Page 17 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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INTRODUCTION

Why C. T. Loo?

This dissertation examines the circulation and reception of ancient Chinese art in the

United States in the first half of the twentieth century through an investigation of Loo

Ching-Tsai, a leading Chinese art dealer, collector, publisher, and exhibition organizer

(Fig.1). The placement of “Loouvre” in the title is a deliberate provocation, alluding to C.

T. Loo’s stature in the international art world. Loo’s company was named “Luwu” in

Chinese, a homophony for the Louvre. In the course of over forty years, Loo introduced

an impressive array of Chinese antiquities to major Euro-American collectors, museums,

1
and scholars. Fifty years after his death, these objects still grace many art museums and

major Chinese art history books in the West.

C. T. Loo merits critical attention because his personal history constituted an important

chapter in the history of Chinese art collections in America. At the turn of the twentieth

century, Loo, a native of China, settled in France. By the early 1910s he became an

established art dealer in Paris. In the mid-1910s Loo moved the center of his business to

the United States, where he emerged as one of the top international dealers of Chinese

art. It is noteworthy that Loo’s rise coincided with the formation of major collections of

Chinese art in America. In the first half of the twentieth century, as the U.S. replaced

Europe as the world’s leader and increased its political and financial presence in China, it

1 Although this dissertation deals with American collections of Chinese art, the analyses
are often placed in the trans-Atlantic discourse of Chinese art, given the constant
exchange of objects and information as well as the travel of dealers, collectors, curators,
and scholars of Chinese art between Europe and America from 1915 to 1950.