The transformation of the image of the islamic world identity in the west from 19th to 20th centuries

Examples from architecture and art are cited to illustrate some of the most common European perspective on the “Arab world” over the last two centuries. This was seen as a geographical and cultural territory to the south-east of the Mediterranean, united under the religion of Islam. In the 18th and 19th century this world was identified in the European mind whit the East tout court; the encounter with the Orient gave rise to “fairy-tale” elements in architecture and the characteristic style of spa establishments, drawing on interpretations of “The Thousand and One Nights” and a barely dissimulated colonial spirit. By the second half of the 20th century Islam featured in European Architecture and figurative art above all in the relationship between nature and the man-made, in compositions of mass, water, light and colour, over and above the formal and stylistic elements of its tradition. The examples we look at include John Nash’s Royal Pavilion, Brighton, the gardens of the 19th century Italian villas of Melzi, Bellagio and Torlonia, Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Cemetry, Barragan’s Folke Ergestrom house, as well as paintings by Delacroix, Ingres, Esher, Klee and Matisse.