Said’s writings on Orientalism were very interesting to me, especially how he describes it as something that is produced and exists within an uneven exchange of various powers. I think this idea of various political, moral, intellectual, and cultural powers perfectly ties into what I’ve learned about art history, specifically during the Romanticism art movement. The Romanticism movement was known for its emphasis on high drama and intellectualism, but also for its focus on the Orient as its subject. Paintings like the Death of Sardanapalus, which was inspired by Lord Byron's play, exemplify how the Middle East was viewed through a European lens. Many artists dramatized what they studied about the “Oriental” world and perpetuated many harmful stereotypes about the cultures there. Artists would also appropriate elements those same elements and place them on European subjects in their paintings to give them an “exotic” flair. It is fascinating to see how Europe’s perception of Eastern cultures has created entirely different and artificial versions of them which have effectively overshadowed the original, authentic cultures.
I definitely agree that Europeans had a skewed perception of Eastern cultures and created many stereotypes. I find it interesting that art from the romantic period focused on Eastern cultures and appropriated these cultures in their representations of Europeans.
You’ve brought up so many interesting points! I love your connection to art history and specifically the Romanticism movement. I am interested in the effects of these pieces over time as they perpetuate harmful stereotypes. How do we responsibly study and appreciate these works of art? Europe’s constructions of Eastern cultures as “radical” persists in our modern society in such prevalent ways that, unfortunately, remain ignored all too often. These formulated ideas of one perspective being valuable while the other is trivial is precisely what we see in The Horse and His Boy between the Calormen and Narnians.
Love this connection to Romanticism, and you're totally spot on! A lot of the novels that Said talks about develop immediately after the Romantic movement. What's also really striking, and what your comment reminds me of is that around the same time in Romanticism that there was a burst of Orientalism there was also a burst in Medievalism. The two have long gone hand and hand, and I suspect it has to do with fantasies around the Ottoman Empire at its height during the Middle Ages.