Orientalism

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Jean-Léon Gérôme, The Snake Charmer, c. 1879. Clark Art Institute.

In art history, literature and cultural studies, orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of the Eastern world (or "Orient") by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. Orientalist painting, particularly of the Middle East,[1] was one of the many specialties of 19th-century academic art, and Western literature was influenced by 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 in the service of imperial power. Implicit in this fabrication, writes Said, is the idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior.[2] This allows 'Western imagination' to see 'Eastern' cultures and people as both alluring and a threat to Western civilization.[3]

Background

Etymology

Eugène Delacroix, The Women of Algiers, 1834, the Louvre, Paris

Orientalism refers to the Orient, in reference and opposition to the Occident; the East and the West, respectively.[4][5] 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 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."[6]

Art

Unknown Venetian artist, The Reception of the Ambassadors in Damascus, 1511, Louvre. The deer with antlers in the foreground is not known ever to have existed in the wild in Syria.

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.[7] 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;[8] whereas in Britain, the term Orientalist identified "an artist".[9]

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.[10] 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.[11] 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.[12]

Oriental studies

R. W. Ekman
, 1853.

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 officials of the East India Company, who said that the Arab culture, the Indian culture, and the Islamic cultures should be studied as equal to the cultures of Europe.[16] Among such scholars is the philologist William Jones, whose studies of Indo-European languages established modern philology. Company rule in India favored Orientalism as a technique for developing and maintaining positive relations with the Indians—until the 1820s, when the influence of "anglicists" such as Thomas Babington Macaulay and John Stuart Mill led to the promotion of a Western-style education.[17]

Additionally,

Hebraism and Jewish studies gained popularity among British and German scholars in the 19th and 20th centuries.[18] 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
.

Critical studies

Edward Said

In his book

Arabo-Islamic cultures, especially Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami.[20][21] Furthermore, Said said that "The idea of representation is a theatrical one: the Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined",[22] and that the subject of learned Orientalists "is not so much the East itself as the East made known, and therefore less fearsome, to the Western reading public".[23]

In the academy, the book Orientalism (1978) became a foundational text of

Orientalist painting. In that vein, the art historian Linda Nochlin applied Said's methods of critical analysis to art, "with uneven results".[24] Other scholars see Orientalist paintings as depicting a myth and a fantasy that did not often correlate with reality.[25]

There is also a critical trend within the

Islamic world. In 2002, it was estimated that in Saudi Arabia alone some 200 books and 2,000 articles discussing Orientalism had been penned by local or foreign scholars.[26]

In European architecture and design

Islamic inspiration: Baroque Red Mosque in the garden of the Schwetzingen Palace, Schwetzingen, Germany, the only surviving example of an 18th-century European garden mosque, by Nicolas de Pigage, 1779–1795[27]

The

Indo-Saracenic Revival architecture. One of the earliest examples is the façade of Guildhall, London (1788–1789). The style gained momentum in the west with the publication of views of India by William Hodges, and William and Thomas Daniell from about 1795. Examples of "Hindoo" architecture are Sezincote House (c. 1805) in Gloucestershire, built for a nabob returned from Bengal, and the Royal Pavilion in Brighton
.

Turquerie, which began as early as the late 15th century, continued until at least the 18th century, and included both the use of "Turkish" styles in the decorative arts, the adoption of Turkish costume at times, and interest in art depicting the Ottoman Empire itself. Venice, the traditional trading partner of the Ottomans, was the earliest centre, with France becoming more prominent in the 18th century.

blue and white porcelain from the early 17th century. Early ceramic wares made at Meissen and other centers of true porcelain imitated Chinese shapes for dishes, vases and teawares (see Chinese export porcelain
).

Pleasure pavilions in "Chinese taste" appeared in the formal parterres of late Baroque and Rococo German palaces, and in tile panels at Aranjuez near Madrid. Thomas Chippendale's mahogany tea tables and china cabinets, especially, were embellished with fretwork glazing and railings, c. 1753–1770. Sober homages to early Xing scholars' furnishings were also naturalized, as the tang evolved into a mid-Georgian side table and squared slat-back armchairs that suited English gentlemen as well as Chinese scholars. Not every adaptation of Chinese design principles falls within mainstream "chinoiserie". Chinoiserie media included imitations of lacquer and painted tin (tôle) ware that imitated japanning, early painted wallpapers in sheets, and ceramic figurines and table ornaments. Small pagodas appeared on chimneypieces and full-sized ones in gardens. Kew has a magnificent Great Pagoda designed by William Chambers. The Wilhelma (1846) in Stuttgart is an example of Moorish Revival architecture. Leighton House, built for the artist Frederic Leighton, has a conventional facade but elaborate Arab-style interiors, including original Islamic tiles and other elements as well as Victorian Orientalizing work.

After 1860,

James Abbott McNeill Whistler's The Peacock Room demonstrated how he used aspects of Japanese tradition and are some of the finest works of the genre. California architects Greene and Greene were inspired by Japanese elements in their design of the Gamble House
and other buildings.

Indo-Saracenic Revival architecture was a genre that arose in the late 19th century in the British Raj
.

Orientalist art

Orientalist tendencies in Western art have a long history. Oriental scenes may be found in medieval and Renaissance art, and Islamic art has itself had a profound and formative influence on Western artistic output. Oriental subject matter further proliferated in the 19th century, in step with Western colonialism in Africa and Asia.

Pre-19th century

Sultan Mehmed II, attr. Gentile Bellini, 1480

Depictions of Islamic "

Muslim groups of southern Europe, North Africa and West Asia) can be found in Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art. In Biblical scenes in Early Netherlandish painting, secondary figures, especially Romans, were given exotic costumes that distantly reflected the clothes of the Near East. The Three Magi in Nativity scenes were an especial focus for this. In general art with Biblical settings would not be considered as Orientalist except where contemporary or historicist Middle Eastern detail or settings is a feature of works, as with some paintings by Gentile Bellini and others, and a number of 19th-century works. Renaissance Venice had a phase of particular interest in depictions of the Ottoman Empire in painting and prints. Gentile Bellini, who travelled to Constantinople and painted the Sultan, and Vittore Carpaccio were the leading painters. By then the depictions were more accurate, with men typically dressed all in white. The depiction of Oriental carpets in Renaissance painting sometimes draws from Orientalist interest, but more often just reflects the prestige these expensive objects had in the period.[39]

Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–1789) visited Istanbul and painted numerous pastels of Turkish domestic scenes; he also continued to wear Turkish attire for much of the time when he was back in Europe. The ambitious Scottish 18th-century artist Gavin Hamilton found a solution to the problem of using modern dress, considered unheroic and inelegant, in history painting by using Middle Eastern settings with Europeans wearing local costume, as travelers were advised to do. His huge James Dawkins and Robert Wood Discovering the Ruins of Palmyra (1758, now Edinburgh) elevates tourism to the heroic, with the two travelers wearing what look very like togas. Many travelers had themselves painted in exotic Eastern dress on their return, including Lord Byron, as did many who had never left Europe, including Madame de Pompadour.[40] The growing French interest in exotic Oriental luxury and lack of liberty in the 18th century to some extent reflected a pointed analogy with France's own absolute monarchy.[41] Byron's poetry was highly influential in introducing Europe to the heady cocktail of Romanticism in exotic Oriental settings which was to dominate 19th century Oriental art.

French Orientalism

Musée du Louvre
).
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, The Turkish Bath
, 1862

French Orientalist painting was transformed by Napoleon's ultimately unsuccessful invasion of Egypt and Syria in 1798–1801, which stimulated great public interest in Egyptology, and was also recorded in subsequent years by Napoleon's court painters, especially Antoine-Jean Gros, although the Middle Eastern campaign was not one on which he accompanied the army. Two of his most successful paintings, Bonaparte Visiting the Plague Victims of Jaffa (1804) and Battle of Abukir (1806) focus on the Emperor, as he was by then, but include many Egyptian figures, as does the less effective Napoleon at the Battle of the Pyramids (1810). Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson's La Révolte du Caire (1810) was another large and prominent example. A well-illustrated Description de l'Égypte was published by the French Government in twenty volumes between 1809 and 1828, concentrating on antiquities.[42]

Sultan of Morocco. He was greatly struck by what he saw, comparing the North African way of life to that of the Ancient Romans, and continued to paint subjects from his trip on his return to France. Like many later Orientalist painters, he was frustrated by the difficulty of sketching women, and many of his scenes featured Jews or warriors on horses. However, he was apparently able to get into the women's quarters or harem of a house to sketch what became Women of Algiers; few later harem scenes had this claim to authenticity.[44]

When Ingres, the director of the French Académie de peinture, painted a highly colored vision of a

Turkish bath, he made his eroticized Orient publicly acceptable by his diffuse generalizing of the female forms (who might all have been the same model). More open sensuality was seen as acceptable in the exotic Orient.[45] This imagery persisted in art into the early 20th century, as evidenced in Henri Matisse's orientalist semi-nudes from his Nice period, and his use of Oriental costumes and patterns. Ingres' pupil Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856) had already achieved success with his nude The Toilette of Esther (1841, Louvre) and equestrian portrait of Ali-Ben-Hamet, Caliph of Constantine and Chief of the Haractas, Followed by his Escort (1846) before he first visited the East, but in later decades the steamship
made travel much easier and increasing numbers of artists traveled to the Middle East and beyond, painting a wide range of Oriental scenes.

In many of these works, artists portrayed the Orient as exotic, colorful and sensual, not to say stereotyped. Such works typically concentrated on Arab, Jewish, and other Semitic cultures, as those were the ones visited by artists as France became more engaged in North Africa. French artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres painted many works depicting Islamic culture, often including lounging odalisques. They stressed both lassitude and visual spectacle. Other scenes, especially in genre painting, have been seen as either closely comparable to their equivalents set in modern-day or historical Europe, or as also reflecting an Orientalist mind-set in the Saidian sense of the term. Gérôme was the precursor, and often the master, of a number of French painters in the later part of the century whose works were often frankly salacious, frequently featuring scenes in harems, public baths and slave auctions (the last two also available with classical decor), and responsible, with others, for "the equation of Orientalism with the nude in pornographic mode";[46] (Gallery, below)

Orientalist sculptors include Charles Cordier.

British Orientalism

William Holman Hunt, A Street Scene in Cairo; The Lantern-Maker's Courtship, 1854–61

Though British political interest in the territories of the unravelling Ottoman Empire was as intense as in France, it was mostly more discreetly exercised. The origins of British Orientalist 19th-century painting owe more to religion than military conquest or the search for plausible locations for nude women. The leading British

Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt and David Roberts (in The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia) had similar motivations,[47] giving an emphasis on realism in British Orientalist art from the start.[48] The French artist James Tissot
also used contemporary Middle Eastern landscape and decor for Biblical subjects, with little regard for historical costumes or other fittings.

William Holman Hunt produced a number of major paintings of Biblical subjects drawing on his Middle Eastern travels, improvising variants of contemporary Arab costume and furnishings to avoid specifically Islamic styles, and also some landscapes and genre subjects. The biblical subjects included The Scapegoat (1856), The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple (1860), and The Shadow of Death (1871). The Miracle of the Holy Fire (1899) was intended as a picturesque satire on the local Eastern Christians, of whom, like most European visitors, Hunt took a very dim view. His A Street Scene in Cairo; The Lantern-Maker's Courtship (1854–61) is a rare contemporary narrative scene, as the young man feels his fiancé's face, which he is not allowed to see, through her veil, as a Westerner in the background beats his way up the street with his stick.[49] This a rare intrusion of a clearly contemporary figure into an Orientalist scene; mostly they claim the picturesqueness of the historical painting so popular at the time, without the trouble of researching authentic costumes and settings.

When Gérôme exhibited For Sale; Slaves at Cairo at the

Royal Academy in London in 1871, it was "widely found offensive", partly because the British involvement in successfully suppressed the slave trade in Egypt, but also for cruelty and "representing fleshiness for its own sake".[50] But Rana Kabbani believes that "French Orientalist painting, as exemplified by the works of Gérôme, may appear more sensual, gaudy, gory and sexually explicit than its British counterpart, but this is a difference of style not substance ... Similar strains of fascination and repulsion convulsed their artists"[51] Nonetheless, nudity and violence are more evident in British paintings set in the ancient world, and "the iconography of the odalisque ... the Oriental sex slave whose image is offered up to the viewer as freely as she herself supposedly was to her master – is almost entirely French in origin",[45]
though taken up with enthusiasm by Italian and other European painters.

Lord Leighton, imagine "the harem as a place of almost English domesticity, ... [where]... women's fully clothed respectability suggests a moral healthiness to go with their natural good looks".[45]

Other artists concentrated on

, They are Triumphant, 1872

Russian Orientalism

John Singer Sargent, Fumée d'ambre gris (Smoke of Ambergris), 1880. Clark Art Institute. This painting presents a fantasy for Western eyes, combining details of costume and setting adapted from different regions across North Africa.

Russian Orientalist art was largely concerned with the areas of

Mongols who had dominated Russia for much of the Middle Ages, who were rarely shown in a good light.[54] The explorer Nikolai Przhevalsky played a major role in popularising an exotic view of "the Orient" and advocating imperial expansion.[55]

"

composers who worked together to create a distinct national style of classical music. One hallmark of "The Five" composers was their reliance on orientalism.[56] Many quintessentially "Russian" works were composed in orientalist style, such as Balakirev's Islamey, Borodin's Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.[56] As leader of "The Five", Balakirev encouraged the use of eastern themes and harmonies to set their "Russian" music apart from the German symphonism of Anton Rubinstein and other Western-oriented composers.[56]

German Orientalism

Edward Said originally wrote that Germany did not have a politically motivated Orientalism because its colonial empire did not expand in the same areas as France and Britain. Said later stated that Germany "had in common with Anglo-French and later American Orientalism [...] a kind of intellectual authority over the Orient". However, Said also wrote that "there was nothing in Germany to correspond to the Anglo-French presence in India, the Levant, North Africa. Moreover, the German Orient was almost exclusively a scholarly, or at least a classical, Orient: it was made the subject of lyrics, fantasies, and even novels, but it was never actual."[57] According to Suzanne L. Marchand, German scholars were the "pace-setters" in oriental studies.[58] Robert Irwin wrote that "until the outbreak of the Second World War, German dominance of Orientalism was practically unchallenged."[59]

Elsewhere

Harem Interior, by Theodor Aman, 1886, oil on canvas, Theodor Aman Museum, Bucharest, Romania
Leon Wyczółkowski, Portrait of Feliks Jasieński Dressed as a Bedouin, 1906–1910. National Museum in Kraków. Feliks Jasieński was a Polish artist fascinated with the Middle Eastern and the Far Eastern cultures, who contributed to the rise of Orientalism in the Polish lands[60][61]

Nationalist historical painting in Central Europe and the Balkans dwelt on oppression during the Ottoman Empire period, battles between Ottoman and Christian armies, as well as themes like the Ottoman Imperial Harem, although the latter was a less common theme than in French depictions.[62]

The Saidian analysis has not prevented a strong revival of interest in, and collecting of, 19th century Orientalist works since the 1970s, the latter was in large part led by Middle Eastern buyers.[63]

Pop culture

Black and white photograph of a walled city in the desert, showing domes and minarets.
Photograph of Cairo by Francis Frith, 1856

Authors and composers are not commonly referred to as "Orientalist" in the way that artists are, and relatively few specialized in Oriental topics or styles, or are even best known for their works including them. But many major figures, from Mozart to Flaubert, have produced significant works with Oriental subjects or treatments. Lord Byron with his four long "Turkish tales" in poetry, is one of the most important writers to make exotic fantasy Oriental settings a significant theme in the literature of Romanticism. Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida (1871) is set in Egypt as portrayed through the content and the visual spectacle. "Aida" depicts a militaristic Egypt's tyranny over Ethiopia.[64]

Irish Orientalism had a particular character, drawing on various beliefs about early historical links between Ireland and the East, few of which are now regarded as historically correct. The mythical Milesians are one example of this. The Irish were also conscious of the views of other nations seeing them as comparably backward to the East, and Europe's "backyard Orient."[65]

In music

Colour sketch of an Ancient-Egyptian-styled male costume.
Costume design for Aida by Auguste Mariette, 1871

In music, Orientalism may be applied to styles occurring in different periods, such as the

Beethoven.[66] The musicologist Richard Taruskin identified in 19th-century Russian music a strain of Orientalism: "the East as a sign or metaphor, as imaginary geography, as historical fiction, as the reduced and totalized other against which we construct our (not less reduced and totalized) sense of ourselves."[67] Taruskin conceded Russian composers, unlike those in France and Germany, felt an "ambivalence" to the theme since "Russia was a contiguous empire in which Europeans, living side by side with 'orientals', identified (and intermarried) with them far more than in the case of other colonial powers".[68]

Nonetheless, Taruskin characterized Orientalism in Romantic Russian music as having melodies "full of close little ornaments and melismas",

Javanese gamelan[71] in Claude Debussy's piano music all the way to the sitar being used in recordings by the Beatles.[66]

In the United Kingdom, Gustav Holst composed Beni Mora evoking a languid, heady Arabian atmosphere.

Orientalism, in a more camp fashion also found its way into exotica music in the late 1950s, especially the works of Les Baxter, for example, his composition "City of Veils".

In literature

Almost naked Indian woman dancing in front of a Hindu statue.
Cover of the pulp magazine Oriental Stories, Spring 1932

The Romantic movement in literature began in 1785 and ended around 1830. The term Romantic references the ideas and culture that writers of the time reflected in their work. During this time, the culture and objects of the East began to have a profound effect on Europe. Extensive traveling by artists and members of the European elite brought travelogues and sensational tales back to the West creating a great interest in all things "foreign". Romantic Orientalism incorporates African and Asian geographic locations, well-known colonial and "native" personalities, folklore, and philosophies to create a literary environment of colonial exploration from a distinctly European worldview. The current trend in analysis of this movement references a belief in this literature as a mode to justify European colonial endeavors with the expansion of territory.[72]

In his novel

Semitic cultures
.

In film

Black and white screenshot from the film The Sheik, with the man in Arab costume and the woman in Western clothing.
Rudolph Valentino and Agnes Ayres in The Sheik, 1921

Said argues that the continuity of Orientalism into the present can be found in influential images, particularly through the Cinema of the United States, as the West has now grown to include the United States.[73] Many blockbuster feature films, such as the Indiana Jones series, The Mummy films, and Disney's Aladdin film series demonstrate the imagined geographies of the East.[73] The films usually portray the lead heroic characters as being from the Western world, while the villains often come from the East.[73] The representation of the Orient has continued in film, although this representation does not necessarily have any truth to it. In

Okinawan people."[74]
The film characterizes the Okinawans as "merry but backward" and "de-politicized", which ignored the real-life Okinawan political protests over forceful land acquisition by the American military at the time.

Kimiko Akita, in Orientalism and the Binary of Fact and Fiction in 'Memoirs of a Geisha', argues that Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) contains orientalist tropes and deep "cultural misrepresentations". She states that Memoirs of a Geisha "reinforces the idea of Japanese culture and geisha as exotic, backward, irrational, dirty, profane, promiscuous, bizarre, and enigmatic."[75]

In dance

During the Romantic period of the 19th century, ballet developed a preoccupation with the exotic. This exoticism ranged from ballets set in Scotland to those based on ethereal creatures.[76] By the later part of the century, ballets were capturing the presumed essence of the mysterious East. These ballets often included sexual themes and tended to be based on assumptions of people rather than on concrete facts. Orientalism is apparent in numerous ballets.

The Orient motivated several major ballets, which have survived since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Le Corsaire premiered in 1856 at the Paris Opera, with choreography by Joseph Mazilier.[77] Marius Petipa re-choreographed the ballet for the Maryinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1899.[77] Its complex storyline, loosely based on Lord Byron's poem,[78] takes place in Turkey and focuses on a love story between a pirate and a beautiful slave girl. Scenes include a bazaar where women are sold to men as slaves, and the Pasha's Palace, which features his harem of wives.[77] In 1877, Marius Petipa choreographed La Bayadère, the love story of an Indian temple dancer and Indian warrior. This ballet was based on Kalidasa's play Sakuntala.[78] La Bayadere used vaguely Indian costuming, and incorporated Indian inspired hand gestures into classical ballet. In addition, it included a 'Hindu Dance,' motivated by Kathak, an Indian dance form.[78] Another ballet, Sheherazade, choreographed by Michel Fokine in 1910 to music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, is a story involving a shah's wife and her illicit relations with a Golden Slave, originally played by Vaslav Nijinsky.[78] The ballet's controversial fixation on sex includes an orgy in an oriental harem. When the shah discovers the actions of his numerous wives and their lovers, he orders the deaths of those involved.[78] Sheherazade was loosely based on folktales of questionable authenticity.

Several lesser-known ballets of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century also show their Orientalism. For instance, in Petipa's The Pharaoh's Daughter (1862), an Englishman imagines himself, in an opium-induced dream, as an Egyptian boy who wins the love of the Pharaoh's daughter, Aspicia.[78] Aspicia's costume consisted of 'Egyptian' décor on a tutu.[78] Another ballet, Hippolyte Monplaisir's Brahma, which premiered in 1868 in La Scala, Italy,[79] is a story that involves romantic relations between a slave girl and Brahma, the Hindu god, when he visits earth.[78] In addition, in 1909, Serge Diagilev included Cléopâtre in the Ballets Russes' repertory. With its theme of sex, this revision of Fokine's Une Nuit d'Egypte combined the "exoticism and grandeur" that audiences of this time craved.[78]

As one of the pioneers of modern dance in America,

Ruth St Denis also explored Orientalism in her dancing. Her dances were not authentic; she drew inspiration from photographs, books, and later from museums in Europe.[78] Yet, the exoticism of her dances catered to the interests of society women in America.[78] She included Radha and The Cobras in her 'Indian' program in 1906. In addition, she found success in Europe with another Indian-themed ballet, The Nautch in 1908. In 1909, upon her return to America, St Denis created her first 'Egyptian' work, Egypta.[78] Her preference for Orientalism continued, culminating with Ishtar of the Seven Gates in 1923, about a Babylonian goddess.[78]

While Orientalism in dance climaxed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is still present in modern times. For instance, major ballet companies regularly perform Le Corsaire, La Bayadere, and Sheherazade. Furthermore, Orientalism is also found within newer versions of ballets. In versions of The Nutcracker, such as the 2010 American Ballet Theatre production, the Chinese dance uses an arm position with the arms bent at a ninety-degree angle and the index fingers pointed upwards, while the Arabian dance uses two dimensional bent arm movements. Inspired by ballets of the past, stereotypical 'Oriental' movements and arm positions have developed and remain.

In sport

The

Islamic governments and secular Western liberal democracies.[84][83][86][80][81]

The first Qatari to publicly

come out as a gay man Naser Mohamed felt that the narrative around LGBT rights in Qatar was focused on Western visitors and their safety during the tournament, and that LGBT Qatari citizens were not part of the debate.[93]

Religion

An exchange of Western and Eastern ideas about spirituality developed as the West traded with and established colonies in Asia.[94] The first Western translation of a Sanskrit text appeared in 1785,[95] marking the growing interest in Indian culture and languages.[96] Translations of the Upanishads, which Arthur Schopenhauer called "the consolation of my life", first appeared in 1801 and 1802.[97][note 2] Early translations also appeared in other European languages.[99] 19th-century transcendentalism was influenced by Asian spirituality, prompting Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) to pioneer the idea of spirituality as a distinct field.[100]

A major force in the mutual influence of Eastern and Western

Masters of Wisdom",[104][note 3] "beings, human or once human, who have transcended the normal frontiers of knowledge, and who make their wisdom available to others".[104] The Theosophical Society also spread Western ideas in the East, contributing to its modernisation and a growing nationalism in the Asian colonies.[94]

The

Another major influence was

Vivekananda,[109][110] who popularised his modernised interpretation[111] of Advaita Vedanta during the later 19th and early 20th century in both India and the West,[110] emphasising anubhava ("personal experience") over scriptural authority.[112]

Islam

With the spread of Eastern religious and cultural ideals towards the West, came in with studies and certain illustrations that depicts certain regions and religions under the Western perspective. Many the aspects or views are often turned into the ideas that the West have adopted onto those cultural and religious ideals. One of the more adopted views can be depicted through Western context on Islam and the Middle East. Under the adopted view of Islam under the Western context, Orientalism falls under the category of the Western perspective of thinking that shifts through social constructs that refers towards representations of the religion or culture in a subjective view point.[113] The concept of Orientalism dates back to precolonial eras, as the main European powers acquired and perceived of territory, resources, knowledge, and control of the regions in the East.[113] The term Orientalism, depicts further into the historical context of antagonism and misrepresentation into the tendencies of a growing layer of Western inclusion and influence on foreign culture and ideals.[114]

In the religious perspective under Islam, the term Orientalism applies in similar meaning as the outlook from the Western perspective, mainly in the eyes of the Christian majority.[114] The main contributor of the depiction of Oriental perspectives or illustrations on Islam and other Middle Eastern cultures derives from the imperial and colonial influences and powers that attribute to formation of multiple fields of geographical, political, educational, and scientific elements.[114] The combination of these different genres reveal significant division among people of those cultures and reinforces the ideals set from the Western perspective.[114] With Islam, historically scientific discoveries, research, inventions, or ideas that were presented before and contributed to many other European breakthroughs are not affiliated with the previous Islamic scientists.[114] From the exclusion of past contributions and initial works further lead to narrative of the concept of Orientalism with the passing of time generated a history and directive of presence within region and religion that historically influences the image of the East.[113]

Through the recent years, Orientalism has been influenced and shifted to altering representations of various forms that all derive from the same meaning.[113] From the nineteenth century, among the Western perspectives on Orientalism, differed as the split of American and European Orientalism viewed different illustrations.[113] With mainstream media and popular production reveal many depictions of Oriental cultures and Islamic references to the current event of radicalization for Non-western cultures.[113] With references and mainstream media often utilized to contribute to an extended agenda under the construct judgement of alternate motives.[113] The approach with the generalization of the term Orientalism was embedded with under beginning of colonialism as the root of the main complexity of within modern societies perspectives of foreign cultures.[114] As mainstream media depicts illustrations to utilize many instances of discourse and on certain regions mainly among the conflict within regions in the Middle East and Africa.[114] With agenda of influencing views on non-western societies to be deemed non-compatible with differing ideologies and cultures, the elements that present diversion among Eastern societies and aspects.[114]

Eastern views of the West and Western views of the East

The concept of Orientalism has been adopted by scholars in East-Central and Eastern Europe, among them Maria Todorova, Attila Melegh, Tomasz Zarycki, and Dariusz Skórczewski[115] as an analytical tool for exploring the images of East-Central and Eastern European societies in cultural discourses of the West in the 19th century and during the Soviet domination.

The term "re-orientalism" was used by Lisa Lau and Ana Cristina Mendes[116][117] to refer to how Eastern self-representation is based on western referential points:[118]

Re-Orientalism differs from Orientalism in its manner of and reasons for referencing the West: while challenging the metanarratives of Orientalism, re-Orientalism sets up alternative metanarratives of its own in order to articulate eastern identities, simultaneously deconstructing and reinforcing Orientalism.

Occidentalism

The term occidentalism is often used to refer to negative views of the Western world found in Eastern societies, and is founded on the sense of nationalism that spread in reaction to colonialism[119] (see Pan-Asianism). Edward Said has been accused of Occidentalizing the west in his critique of Orientalism; of falsely characterizing the West in the same way that he states that Western scholars have falsely characterized the East.[120] According to this viewpoint, Said essentialized the West by creating a homogenous image of the area. Currently, the West consists not only of Europe, but also the United States and Canada, which have become more influential over the years.[120]

Eighteenth century Qing emperors in China had a material fascination with Occidenterie, or objects inspired by Western art and architecture (an analogue to Europe's chinoiserie or material imitation of Chinese artistic traditions). Although the phenomenon was strongly associated with the emperor's court and the architecture project of Xiyang Lou, nonetheless, a wide spectrum of China's social classes had some access to Occidenterie objects as they were domestically produced.[121]

Othering

The action of

Hindi-language cinema
.

Said's Orientalism has been instrumental to the critical turn in the humanities and the social sciences concerning the appreciation of the political weight of "representing" as a form of powering over Others. However, as recent anthropological enquiries suggest, Orientalism has also been at times simplistically applied to merely equate Othering with the attribution of negative qualities.[124] A study of the sphere of Othering in contexts, seemingly removed from Said's original focus, such as the relationship between Greece and Germany during the

sovereign debt crisis years may point to volatile ingredients in the Othering process, including fascination mixed with condescension, aversion, admiration and hopes for an escape from an oppressive northern European lifestyle.[124] Similarly, tourism and intra-national relations between urban centers and rural peripheries are spheres where Orientalist dynamics (Othering) are at a play, even if, as noted above, these dynamics may well involve the ambivalence of the spectators, and also the involvement of those represented in reproducing, and at times contesting the stereotypes of those who represent others.[125]

See also

Notes

  1. 2018 World Cup respectively, and who both have arguably worse human rights records.[88] Moreover, it added that “Western criticism” failed to “distinguish between truly repugnant regimes and merely flawed ones”, and that many “indignant pundits” simply sounded as if they did “not like Muslims or rich people”.[88]
  2. ^ Schopenhauer also called his poodle "Atman".[98]
  3. Ascended Master Teachings

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  8. ^ Harding, 74
  9. ^ Tromans, 19
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  50. ^ Tromans, 135–136
  51. ^ Tromans, 43
  52. ^ Tromans, quote 135; 134 on his wife; generally: 22–32, 80–85, 130–135, and see index
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  98. ^ Renard 2010, p. 178.
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  100. .
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  116. .
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  125. .

Sources

Further reading

Art

Literature

External links