Page 201 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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Visibility and power were the key elements in Loo’s staging of spectacles. Although

Loo’s publications often contained detailed contextual information about the objects, the

formal and visual elements dominated in the display. The New York Times review of the

1935 Exhibition of C. T. Loo’s Collection of Chinese, Hindu and Cambodian Art at the

Jacques Seligmann Galleries, revealed a somewhat perplexing experience for visitors

who were not well-versed in Chinese art due to the exhibition’s “undocumented manner

of presentation” (Jewell 1935). The review, however, noted that the average visitors

would still find beauty. It observed, “As it is, the plain citizen, though assisted by little

placards, is likely to wander in some bewilderment through this wealth of objects. But he

will find an abundance of beauty here.”(Jewell 1935) Loo paid meticulous attention to

the objects’ formal qualities and to the aesthetic principles of their display. Loo’s 1941-2

sale catalogue of the Exhibition of Chinese Art, for example, presented a group of

carefully arranged Song and Yuan ceramics (Fig. 60). The placement of objects in each

register was well balanced. Objects such as the circular dishes on the three bands from

the top corresponded with each other in shape (C. T. Loo and Company 1941a, Cat.no.

582-600).

What made Loo’s display a spectacle was not only the properties and visual elements

of the artworks, but also the people who sold, bought, studied, displayed, viewed it, as

well as where and how it was viewed and displayed. The media sensations that John D.

Rockefeller, Jr.’s art acquisition of a rare bronze from C. T. Loo offers a case in point. An

article in the New York Times announced, “A gilded bronze Indo-Scythian statuette,

purchased by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. from C. T. Loo, the Chinese archeologist, was