Orientalist Paintings and said Orientalism

Abstract

Westerners came to this conclusion that to dominate Orient, they should gain sufficient knowledge about them. Therefore, they established the so-called field of Orientalism to study Orient since this knowledge gave them the power to rule. Based on this type of knowledge, they thought that there were sharp contrasts and differences between Orient and Occident and they tended to gain advantage from them. The problem started when Orient internalized these notions and embraced them with open arms due to the inferiority complex that was imposed on him. Orientalist painters also took their cues from the Orientalism to reflect their governments’ ideas and politics in disguise. These paintings began in nineteenth-century and different artists from Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Spain went to the East or started to paint based on others’ paintings or description of Eastern land. The problem is that some of these painters were first-hand observers but some others let their imaginations to shape their conceptions of Orient. Here, attempts have been made to review these paintings based on Said’s book, Orientalism.