Orientalist Museum Exhibitions in UK as a New Media at the Turn of the 21st Century: Re-Orientalism of Orientalism

Introduction

Orientalism is a word that describes how Europeans represented unexplored territories in regions of the Eastern or Islamic World. Places like Turkey, Greece, the Middle East and North Africa are framed in orientalism by the Western countries as exoticized and fictionalized places. In fact, orientalism is a kind of imaginative world of the West. The people who concerned about the term question the creation of these imaginative geographies. Most of the authors like Marino define orientalism “both as a field of knowledge attempting to map the East into a Western understanding and as a political strategy of control sustaining imperialism” (2014, p. 185).

In general, orientalism is one of the most important tools of the West that it uses to dominate the East. However, establishing a direct relationship between orientalism and Western colonialism, although it is a correct detection, has actually become commonplace.¹ Undoubtedly, Said’s work is a milestone among the studies on this subject. The feature that sets him apart from the others is that his work refines Europe’s cultural, political, and economic interests connected with the East and a writing tradition dating back to ancient times (Said, 2003). In fact, Said’s work is not the first book written on the subject. However, it is the most influential work that deals with this term widely, from general culture to political ideology for the first time. The main goal and theme of Said’s work is based on the idea of representation of the Near East, accompanied by political and aesthetic concerns. The author explains how the region called the East was constructed and produced by European culture in the post-Enlightenment period. On the basis of the distinction between East and West, the Eastern ‘other’ is constructed by the West as an integral part of the European material civilization and culture.

Ever since Said’s argument, the confrontation or tension between Eastern and Western civilizations has been attempted to be defined by the scholars in many fields through this term. It is still very popular even in the 21st century. It is possible to observe this trend from literature to music, from plastic arts to cinema. In fact, orientalism which was about the people and their living areas that were geographically western Middle East, Turkey and North Africa, has relied heavily on productions on European (Western) travelers / painters since the 19th century. Perhaps this is why painting still takes the lead among other fields. Although Said expresses his astonishment at the practice of orientalism in painting,² while making his determinations and evaluations on the subject; historically many researches/scholars discuss this field mostly in painting practice. Orientalist painters and travelers could be thousands in number. Their paintings are still so popular on a scale that Said could not have imagined. The most powerful representations of the East are present in intensely orientalist paintings which again define Eastern societies. For this reason, one of the most important fields in the West, where eastern knowledge is built, is painting. One can see in these pictures that the West defines its social difference and identity through its relationship with the East. Thus, it both defines itself and creates its own other.

In terms of art history, scholars/academicians consider the French Occupation of Egypt as the beginning of orientalist painting. Napoleon’s campaigns in Egypt and his successes are proof of the power relations that have turned in favor of the West. In this direction, palace painters covered Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt extensively in their paintings (Lamaire, 2005, p. 95). On the other hand, the painters who did not go to the East depicted the riches of the East, the nature, the palace and the harem, the daily life of the sultan in accordance with their own perceptions, based on Eastern expressions produced by travelers who traveled to the East. Over time, orientalist painting³ has become a trend in the West.