Alternating between charmingly and cringingly unfashionable, George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing defies some orientalist tropes while falling prey to others.
Orientalism
Posted inOpinion
How the Contemporary Art World Repackages Orientalism
The depiction of Muslim-majority cultures as a foreign “other,” in contrast to Eurocentric values, occurs in museum art exhibitions and formal visual analysis.
Posted inArt
How Academics, Egyptologists, and Even Melania Trump Benefit From Colonialist Cosplay
From khakis to pith hats, certain items of clothing have become enduring emblems of European colonialism and particular scholars who know these problematic histories choose to engage in the aesthetics of colonialism in their everyday lives.
Posted inArt
A Worthwhile But Flawed Reconsideration of Orientalist Art
The British Museum’s Inspired by the East asks its audience to rehabilitate Orientalist art without ever focusing on what made it problematic in the first place.
Posted inBooks
How Victorian Intellectuals Idealized Japan and Its Culture
The undercurrent of the book is the link between Japonisme, aesthetics, and queer culture: Admiring Japan was, in several cases, shorthand for queerness and a dainty homoeroticism.
Posted inArt
Decoding Techno-Orientalism in Science Fiction
The AC Institute is hosting a series of screenings that will examine the pervasive exoticization of Asian people and cultures in science fiction.
Posted inArt
The Getty’s Online Palmyra Exhibition Falls into Orientalist Traps
A new online exhibition on the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra by the Getty Research Institute forgoes the city’s historical complexity to take an Orientalist approach.
Posted inOpinion
The Confused Thinking Behind the Kimono Protests at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts recently cancelled an event they had called “Kimono Wednesdays,” that, according to the museum, sought to engage people by arranging enhanced encounters with works of art.
Posted inArt
Using Beauty to Examine Ugly Political Truths
Beauty has long occupied an inferior rank in the modern art world. At best, it’s deemed inconsequential — at worst, shallow. But this puritanical sentiment may be misguided, if two video works on view at the Asia Society are any indication.
Posted inArt
The Mystery of the Orient Express Resurfaces at a Paris Museum
PARIS — In forming an exhibition on the Orient Express, the railroad line most steeped in myth, it was wise to bring in the body of the train itself.
Posted inOpinion
American Pop Culture Meets… Everyone Else
LOS ANGELES — I’m not a fan of the word “Third World” (third world to what?) but I am a fan of pop culture, and I’m fascinated by how American pop culture has intersected with all sorts of countries, rich and poor alike. So when I stumbled across a new tumblelog called Pop Culture and the Third World, I had to click on it.
Posted inArt
The Many Comic Faces of Tibet
Something about Tibet has always seemed very mysterious to the West. Maybe it’s the terrain of the towering Himalayas possibly inhabited by savage yetis, the legends of the heavenly Shangri-La, or the ancient traditions of Tibetan Buddhism embodied by the reincarnated Dalai Lama. All of these impressions, founded on fact or not, have naturally made for great comic book fodder, where the exotic and mystical image of Tibet fits in perfectly with superheroes and mad villains. The Rubin Museum of Art’s Hero, Villain, Yeti: Tibet in Comics is now presenting over 50 comics related to Tibet dating back to the 1940s.
