WEST MEETS EAST - PREPARATION 3

(F-10)

For Monday, 27 Sept

Your bibliography assignment is due this week, so I won't assign any pieces to prepare. Instead we’ll read some 20^th-century critical essays that deal with the concept of “orientalism” and some of the issues it raises. Please read the following, all xeroxed and on reserve in the library (also posted on the website):

Edward Said, Orientalism (1978), Introduction (pp. 1-28)

Linda Nochlin, "The Imaginary Orient," Art in America (May, 1983), 121 ff.

Also on reserve is a picture book by Gérard-Georges Lemaire calledThe Orient in Western Art (2000). Look through Lemaire's book with Nochlin’s essay in mind. Write out brief answers to the following questions:

1) Choose a picture that you think exemplifies Said’s notion of “orientalism.” Explain how it fits into the “discourse of orientalism.”

2) Choose a picture that you think is harder to characterize as “orientalist.” Explain what about the picture does and what doesn’t seem to fit into Said’s “discourse of orientalism.”

Please refer to the pictures by artist, name and page number so we’ll all know just which pictures you are talking about.

PS – The reproductions of paintings in the xerox of the Linda Nochlin article are terrible. However, a thoughtful professor at USF has posted all of them on line for you to look at. You can find them by googling “Nochlin Gerome”