Orientalism

Orientalism broadly refers to European visual arts that subject what was once called the Orient (now present-day Turkey, Greece, Egypt the Middle East, India, and China) with fantasy and romanticism that essentialized a wide range of diverse foreign cultures as exotic, less advanced, and sexually inviting. Renaissance and Baroque artists engaged with Oriental themes, but once Napoleon Boneparte’s army occupied Egypt in 1801, travel to the East expanded and the Oriental subject became and remained prevalent through the 19th century. In the early half of the century, Oriental themes were often used in propaganda images to support French imperialism and champion Europe’s superiority over the East. Later Orientalism was less directly sinister, often portraying harems with ornate interiors and inexplicably Western-looking women. Few Westerners ever stepped foot in a real haram, and many Orientalist painters (including Orientalist master Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres) never stepped foot in the East, so the popular erotic images of slaves and concubines waiting in luxury for some male visitor were entirely inaccurate portrayals of vaguely defined cultures. The male European artist’s erotic imagination continued to relate sexually available women with the Eastern Other, nature, and intellectual and political inferiority well into the 20th century, making Orientalism important to understanding Modern and Contemporary art.