Page 211 - C.T. Loo A paper about his impact and activities in the Chinese art Market

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women. 411 The emphasis on the female subjects was also evident in that half of the

colored illustrations in the catalogue are devoted to the paintings of women. 412

While the description of paintings of female subjects concerned mostly their body and

ornaments, the text for the Five Old Men from Suiyang, portraits of five high officials of

the Northern Song dynasty (Kwen 1916, Cat. no. 60) concentrated on their career and

character. This contrasting mode of presenting female and male subjects reflected not

only the identification of women as decorative objects in the male-centered society in

China, but also their exoticization and commodification for viewers in America. The

discussion of the size of the women’s feet in the catalogue entry for the painting “Three

Beautiful Women” (Kwen 1916, Cat.no.4), for example, capitalized on the curiosity of the

Westerners who identified Chinese women as an exotic subject with bound feet.

To the Western audience, Chinese figures in art apparently lacked the kind of

sensuality one could find in the representation of nudes in the Western art tradition or in

the works made in an Oriental manner. The art critic, Jane Gaston Malher, after viewing

Loo’s 1946 Exhibition of Chinese Figures, observed, “‘How Chinese it is!’ For all are

clothed.” (Mahler 1946, 42) The erotic message of Chinese figures in Loo’s collection,

however, was delivered in a subtle way. The implied eroticism in the Minneapolis

Institute of Arts acquisition of two bare-chest statues of Bodhisattva from Loo in 1941,

for example, was given a tantalizing note in the New York Times report. Highly

411 Cat. no. 3 The Empress Wu and Travelling Equipage, Painted by Chang Suan Tang
Dynasty, A.D. 618-906; No. 4 Three Beautiful Women Painted by Chou Fang Tang
Dynasty, 618-906; No. 10 A Lover of Flowers Painted by Tu Siao Five Dynasties, A.D.
906-960, and. The other two colored illustrations were tiger and a landscape/genre
painting.
412 Cat. no. 1, and 10.