Orientalism

About the Class

This class examines how Orientalism—the European representation of the “Orient” as place and idea—played out in the hands of visual artists in 19th-century France. This period witnessed the rapid expansion of the French empire as well as a parallel growth in tourism and trade, enabling numerous European artists and writers to visit the regions encompassing present-day Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa. In this historical framework, we will explore Orientalism’s equivocation between the projects of documentation and mythmaking, unpacking how artists combined, conflated, or even undermined their careful transcriptions of observed sites with preconceptions and fantasies about diverse Islamic lands and peoples.

In studying Orientalist art associated with academicism, neoclassicism, romanticism, impressionism, and modernism, we will also evaluate the centrality of Orientalism to aesthetic debates about genre, style, color, and abstraction. And when considering recurring subjects such as the harem, bedchamber, market, and mosque—and especially the place of the female nude therein—we will simultaneously look to work by women artists, early 20th-century Algerian painters, and global contemporary artists to unearth and make space for agency beyond that of the normative European male gaze.

The class is online-only. More about online classes.