Page 188 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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also for their compatibility with Modernist aesthetics. The Art News report of Loo’s 1947

Song ceramic exhibition, for example, emphasized these ancient objects’ connection to

contemporary Western viewers. It suggested that knowledge about its history and native

context was not required to enjoy them: “An audience untutored in the niceties of

terminology, in the marks which indicate authenticity and rarity, or in the glazes which

identify the individual kilns can still get enormous pleasure from the eighty-odd superb

examples of Sung stone porcelaineous vases which make the current exhibition at C. T.

Loo & Company.” (A.B.L. 1947, 35) Aware of the sweeping Western Modern art

currents, the report noticed the good timing of Loo’s exhibition, “There is no better time

than now for the first expert exhibition of the ceramic ware of the Sung Dynasty. To a

public schooled in abstraction, here is a craft-produced during China’s great cultural era

of AD 960-1260-which is based primarily on shape and color and which bears close

kinship to sculpture in all principles of plastic form.” (A.B.L. 1947, 35) The report also

noted the compatibility of Chinese porcelains and Western Modern paintings, “…a New

York collector had chosen Chinese porcelains along with the twentieth century paintings

in his modern living room.” (A.B. L. 1947, 59) The affinities between Song ceramics and

Modern art was suggested by two images that appeared in the 1947 issues of Art News:

the intricate pattern of the crackled glaze and simple form of the ge ware in C. T. Loo’s

advertisement in the May, 1947 issue of the Art News created rich resonance with the

abstract fabric design on the cover of the March 1947 issue (Fig.57 a,b).

Loo’s strategy of modernizing Chinese antiquities was a market gambit to broaden the

base of American collectors of Chinese art. The Art News review of Loo’s 1947 Song