Page 186 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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T'ang, Sung and Yüan Paintings Belonging to Various Chinese Collectors featured

exclusively works dated prior to the Ming dynasty. In the 1930s and 1940s, paintings of

the later periods became the focus of Loo’s promotional activities. The spontaneous and

expressive quality of the kind of paintings that Loo promoted for clients with a Modernist

taste was illustrated by his 1938 catalogue Exhibition of Chinese 18th Century Paintings.

The catalogue opens with an ink painting of a bird by Zhu Da, a late Ming early Qing

painter known for his highly individualistic and free-hand brushwork (C. T. Loo and

Company 1938, Cat. no.1) (Fig.55). The 1949 exhibition of a collection of Ming and

Qing paintings organized by Jean-Pierre Dubosc was a landmark event in the reception of

Chinese painting in America. The exhibition was received with much enthusiasm for its

Modernist quality. The New York Time review stated, “M. Dubosc had undertaken to

prove that the masters of the Ming and Ch’ing periods, usually dismissed rather

cavalierly by Western art scholar, attained heights comparable to those reached by earlier

masters… The later tendency toward abstract treatment of landscape is pronounced and

profoundly effective. In the horizontal scrolls the beholder is opposite every point in the

picture; but the absence of our Western convention of architectural perspective has not

impeded the extraordinary movement through the paintings.” (Devree 1949a)
The well-received Song mural exhibition that Loo launched in 1949 also merchandised

the Modern qualities of Chinese antiquities. The New York Times review observed,

“Aside from the intrinsic interest of the exhibition of Chinese frescoes more than eight

centuries old, at the gallery of C. T. Loo, the work shown proves of additional interest

because of its essentially abstract nature.” (Devree 1949a) The Art Digest review also