Page 181 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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government not only continued to try to prevent its art treasure from being exported to

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foreign countries, but also bought back a historically significant bronze from America.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that Loo became the target of Chinese

nationalistic fervor against the outflow of Chinese antiquities. Loo repeatedly mentioned

both privately and in public that the Chinese government was tightening its control over

exportation of its cultural patrimony, which led to the draining of his major source of

supply.

Timelessness

“… there was no such thing as modern art, or ancient art, or art of the Middle Ages;

that the youngest and liveliest art, today, was that of Egypt, China and Greece.” (Altman

2006, 73, originally from Crowninshield 1938, 85)

Ancient Chinese art, in C. T. Loo’s dealing, was directed both to the past and the

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present. Although Loo imbued a strong sense of history into his dealing, Chinese
antiquities, paradoxically, became timeless in modern America. The New York Time

376 “A Chinese Bronze Returns to China,” Art News, Vol. LXXXV, No.22, February 27,
1937, 12. The article noted that this bronze beaker Chou Kung Tsun was on display at the
New York galleries of Tonying & Company in the spring of 1935. The bronze was
historically significant “because of the inscription which it bears. This inscription relates
that the Duke of Chou (one of the most important personages in Chinese history) ordered
the bronze to be made to commemorate the victory of King Chao over Tsu Pei. Leading
Chinese scholars have accepted a reading of the date on bronze as the tenth year of King
Chao’s reign, corresponding in the orthodox chronology to 1043 B.C. This date not only
is helpful to students of art who wish to work on the dating of Chinese bronzes, but also
supplies the date for King Chao’s victory which, although one of the three most
important event of the Chou dynasty, and remained obscured. ”
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The tendency of “modernizing” American Indian art and African art occurred in the
1930s and the 1940s long before the much critiqued 1984 exhibition, “Primitivism” in 20
th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern, at the Museum of Modern Art,
New York.