What are pricing regulators and the conservatives of the decorative arts have in common? The two must navigate complex questions of international trade: who did what and for whom, with the ideas of whom and who technology? The blue and white porcelain that invaded Europeans when he arrived from China in the middle of the 18th century gave birth to a worldwide import industry, layoffs, development, tributes and refinements collectively called “Chinoiserie”. It is French for things that even vaguely evoke from East Asia, or the idea of the third hand of someone from East Asia, and it is the subject of provocative, but trendy exposure, of irresistible consumer goods at Metropolitan Museum in New York.
This is a show with a point. Monstrous beauty: a feminist revision of Chinoiserie Gives that porcelain and other home ornaments played a role in training views of four continents on each other and in particular the role of women in each. The sets and ewers embarrassed exotic scenes that allowed the imagination to move to places where women were confined, sexualized, domesticated or transformed into monsters. Those who owned these fragile articles, so the argument goes, were not content to eat or drink them; They also soaked a whole cultural ideology.
Even if you do not buy the conclusion (or do not refuse to bury yourself in its mysteries by reading all the text panels), the MET provides a sumptuous study of the coveted objects, magnificent babioles and extravagant demonstrations of crafts. You can browse it with pleasure or dwell on the unpleasant implications. One or the other approach is enriching in a different way.
One of the first pieces of the exhibition is a plate of Ming dynasty painted with plant patterns that were moving aboard the Dutch company from eastern India Witte Leeuw when an explosive cannon flowed near Saint Helena in 1613. No one in Europe, until the ship's cart was made in the 1970s. But the cargo clearly XVIIth century and how complex the commercial roads were. Witte Leeuw had Java sail, and porcelain also made his way to the Philippines in Mexico, or by land in Italy through Persia and Egypt. Even then, China has shown its talent for gratifying Western customers, incorporating a European taste and technique superposition.
Porcelain arrived for the first time in Europe as a ballast for a lighter cargo, like spices. But for a continent accustomed to heavy sandstones and robust tin, delicately painted and practically translucent dishes had to resemble the creation of a legendary workshop. The princes took everything they could find and had the best parts in wrought metal supports such as the Grays trophy. Soon, Portuguese, Dutch and British merchants have competed in market control.
Competition was so intense that in 1545, Cosimo of Medici sent an agent during a shopping in Alexandria – the world commercial equivalent of standing near the kitchen door at a party to catch the sofas before having the chance to circulate. Not satisfied with imports, Cosimo organized his own workshop at his court of Florence and decorated local ceramics decorated with a mixture of Asian and local patterns. On a gentle porcelain dish from the end of the 16th century, two travelers in the event of European bankruptcy roam a lush floral landscape evocative of Islamic ornamentation.
The association with distant fantasy lands has given a taste for monsters, including an imaginative menagerie of hybrids and vines of the human beast wrapped in the arabesques. This grotesquerie was born for the first time from the rediscovery of the end of the 15th century of the Domus Aurea, the villa of the Emperor Néro in Rome, which was extravagant decorated with fanciful animals. Over time, familiar demons have merged with distant peoples to form an surprisingly durable aesthetic of fascination and fear.
“The race was the exotic subconscious of European porcelain”, reads a wall label for a pair of teapots from the 1870s. “Grotesque creatures based on classic models have turned into racial caricatures of Chinese and Africans.”
Monstrous beauty Underlines the abundance of women who break through glass gardens, beautifully dressed or not dressed at all, presiding over Hauthty, shopping, reading, maternity, smooth, chatter. A pair of 18th century saucers made in China for export to Europe shows a Dutch dairy raising its skirts and leaning on obliging. A pyramid in giant porcelain from the 17th century, a sort of castle for cut flowers made in the Netherlands, has women in various forms: as a musicians painted in a Chinese garden, like a quartet of torso supporting the column in each corner, and as a European matron with a cruciform hanging, perched on the apex as if to reproach all the crucial desirates.
This piece belonged to the collection of Queen Mary II, which excited its various palaces so full of delicious tchotchkes which, as a nearby text says, “Porcelain attacked the walls, coats, shelves and cornices”. Mary's enthusiasm moved the market. What had been a concern of male connoisseurs has now become the province of women, who has raised the stuff, used it to serve tea and played in his painted scenes. Goddesses, actresses and courtesans were walking on the sets and around vases, less for the delight of men than in the context of an international fraternity of pleasure.
Imaging transcended materials and geography. In the 18th century, Chinese artists mixed Asian and European subjects and techniques in different proportions, depending on whether they provided articles for export or the prohibited palace. A pair of inverted paintings on the glass is eloquent of this cultural mixture. In one, commanded by the Emperor Qianlong, a “woman and a scholar” sit together in calm, reading, writing and sipping of tea. But the setting has a western atmosphere, with its theatrical curtains and its architectural interior in perspective. A similar painting of the same place and the same period presents us “Mme and Miss Revell on a veranda”, probably the wife and daughter of an East India company disguised as a Chinese hostess for their intimate masquerade.
The exhibition covers a too long period and a whirlwind of influences too complex to hammer all this variety in a convincing feminist argument. The conservative Iris Moon tries to extend the historical debate in the field of contemporary art by including videos and sculptures by American Asian and Asian women who aspire to “transform the negative aspects of a style into visual expressions of power”. The recruitment of artists to correct and reproach their ancestors seems to be a mistaken business; In this case, the effort only gives distraction.
More persuasive is proof of a global luxury trade dominated by exchange and opportunism. Europeans want to do the printur in China for its prestige and quality. Then, targeting the independence of the interior decoration, they made similar items closer to their home. In the end, however, the mercantile era prospered on artistic products without clear origin, a form of glorious hybridity which maintained the wheels of culture for hundreds of years.
At August 17, Metmuseum.org
