Linda Nochlin Orientalism

There are so many different cultures and people in the world and every one of them have a unique viewpoint of the world and it is impossible for one person to fully understand every culture. However, it is possible to glimpse into what they see, feel, and experience by looking at the different art that they create. Juan Pablo Villalobos novel, “Down the Rabbit Hole”, shows the reader the distorted worldview that the son of a Mexican drug king-pin holds. The American Iraq war veteran Brian Turner shares his experiences through his poetry in the book “Here, Bullet”. Karolin Klüppel gives the reader insight to the remote village of Mawlynnong, India and the Khasi people through her photo essay “Mädchenland”. A reader can successfully experience and gain unique a perspective of events and cultures around the world by reading and looking at

“Primitivism” was a cultural attitude that arose in Europe during the late 19th and 20th century in opposition to the increasingly decadent and materialistic European culture. Rather than an artistic movement, “primitivism” is a European conception of foreign civilizations and lands as “simple”, less developed, and naive. This is an important distinction to make, because “primitivism” was defined in the eyes of the Europeans who saw foreign civilizations as unsophisticated, indicating that the concept of “primitivism” is heavily biased in the view of the Europeans. Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse were two artists that were highly influenced by the concept of “primitivism,” and some similarity can be depicted in their works such as the use of female nudes, vivid colors, and artistic techniques. However, their definition and methods of achieving “primitivism” differ heavily, due to the fact that the vagueness of “primitivism” allows it to be a self-defined concept. These similarities and differences can be seen through the two works of art The Spirit of the Dead Watching by Paul Gauguin, and The Blue Nude by Henri Matisse, and the way they depict women in each of the pieces.

Large busy markets, snake charmers, carpet vendors, and veiled women all invoke ideas of West Africa, the Middle East, and West Asia, but all these ideas come from Oriental fantasies from the nineteenth century. Edward Said the author of Orientalism said that “Orientalism was ultimately a political vision of reality whose structure promoted the difference between the familiar (Europe, West, "us") and the strange (the Orient, the East, "them").” The nineteenth century was a period of imperialism and tourism that led many western artists to visit West Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Orientalist paintings depicted two major effects, many artists often portrayed something “exotic,” which was racialized, feminized, and from a sexualized culture from a faraway land. Another effect that artists mainly like Jean-Léon Gérôme often showed was an authentic glimpse of a location and its inhabitants. Nochlin mentioned that many of Gérôme’s paintings worked to persuade their audiences by carefully representing a "preexisting Oriental reality.”

Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner's Art through the Ages: A Global History, Fourteenth Edition, Volume II.

Throughout history, societies have defined and transformed themselves through their art. When looking at works of art today, a person sees not only the work of art itself, but also the world from which it came from. The same is true for this transformation mask, which reflects the works of art and beliefs of the Northwest Coast Tribes.

14. What immediate developments in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries might have influenced the cultural patterns depicted in these illustrations? How does the broad context of the Columbian exchange help you understand these painting?

In the book by Timothy Brook, Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World, the author analysis several paintings of the Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer. In these several paintings, Vermeer, beautifully depicts scenes from daily life. His paintings are from the Dutch Golden Age and are incredibly realistic and the way he shows light and color are strikingly gorgeous. Although Vermeer’s painting skills are developed the subject of his paintings illustrate quite simple subjects, showing middle class daily life and tasks. However, Brooks takes readers past the beautiful colors we see on the surface and digs a little deeper into each one, going in and unraveling the scene to analysis things like globalization and world trade in the 1600s.

Art by its nature is a subject of the philosophical, social, economic, political or religious context surrounding its creator. More often than not, a work of art addresses a specific topic or somewhat revolves around a particular person. Therefore, it is impossible to separate the context of a piece of painting, either historical or cultural, to its intrinsic value or the artwork's meaning. On the other hand, different cultures and time utilized specific conventions that govern the representation of objects of creativity. This essay highlights various pieces of art and their relationship to particular cultural, political, economic, or social settings. Moreover, it pinpoints how different times influence art presentation.

Cynthia Saltzman, a former Forbes and Wall Street Journal reporter, investigates the history of the famous Vincent van Gogh’s work Portrait of Dr. Gachet by telling a century-long story of this single masterpiece's journey. Instead of focusing on the van Gogh’s background and the painting itself, Saltzman meticulously provides a case study of how the modern art market developed and how the forces of money, politics and taste can ensure that genius will out. From 1890 to 1990, the painting was taken from van Gogh's easel and valued as “an obscure object worth at most a few hundred francs” at beginning. It then was hung in private homes and world-famous museums, and traveled to Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and New York with 13 different owners.

I want to research whether portrayals of Orientalism in the media are used to retroactively justify decisions such as imperialism or the Vietnam War. I chose this topic because I found Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism very thought-provoking and wondered if it can apply to contemporary society. In addition to that, I have not seen a lot of contemporary analysis on Orientalism of Southeast Asia. My initial inspiration was when I watched the film No Escape, which seemed blatantly racist and problematic. I narrowed and refined my topic by further researching the concepts of Orientalism and otherness, and considered how they could be applied to this film. Sources that have been key in defining my research topic include scholar articles on Orientalism

The subject matter exhibited in this representational work of art is four people that are gathered around rigid rocks. The two figures on the left are black, young-adult women, and a younger black boy on the right is looking up at a tall older white male in the center. Even though the use of silhouettes hides fine details, the women and the child portray exaggerated stereotypical racial features. The women are wearing head wraps, which are exclusive to women of African descent, the boy has Afro shaped hair, and all three have large protruding lips. Their clothes are worn down and ragged compared to the man’s attire. The white male’s features are less obvious, but the texture of his hair and lack of lip definition is apparent.

When we look at the history of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, we always like to use the confinement of thinking and the liberation of ideas to sum up the two, especially in the art, the medieval paintings are often used in dark colors, deformed three-dimensional concept Showing the real world, and often less a bit human nature. And after the Renaissance, the painting masters are the opposite of it. I am not here to comment on their good or bad, but from the artistic point of view, to explore whether a good form of art needs to reflect the community and a wide range of civilizations

In “Social Space and the Genesis of Groups”, Bourdieu (1982) discusses how habitus, as well as different kinds of capital, can combine to determine an individual’s place in society (Bourdieu, 1982 as cited in Applerouth & Edles, 2016). In “Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception”, Bourdieu (1968) discusses “art” and how it is that those with greater capital are able to engage with art (Bourdieu, 1968 as cited in Applerouth & Edles, 2016). Although the greater narrative implies that those with greater capital can engage “art” because of innate qualities, the reality is that through their continued exposure to art (which stems from their economic capital), they can develop an understanding of it (Applerouth & Edles, 2016). In Edward Said’s (1978) Orientalism, Said (1978) discusses “orientalism”, the areas of study that focus on the areas “east” of Europe (Said, 1978 as cited in Applerouth & Edles, 2016). Said’s (1978) point is that “western” scholars have created this idea of the “orient” to create a distinction between themselves and those from areas that were part of the “oriental” umbrella (Said, 1978 as cited in Applerouth & Edles,

In the University Of Arizona Museum Of Art, the Pfeiffer Gallery is displaying many art pieces of oil on canvas paintings. These paintings are mostly portraits of people, both famous and not. They are painted by a variety of artists of European decent and American decent between the mid 1700’s and the early 1900’s. The painting by Elizabeth Louise Vigee-Lebrun caught my eye and drew me in to look closely at its composition.

Orientalism is a study of language and traditions of the people and their culture in the Middle East. These studies are mostly done by people outside of the culture that is being looked at, and mostly the studies are being performed by white western men. Edward Said believed that there was a problem with the way in which other people were studying and writing about his culture. He was upset and spoke up when he wrote a booked called “Orientalism,” in his book he points out many reasons why the study of orientalism is hurting the cultures in which they are studying. The study of other cultures and countries better known as the Orient has become a popular discussion since Said’s book on orientalism was published. This paper will take a look