"Saudi Aramco World: Behind Orientalism's Veil" - Juliet Highet

In 2008 the art market reached record prices for Orientalist art. Remarkable is the move in space of this art market. The subject of Orientalist art has become its own buyer, as the Middle East state itself as a new player in the art world. They invest in new museums, large collections and institutions. Therewith also in Orientalist art, as it is an important part of their national heritage. 

These Orientalist paintings represent some recurring subjects. The first one is 'The Harem', a space where the European male viewer can let his imagination free about these women. The landscape paintings of the East shows cities and the desert as if the time stopped, a snapshot of a more archaic period. A subgenre here is the 'desert action' with adventurous figures on horses or camels attacking a convoy. Nevertheless, the most provocative are the ones with the overall nudity and the slave markets. Noteworthy is that these scenes are being avoided by the new investors in the Middle East. Art critic Rana Kabbani notes that "This is someone else's story: someone else's Orient". This is the story of the European, male gaze that generalized the East in the 19th century. Edward Said argued in Orientalism that "the West's imaginary artistic and literary notions of a static, passive and even morally degenerate East abetted Western colonialism, no matter how benign the apparent intentions of the paintings or the literature". 

The important question here is why would the Middle East art market become so primal for the purchase of Orientalist art when it's basically cultural imperialism? Apparently, some see it as honouring to their heritage as historically important documentation. That is why the artists who are truthful get better prices at sales. The nostalgia of the Orientalist paintings gives them some kind of peace within the rapidly changing world they live in.