Odalisque in Green 

Iosif Iser, a Romanian artist, painted ‘Odalisque in Green’ at some point in his career. The image, a nude woman, is an odalisque, a figure that has roots in the history of orientalism in European painting. The orient, or the East, provided European artists with a space for fantasy, and projections of the exotic other. Odalisques were concubines in Turkish harems and therefore forbidden to western male viewers. This allowed artists to explore themes of sexuality under the guise of historical or documentary accuracy. Iser, born in Romania, was a Jewish artist. His position on the periphery of western European culture may have allowed him to approach the orient from a slightly different perspective, not quite western, not quite eastern. Art historians look to institutional records and cultural histories to better understand the position of artists like Iser. By studying the image in its social and institutional context, we can better understand its historical and cultural meaning.