The Manifestations of Orientalism in Latvian Architecture and Art during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and First Third of the Twentieth Century as a Versatile Research Platform
The Manifestations of Orientalism in Latvian Architecture and Art during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century and First Third of the Twentieth Century as a Versatile Research Platform

Summary/Abstract: At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries there was an emerging trend of orientalism in Europe. In a wider sense this term included the passion of members of Western society for oriental cultures and the intention to get acquainted with, to study, to describe and to depict these cultures. The term orientalism refers to the places where the culture of Islam was or had been dominant. Orientalism was at its peak during the second half of the nineteenth and first decades of the twentieth centuries and in this period it also found its place in architecture and visual art in the territory of Latvia, which creates an opportunity for a variety of investigations, as there are still a lot of questions to be answered and facts to be discovered. Thus, the article is focused on the most significant examples of orientalist art and buildings influenced by neo-Islamic architecture in the territory of Latvia, as well as some objects from other Baltic countries.

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