Behind Orientalism's Veil

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.”