Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 04:56:28 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Giant crater may lie under Antarctic ice
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn9268
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

ORIENTALISM

Pages: [1] 2 3 4   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: ORIENTALISM  (Read 13038 times)
0 Members and 25 Guests are viewing this topic.
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« on: May 30, 2009, 08:38:38 am »

                      









it just growing nostalgia for a vanished, pre-industrial past that made 2008 a year of record prices for Orientalist art? Or is there more to it? The sophisticated buyers—now located mostly in the lands depicted in the paintings—know well that these paintings are much more than simple pictorial memories. The experts see in them part of the dynamic, historic dialogue between East and West. As the Middle East invests in new museums, art and educational institutions as well as tourism, Orientalism is increasingly perceived as a valuable part of Middle Eastern countries’ national heritage.

In July 2008, Orientalism brought £21.4 million to Christie’s in London, “the highest total ever achieved for this category,” says Alexandra McMorrow, director of 19th-century European art for the prestigious auction house. This included world record prices for seven artists; “bidders from North Africa, the Middle East, India, Europe and America competed fiercely,” she adds. The top seller, “Femme Circassienne Voilée” (“Veiled Circassian Woman”), by the French painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, fetched just over two million pounds.
                                       
Not far away from Christie’s, the Tate Britain’s major summer exhibition was titled “The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting.” And more telling still are the subsequent venues hosting the 120-painting show: Istanbul in the fall, and Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, in the winter. Raficq Abdulla, a poet and art writer, was among a number of cultural figures whom the Tate invited to post comments at the exhibit. Rather than letting a superficial relationship between “colonizer” and “colonized” be the sole lens through which we today can understand how British (and other) Orientalists represented their subjects, understandings of Orientalism have become more complex and nuanced, he wrote, “a focus, a module upon which people of different cultures can exchange perspectives and prejudices, becoming more aware of who they are—and who they are not—in a fast globalizing world.”
« Last Edit: May 30, 2009, 08:47:05 am by Bianca » Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.


Pages: [1] 2 3 4   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy