Did we all get Orientalism wrong?

Ariella Budick | Financial Times | 20th June 2026

Orientalist art, painted by Europeans, has been scorned as colonialist fantasy. That’s true, but this type of art was just part of a complex two-way exchange between cultures. An acclaimed portrait by the French artist Gérôme portrays an Ottoman soldier with great respect. And Hamdi, the Ottoman artist, borrowed his theatrical stagings and architectural renderings straight from Paris. There was “a much richer and more human concoction than postcolonial polemics would suggest.“