PUBLICIDADES TURÍSTICAS DO MAGREBE: (DES)CONTINUIDADES DO IMAGINÁRIO DA PINTURA ORIENTALISTA DO OITOCENTOS

Abstract

The imaginary created by the nineteenth-century orientalist art is still present in tourism advertisements today, as a means of arousing the desire to know the Orient. In this period, the North of Africa, which is the geographical location considered in this study, began to receive artists and tourists, that, immersed in a context of violence and dazzled by the exotic, contributed to shape the imaginary of a picturesque and mystic Orient. In order to understand the (dis)continuities of the nineteenth-century orientalist painting imaginary, we take as a theoretical background the concepts of Imaginary and Orientalism in the context of the French invasion and colonization of Maghreb. Based on a formal comparative analysis of images used in tourism advertisements, we identify elements of great visual and symbolical extent related to the nineteenth-century orientalist art. Therefore, results indicate the permanence of certain features of this kind of art in the current tourism advertising of the referred region, a fact that may sustain a colonial view of this territory.