The purpose of this conceptual paper is to critique the phenomenon of representing the Orient in western modern painting. In this context, the author negotiates the iconographies of the Orient and its conceptual constructions from critical perspectives. Painting the Orient, as an artistic practice in the modern era, is a consequent result of the cultural impacts that occurred between the west and the east when the modern painters traveled across the seas to North African and Arab landscapes to explore new warm colors within the oriental panoramas. Such cross-cultural experimentation evoked novel representations in the Art of Modern Painting, where the oriental fashions, scenes as well as urban and rural backdrops manifested in the modern movements of western art. Therefore, the orient appeared in the western painting as a new visual discovery in the pictorial composition through its vibrant colors and wide-open landscapes. The simple compositions of such painting practices manifested new waves of abstract art in the painting experimentations and delivered new realms of painting expressions. Furthermore, this paper presents an argumentation between scholars on the subject such as Clarke and Said, not to evoke any political, cultural or social bias toward any western or eastern ideology, but to present the notion of academia in contextualized manners toward the criticism of the creative practices of the art of modern painting.
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