n my analysis of Renoir’s works of Algeria, I referred to the term Orientalism to describe the genre of art to which this series belongs. Orientalism, however, applies to much more than art: it is a fascinating and broadly applicable field of study.
In Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Edward W. Said defines and details what Orientalism is as a term and as a historical and cultural construct of the West. This groundbreaking work is the product of years of study and experience of the ancient as well as modern Near East and its relationship with the West, primarily England, France, and the United States.
Born in Jerusalem and forging his career in America’s higher educational institutions, Said’s book reflects the work of a man who not only identifies himself as an Arab and a Muslim, but as a man educated in and by the West. Inasmuch, he acknowledges the immense amount of knowledge accumulated by countries such as England and France and the power that arises from this knowledge. Through the intense study and thorough comprehension of the history of the people of the Middle East, Orientalism developed “as a sign of European-Atlantic power over the Orient” (Said 6). This power, seen both through the military history and the more subtle intellectual history of these European-Atlantic countries, formed the basis for the term Orientalism. Thus, it is a construct of Western powers, a means by which “we” can classify and contain “them” according to a system of skewed interpretation cemented in place as the years passed.
According to Said,
No merely asserted generality is denied the dignity of truth; no theoretical list of Oriental attributes is without application to the behavior of Orientals in the real world. On the one hand there are Westerners, and on the other there are Arab-Orientals; the former are (in no particular order) rational, peaceful, liberal, logical, capable of holding real values, without natural suspicion; the latter are none of these things (Said 49).
The root of such a corrupted label of a group of people is quite complex. It involves physical separation between the Orient and the West (eventually breached by the Suez Canal), the constructed battle between Christianity and Islam which was inextricably linked to the Ottoman empire’s power under the banner of Islam, the history of colonialism, and the years upon years of scholars and politicians reinforcing old views with volumes of literature on what the West had constructed as the Orient. Simply put, a lack of true knowledge, more precisely a lack of interest in truly knowing, created the disconnect between the West and the great variety of people living in the “Orient.”
Said’s Orientalism is a thoughtful and provocative book focused on a subject which spans academic genres and generations. In the following gallery pages, I address Orientalism in art, specifically during the time of Renoir, in nineteenth-century France.
Images: Said, Edward W. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. Cover. London: Penguin Books, 1995.