Page 182 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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review of Loo’s 1946 exhibition Figures in Chinese Art, for instance, noted both the

timeless quality and the historical relevance of the art collection in the show,

“Timelessness and serenity in Chinese art are exemplified by a group of small figures on

exhibition at the gallery of C. T. Loo. The figures-wood, stone, bronze, terra cotta and

porcelain-range from late Han to late Ming, through the first 1600 years of the Christian

era.” 378 Though Chinese antiquities could be placed into a chronology, they became

timeless when perceived in the modern West not only as an abstract and changeless

tradition, but also as fixities in an idealized past distanced from a decayed and chaotic

present. Loo’s dealing in Chinese art entertained the idea held by average Americans that

China’s civilization had come down through the centuries with little change. 379

According to Loo, the small standing bronze figure holding two posts with jade bird

finials (MFA 31.976) in his collection “represents a fortune teller and that even today in

city gates or market places similar fortune tellers with live birds are to be seen, another

evidence of the extraordinary continuity of manners and customs in China.”(Jayne 1931,

25) (Fig.30). Chinese antiquities, when reoriented in the West to meet modern aesthetic

standards and the needs of modern society, also became timeless.

This paradox of time and timelessness in the reception of Chinese art was built upon

the tempo-spatio-cultural dichotomy of ancient-Chinese vs. modern-American. While

Chinese antiquities stopped in their own past, modern America was entitled to consume

378
“Stress on the Exotic,” New York Times, April 14, 1946.
379
Even today, for the average Westerner, Chinese contemporary art is something new
because their notion of Chinese art is largely defined by museum collections of classical
art.