What is “Orientalism”?
an extract from my MA’s paper for “Travelling Images: Orientalism in Painting and Photography (19th & 20th Centuries)”
“Orientalism” is a term to show the attitude characterized by a marked interest and a strong admiration for civilization and cultures of eastern places. This new consideration of eastern countries and cultures began around the early 18th century in France after the publication of The Arabian Nights (alternatively known as One Thousand and One Nights).
The East started being considered a source of scientific studies or travel destinations as well, and, additionally, was evoked as a place of picturesque ruins, wonders, mysteries, exotic oddities and fantasies (such as the stereotyped ideas of harems and odalisques).
A way to show the deep love and fascination towards the East was the so-called cultural cross-dressing — it happened when western people used to dress up as oriental people (and, sometimes, vice versa). One of the first westerns who actually practiced cultural cross-dressing was John Frederick Lewis, a romantic poet and watercolour artist who — after conducting quite a dandy lifestyle in Great Britain — spent 10 years in Cairo, married a local woman and changed his appearance and behaviour, acting like a (stereo)typical oriental man.
Other western examples of cultural cross-dressing were performed by ladies as well: Mary Wortley Montagu and Emmeline Lott, who dressed up as an oriental woman to access the prohibited harems to write and document her experiences there.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, the European culture deeply changed; first of all, people became aware of their own nationalism and nationalistic ideas were spread through the countries since the majority of the states reached the status of nation after years of civil struggles and wars (e.g. France, Germany and the United Kingdom).
To reinforce their nationalistic view, European states started bloody colonization campaigns (especially in Africa and Asia); new places were discovered and people had to approach to cultures which were different from the Old World’s standards. Everything new to western people’s habits was concerned as something mystical and mysterious. Moreover, oriental cultures have been stereotyped as exotic Orientals. For instance, during the first Exposition Universelle [d’art et d’industrie] de 1867, eastern countries were seen as something new to investigate about, and they aroused the curiosity of all participants.
“Although these other men are our contemporaries, they are situated at a temporal and spatial distance. The displays of non-Western peoples at the nineteenth-century world’s fairs were organized around the anthropologist’s concept of distance. “Natives” were placed in “authentic” settings, dressed in “authentic” costumes, and made to perform “authentic” activities, which seemed to belong to another age. They formed tableaux vivants, spectacles that fixed societies in history.”
New places and cultures also mean new literary and artistic movements. In literature, Orientalism played a fundamental role and influenced a great number of writers, such as Gustave Flaubert (Salammbô, 1862), J. W. Goethe (West–östlicher Divan, 1819) and François-René de Chateaubriand (Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem, 1811). Artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Jean-Jules-Antoine Lecomte de Nouÿ, Maxime Du Camp and Emile Bernard were profoundly influenced by exotic and oriental places, too.
Orientalism means a lot for artistic and political movements. The pioneering cross-dressing technique could be related to strong statements of feminine power (Emmeline Lott, Princess Nazli Hanim), to self-identity or national identity, the need to be accepted by another culture or just to state a new way of living (Emile Bernard, John Frederick Lewis).
