Exoticism

In music, exoticism is a genre in which the patterns, notes, or instrumentation are designed to feel like the audience is in exotic places or old times (e.g., Ravel's Daphnis et Chloé and Tzigane, Debussy's Syrinx, or Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio espagnol).

[4] An important and archetypical exoticist is the artist and writer Paul Gauguin, whose visual representations of Tahitian people and landscapes were targeted at a French audience.

The painting diverged scandalously from the accepted academic style by outlining the figure and flattening space to draw the viewer in: Olympia seems provocatively naked rather than classically nude.

[8] Particularly following the publication of Edward Said's book Orientalism, exoticism has become a key term in political assessments of the encounter between Euro-America and the non-Western world and more broadly of any center and a periphery.

As recent anthropological enquiries suggest, terms such as Orientalism and exoticism have been at times simplistically applied to merely equate the interest in the Other with the attribution of negative qualities.

A study of the sphere of Othering in contexts, such as the relationship between Greece and Germany during the sovereign debt crisis years and the art show Documenta14 may point to volatile ingredients in "exoticism", including fascination mixed with condescension, aversion, admiration and hopes for an escape from an oppressive northern European lifestyle.