Chinoiserie through a feminist objective

Largely turned ridiculous as the ultimate in Female vanity and frivolityPorcelain fever imported from Europe from the beginning of the 18th century threw the framework of Chinoiserie, an imitation and a Western interpretation of Chinese culture and aesthetics in manufactured products. A next exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is examining the symbol of status of obsessively collection of houses in superior failure, identifying how perceptions of the art form aimed at the financial autonomy of European women and contributed to the exotuating objectification of women and Asian cultures.

Organized by Iris Moon, which oversees the collection of ceramics and glass in the department of the Museum of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Monstrous beauty: a feminist revision of Chinoiserie Assesses some 200 objects from the MET collections and on an international loan in a critical examination of gender autonomy and racial stereotypes. In an interview HyperalgicMoon said that his main entry point into the department's collection was by Chinesery as an American Asian woman. She sought to reveal the stories integrated into the style and her inheritance through the Monstrous beauty Show, opening on March 26.

“The other starting point for this exhibition was an object that we have acquired, an inverted painted mirror of a woman in a Manchou dress in 1760,” said Moon. The generic commercial object stood out because the image of the woman seemed to look at her directly. “It is supposed to be a decoration on the surface of the mirror, not someone you need to face, and I found it incredibly intriguing.”

Moon has established chronology and porcelain acquisition trends imported to HyperalgicNoting that if the first presence of equipment in Europe dates back to the medieval period, it was mainly available for princely collectors as an object or a rare and precious whole.

“The association with women and the frivoleness really occurs in the 18th century with the consumer revolution,” she explained. “It is exactly at this time, when women gain power as consumers, as the panic public discourse on the new power of women and the fact that no one can control their taste.”

“Suddenly, porcelain goes from this rare and precious object of merchandise to this explosion of uncontrolled desire”, continued Moon, “and this sexualized language is imposed on these women when they develop a taste for these objects.”

Moon said one of the Primary societal criticism Buying porcelain was that you couldn't have a set – “You have to catch them all, they were like Pokémon.” The collectors compulsively filled rows of shelves in whole parts with their acquisitions. Noting that decorative art was often rejected both from an aesthetic and political point of view compared to what was considered a high art, Moon declared that porcelain was more accessible because it was flying under the radar.

With regard to the role of porcelain as an inheritance object, the curator explained that, historically, “the rights on earth and the inheritance of goods all go to the male line, while women inherited mobile goods”. She quoted Amalia van Solms-Braunfels, Princess of Orange, who left her collection of tastes and an influential collection of decorative art and jewelry with His four daughters – Everyone has devoted a room to their house to display and rely on their mother's inheritance.

But what has in particular attracted women to this form of art? Was it the fragile and milky milky white material and delicate decorations? Was it the act of hosting and showing the goods and the beautiful teas associated with the guests?

“We tend not to consider the important decoration because you see the same figures on all these objects – pavilions and pagodas, trees and women in silk dresses,” said Moon. “But if it is your only access to a world beyond yourself, porcelain really becomes a tool to fuel imagination and fantasy and projections.”

And in this, Chinoiserie took the aesthetics presented of Chinese porcelain and other decorative products and ran with it, leading to fetishized rendering of “the Orient“” As the imagination of European producers who rely on their interpretations of previously imported and authentic commercial goods said by the imagination.

“Chinoiserie has flattened and serialized fixed images of a culture of which Europe did not know anything, and it was designed to suit European taste,” said Moon. “The imagined story of what they think that China has become a structure that does not necessarily disappear; It comes back when necessary. The idea that these inanimate purchased objects first determine your relationships with a person or a country is the complexity of Chinoiserie. »»

To complete the conversation to have on stereotypes and autonomy with historical works, the exhibition of Moon will incorporate Asian contemporary artists, notably Candice Lin, Lee Bul, Yee Soo-Kyung and Patty Chang, as a kind of “tonic” to cut the adorned seduction of chinoiserie and the call in the present and the future of the material and the future of the material and the future.

“Different stories can, hopefully, open people to new perceptions and new ways of thinking not only of history, but also on the way we live today,” said Moon about Monstrous beautyFeminist.

“I hope that when viewers come, they will first look and think second.”