Page 170 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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41). 355 Loo also emphasized his collection’s illustrious ownership history. In his offer of

a Kangxi vase to the American industrialist and billionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Loo

mentioned that it was from the collection of Ching Shio-san, a Manchu prince and the

keeper of the Imperial Palace treasure. 356

Loo’s dealing also capitalized on the anti-modern, nostalgic sentiments that permeated

the middle and upper classes in America in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries

(Lears 1981, XV). As Holly Edwards notes, it was a period of psychological uncertainties

and spiritual homelessness that resulted from rapid industrialization and urbanization,

territorial expansion, economic upheaval, and war (Edwards 2000,16). Disillusionment

with corrupt modern society spurred an interest in the “long ago and far away”. It is no

coincidence that collectors like John D. Rockefeller, Jr. were interested in both Chinese

art and medieval art. Ancient Chinese art, when idealized and distanced from the chaotic

modern China and West, promised a peaceful and spiritual world where Westerners could

357
take a respite from their distress. An article in the New York Times, for example,

commented on the 1931 exhibition of Loo’s collection, “Many of the large pieces of

ancient sculpture look out with peculiarly serene faces toward the turmoil of the twentieth

355 Samuel N. Behrman notes that the renowned dealer Joseph Duveen employed the
similar strategies to promote portraits of European nobility in America. The newly rich
Americans in Duveen’s time, “could not become lords and ladies, they could buy the
family portraits and other works of art that had belonged for centuries to lords and ladies,
and this strengthened their feelings of identification and equality with British nobility and
with the great rulers and merchant princes of the Renaissance” (Behrman 1951, 97).
356 C. T. Loo to JDR Jr., June 21, 1945, folder 106, C. T. Loo 1945-1951, box 11, OMR-
RAC.
357
It is not a coincidence that JDR Jr. was drawn to both Chinese art and medieval art.
Both fall into the category of the long ago and far away. Both promised an intense and
intimate aesthetic and spiritual experience.