Exoticism (from exotic) is a trend in art and design where creators become fascinated with ideas and styles from distant regions and draw inspiration from them. This often involves surrounding foreign cultures with mystique and fantasy which owe more to the culture of the people doing the exoticism than to the exotic cultures themselves: this process of glamorisation and stereotyping is called "exoticisation".
The word exotic is rooted in the Greek word exo 'outside' and means, literally, 'from outside'. It was coined during Europe's Age of Discovery, when "outside" seemed to grow larger each day, as Western ships sailed the world and dropped anchor off other continents. The first definition of exotic in most modern dictionaries is 'foreign', but while all things exotic are foreign, not everything foreign is exotic. Since there is no outside without an inside, the foreign only becomes exotic when imported – brought from the outside in. From the early 17th century, "exotic" has denoted enticing strangeness – or, as one modern dictionary puts it, "the charm or fascination of the unfamiliar". [1]
First stimulated by Eastern trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, interest in non-western (particularly Oriental, i.e. Middle Eastern or Asian) art by Europeans became more and more popular with the rise of European colonialism. [2]
The influences of Exoticism can be seen through numerous genres of this period, notably in music, painting, and decorative art. In music, exoticism is a genre in which the patterns, notes, or instrumentation are designed to feel like the audience is in exotic places or old times (e.g., Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé and Tzigane , Debussy's Syrinx , or Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio espagnol ). Like orientalist subjects in 19th-century painting, exoticism in the decorative arts and interior decoration was associated with fantasies of opulence.
Exoticism, by one definition, is "the charm of the unfamiliar". Scholar Alden Jones defines exoticism in art and literature as the representation of one culture for consumption by another. [3] Victor Segalen's important "Essay on Exoticism" reveals Exoticism as born of the age of imperialism, possessing both aesthetic and ontological value, while using it to uncover a significant cultural "otherness". [4] An important and archetypical exoticist is the artist and writer Paul Gauguin, whose visual representations of Tahitian people and landscapes were targeted at a French audience. While exoticism is closely linked to Orientalism, it is not a movement necessarily associated with a particular time period or culture. Exoticism may take the form of primitivism, ethnocentrism, or humanism.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) was a French Neoclassical painter. The revival of ancient Greek and Roman art left behind the academy's emphasis on naturalism and incorporated an idealism not seen since the Renaissance. [5] As classicism progressed, Ingres identified a newfound idealism and exoticism in his work. Grand Odalisque , finished in 1814, was created to arouse the male view. [6] The notion of the exotic figure furthers Ingres' use of symmetry and line by enabling the eye to move cohesively across the canvas. [7] Although Ingres' intention was to make the woman beautiful in his work, his model was a courtesan, which aroused debate.
Édouard Manet's Olympia , finished in 1863, was based on Titian's Venus of Urbino . [8] Olympia was a popular play about a courtesan of that name. The painting diverged scandalously from the accepted academic style by outlining the figure and flattening space to draw the viewer in: Olympia seems provocatively naked rather than classically nude. [9] Looking out boldly, she puts the viewer in the position of a man coming to a prostitute, although the placement of her hand suggests coyness. [10]
Particularly following the publication of Edward Said's book Orientalism , exoticism has become a key term in political assessments of the encounter between Euro-America and the non-Western world and more broadly of any center and a periphery. As recent anthropological enquiries suggest, terms such as Orientalism and exoticism have been at times simplistically applied to merely equate the interest in the Other with the attribution of negative qualities. A study of the sphere of Othering in contexts, such as the relationship between Greece and Germany during the sovereign debt crisis years and the art show Documenta14 may point to volatile ingredients in "exoticism", including fascination mixed with condescension, aversion, admiration and hopes for an escape from an oppressive northern European lifestyle. [11] Similarly, tourism and intra-national relations between urban centers and rural peripheries are spheres where exoticizing dynamics are at a play, even if, as noted above, these dynamics may well involve the ambivalence of the spectators, and also the involvement of those represented in reproducing, and at times contesting the stereotypes of those who represent others. [12]
In art history, literature and cultural studies, Orientalism is the imitation or depiction of aspects of the Eastern world by writers, designers, and artists from the Western world. Orientalist painting, particularly of the Middle East, was one of the many specialties of 19th-century academic art, and Western literature was influenced by a similar interest in Oriental themes.
In Western anthropology, philosophy, and literature, the Myth of the Noble savage refers to a stock character who is uncorrupted by civilization. As such, the "noble" savage symbolizes the innate goodness and moral superiority of a primitive people living in harmony with Nature. In the heroic drama of the stageplay The Conquest of Granada by the Spaniards (1672), John Dryden represents the noble savage as an archetype of Man-as-Creature-of-Nature.
Aestheticism was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose, a sentiment best illustrated by the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.
Olympia is a 1863 oil painting by Édouard Manet, depicting a nude white woman ("Olympia") lying on a bed being attended to by a black maid. The French government acquired the painting in 1890 after a public subscription organized by Claude Monet. The painting is now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Chinoiserie is the European interpretation and imitation of Chinese and other Sinosphere artistic traditions, especially in the decorative arts, garden design, architecture, literature, theatre, and music. The aesthetic of chinoiserie has been expressed in different ways depending on the region. It is related to the broader current of Orientalism, which studied Far East cultures from a historical, philological, anthropological, philosophical, and religious point of view. First appearing in the 17th century, this trend was popularized in the 18th century due to the rise in trade with China and the rest of East Asia.
The Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture is a graduate research institute and gallery located in New York City. It is affiliated with Bard College, located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The gallery occupies a six-story townhouse at 18 West 86th Street while the academic building and library are located at 38 West 86th Street.
Cross-cultural may refer to
Japonisme is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858. Japonisme was first described by French art critic and collector Philippe Burty in 1872.
In the arts of the Western World, Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that means to recreate the experience of the primitive time, place, and person, either by emulation or by re-creation. In Western philosophy, Primitivism proposes that the people of a primitive society possess a morality and an ethics that are superior to the urban value system of civilized people.
French art consists of the visual and plastic arts originating from the geographical area of France. Modern France was the main centre for the European art of the Upper Paleolithic, then left many megalithic monuments, and in the Iron Age many of the most impressive finds of early Celtic art. The Gallo-Roman period left a distinctive provincial style of sculpture, and the region around the modern Franco-German border led the empire in the mass production of finely decorated Ancient Roman pottery, which was exported to Italy and elsewhere on a large scale. With Merovingian art the story of French styles as a distinct and influential element in the wider development of the art of Christian Europe begins.
19th-century French art was made in France or by French citizens during the following political regimes: Napoleon's Consulate (1799–1804) and Empire (1804–14), the Restoration (1814–30), the July Monarchy (1830–48), the Second Republic (1848–52), the Second Empire (1852–71), and the first decades of the Third Republic (1871–1940).
Painting – artwork in which paint or other medium has been applied to a surface, and in which area and composition are two primary considerations.
Women of Algiers in their Apartment is the title of two oil on canvas paintings by the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix.
Singerie is the name given to a visual arts genre depicting monkeys imitating human behavior, often fashionably attired, intended as a diverting sight, using satire. The term is derived from the French word for "Monkey Trick".
The Turkish Bath is an oil painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, initially completed between 1852 and 1859, but modified in 1862. The painting depicts a group of nude women at a pool in a harem. It has an erotic style that evokes both the Near East and earlier western styles associated with mythological subject matter. The painting expands on a number of motifs that Ingres had explored in earlier paintings, in particular The Valpinçon Bather (1808) and La Grande odalisque (1814) and is an example of Romanticism.
Egyptian revival decorative arts is a style in Western art, mainly of the early nineteenth century, in which Egyptian motifs were applied to a wide variety of decorative arts objects.
The word negrophilia is derived from the French négrophilie that means "love of the Negro". It was a term that avant-garde artists used among themselves to describe their fetishization of Black culture. Its origins were concurrent with art movements such as surrealism and Dadaism in the late 19th century. Sources of inspiration were inanimate African art objects such as masks and wooden carvings that found their way into Paris's flea markets and galleries alike as a result of colonial looting of Africa, and which inspired artworks such as Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, as well as live performances by Black people, many of whom were ex-soldiers remaining in European cities after World War I, who entertained as a source of low income. Equally of interest to avant-garde creators were live arts such as dance, music and theatrical performances by Black artists, as evidenced by the popularity of comic artist Chocolat and the musical review Les Heureux Nègres (1902).
The Blue Room is a 1923 painting by French artist Suzanne Valadon. One of her most recognizable works, it has been called a radical subversion of representation of women in art. Like many of Valadon's later works, it uses strong colors and emphasizes decorative backgrounds and patterned materials. Valadon depicts a modern 20th-century woman, clothed and smoking a cigarette, in a pose traditional to female nudes, particularly 19th-century images of odalisques and prostitutes, such as Edouard Manet's Olympia.
Oedipus and the Sphinx is an 1864 oil on canvas painting by Gustave Moreau that was first exhibited at the French Salon of 1864 where it was an immediate success. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The work was a fresh treatment of the established subject of the meeting between Oedipus and the Sphinx on the road outside Thebes, as described in Sophocles's play Oedipus Rex.
Prostitution in Impressionist painting was a common subject in the art of the period. Prostitution was a very widespread phenomenon in nineteenth-century Paris and although an accepted practice among the nineteenth century bourgeoisie, it was nevertheless a topic that remained largely taboo in polite society. As a result, Impressionist works depicting the prostitute often became the subject of scandal, and particularly venomous criticism. Some works showed her with considerable sympathy, while others attempted to impart an agency to her; likewise some work showed high-class courtesans, and others prostitutes awaiting clients on the streets. In addition to the sexual revulsion/attraction the figure of the prostitute stirred, she functioned as a sign of modernity, a clear sign of the entanglement of sex, class, power and money.
