Page 185 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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faithful and meticulous rendering of the subject matter, and the dismissal of the Ming and

Qing paintings that often favored idiosyncratic and spontaneous expressions.

The surge of Modernist art movement in the West brought about a paradigm change in

the reception of Chinese painting with respect to aesthetics and category. By the 1930s

and 1940s, modernists in the West had rejected naturalism and representation in favor of

abstraction and expression. In this context, the previous disregarded qualities of Chinese

painting, such as its lack of representational precision and spatial depth, suddenly became

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virtues. The increasingly internationalized art scene in America also encouraged lively

dialogues between Western modern art and art from other cultures and times. 388 Chinese

art was increasingly displayed and evaluated with modern art, as indicated by the title of

the New York Times art review, “Old Orient, New West: Great Chinese Paintings-

Academy-Picasso.” (Devree 1949b)

Loo’s dealing in Chinese art reflected and responded to this changing aesthetics.

Before the 1930s Loo’s dealing focused on early paintings. Two important catalogues,

the 1916 Descriptive Catalogue of Ancient and Genuine Chinese Paintings, and the 1924

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While the reception of Chinese art was affected by modern aesthetics, Modernist
artists in the West were making a conscious effort to draw inspiration from the art of
other cultures and times. As Jackson W. Rushing notes, it was a time when Jackson
Pollock, Mark Rothko made paintings that “referred to atavistic myth, primordial origins,
and primitive rituals and symbols” (Rushing 1995,121). Matisse in his visit to John D.
Rockefeller, Jr.’s home likened Rockefeller’s collection of Qing porcelains to Modern art
(Crowninshield 1938, 85).
388 The 1930s and 1940s witnessed a parade of exhibitions of American Indian, African
art, and Oceanic art with a curatorial concept of drawing the affinities of the ancient and
the modern in the U.S. The 1933 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA),
“American Sources of Modern Art”, for example, showed an affinity between Modern art
and that of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca. Among these shows, the 1941 exhibition at the
MoMA, Indian Art of the United States, was one of the most impressive and successful.