsider-interpretations of the Eastern world, which was shaped by the cultural attitudes of European imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries. The thesis of Orientalism develops Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony, and Michel Foucault's theorisation of discourse (the knowledge-and-power relation) to criticise the scholarly tradition of Oriental studies. Said criticised contemporary scholars who perpetuated the tradition of outsider-interpretation of Arabo-Islamic cultures, especially Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami. The analyses are of Orientalism in European literature, especially French literature, and do not analyse visual art and Orientalist painting. In that vein, the art historian Linda Nochlin applied Said's methods of critical analysis to art, 'with uneven results'. In the academy, the book Orientalism (1978) became a foundational text of post-colonial cultural studies. Moreover, in relation to the cultural institution of citizenship, Orientalism has rendered the concept of citizenship as a problem of epistemology, because citizenship originated as a social institution of the Western world; as such, the problem of defining citizenship reconfigures the idea of Europe in time of crises.