Page 171 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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century.” 358 During World War II, the contrast between the turbulent modern West and

the imaginary ancient China was presented in a dramatic way in the 1944 issue of the Art

News. On the left was a compelling photograph from “Twelve Great Pictures of the War”

depicting “a Navy Douglas ‘Dauntless’ banking into formation for the return to its base,

floating somewhere in the Pacific.” (Commander Edward J. Steichen 1944-45, 110.) This

forceful image was curiously juxtaposed with a page from the article on the history of

Chinoiserie from the seventeenth to nineteenth century, a trend of decorative art based on

the Westerners’ fantasy of China (Fig.53).

Loo was conscious of the appeal of the idealized notion of ancient Chinese art for C.L.

Freer, who, as Agnes Meyer observes, “derived boundless happiness from his content

with Oriental love and began to discover profound value for our turbulent era in the calm

acceptance of the world which the Chinese sages possessed.’” (Conn 2001, 168 ) 359 In

1916 a group of paintings in the Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient and Genuine Chinese

Paintings, were offered to Freer. This collection featured the peaceful and poetic

expressions in Chinese art. Among fifty-seven entries in the catalogue, twenty were

360
landscapes, and a significant number of landscapes were idyllic scenes. The painting,

entitled Composing Poetry beneath Pine Trees under a Cliff, attributed to the Song

painter Ma Hezhi, offers a case in point (Fig. 5). The descriptive text emphasized the

358
New York Times, November 15, 1931.
359 As Julia Meech notes, similar situation can be found in the reception of Japan and
Japanese art in the West, “Japan was perceived as a primitive country in which childlike
people lived in perfect harmony with nature.” (Meech 1993, 141) “Those who found
solace in the Orient and for whom it exerted a spiritual as well as a psychological
attraction, include-to name only two of the most obvious-Vincent van Gogh and Frank
Lloyd Wright.” (Meech 1993, 141)
360 Three albums were not included in this statistic.