Page 133 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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Nearer East, Greece and Rome. I am constantly keeping in mind the rich repertory of

monuments of Oriental, Greek and Roman art which used to form the chief subject of my

studies for long years. And I use for analyzing the products of Chinese art the knowledge

of Central Asiatic and to a certain extent of Indian antiquities which I have acquired in

dealing with the monuments of Scythian and Sarmatian art: found in South Russia, in

Siberia, in Turkestan, and in the Altai region.” (Rostovtzeff 1927, 7-8) Based on his

scholarship on Greek influence on Iranian art, Rostovtzeff proposed a Greece-Siberia-

China lineage. In the catalogue, he suggested that Hellenistic art might have an direct or

indirect influence on Chinese art of the late Zhou and early Han dynasties through

Siberia. He noted, “The finds of Kozlov in Mongolia have shown that Greek wares,

especially Greek textiles, were imported in large masses into Mongolia and probably into

China as early as the 1 st century B. C.” (Rostovtzeff 1927, 4) He suggested that Iranian

tribes, who brought with them Greek influence to South Russia, could have spread this

influence to China through Sarmatian art (Rostovtzeff 1927, 5-6).

Developmental Pattern, Categorization, and Aesthetics

To further incorporate Chinese art into the Western art historical map, it is necessary to

demonstrate that Chinese art not only originated from the West, but also followed

Western art’s developmental pattern and met Western aesthetic criteria. This ideology

was manifested in Loo’s dealing in Chinese sculpture.

Unlike painting, Chinese sculpture was an invention of the West. The mortuary figures

(Met. 23.180.4-7), which were appreciated as fine examples of sculpture in the West, for

example, were not originally items that the Chinese would collect because of their