William Greenwood

This is the catalogue of a small exhibition, in 2019, held at the British Museum in London, in collaboration with the Islamic Arts Museum of Malaysia. The book and the exhibition provide a good overview of the intense interest the West had for the East from the 16th century (and earlier) on. In that sense it certainly does not cover the entire Islamic world. The focus is almost entirely on painting and partly also on photography. It is a nice overview of how Western artists were positively fascinated by that "other" East, and in turn incited artists from that region to adapt their own work to the Western taste; an intriguing example of cross-cultural influence. At the same time, the book also corrects the negative interpretation that the Egyptian-American sociologist Edward Said gave to the term "Orientalism" in his book with the same name, published in 1978. More on that in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3056829915… (mer)