Out Of The Orient 

Carl Spitzweg made this painting, Out of the Orient, with oil on canvas. Look closely and you can see how Spitzweg has used the fluidity of the oil paint to describe the scene. Notice the stark contrast between the light and shadow. The artist, who never traveled to the Middle East, relied on the visual language of orientalism, a Western fantasy of Eastern cultures. The painting is more about what those back in Europe thought the ‘Orient’ was like, than what it actually was. Here, the painter emphasizes the supposed idleness of the orient, with his focus on the man smoking in repose. The artist’s brushwork gives texture to the walls, highlighting the hard labor that went into the buildings’ construction, while downplaying the work that went into his own: the social and political implications are clearly loaded. The artist positions the scene as exotic and other, which is why it’s important to look beyond the surface of this genre painting, and consider its original context.