Page 51 - Jindezhen Porcelain Production of the 19th C. by Ellen Huang, Univ. San Diego 2008

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Themes of national pride and a desire to preserve and study one’s own national

tradition in this period are not surprising given the prevalence of nation-centered reform

in twentieth-century China. What is significant is how art leaders in China emphasized

the importance of the physical materiality of objects to the study of China’s art history.

A Chinese article introducing a seminal book on Chinese art published by the Burlington

Magazine of the Royal Arts Academy in 1935 declared it enlightening for those wanting

to understand Chinese art history because “Westerners base their academic research on

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physical contact with the “real things” (shiwuྼي). Comments by Palace Museum

organizers and the Organizing Committee about the process of lending art works also

revealed a similar logic hinged upon the centrality of physical and material aspects of

objects. An example of this is evident in the way in which members of the Chinese

organizing committee worked meticulously to implement measures that protected the

materiality of these objects. For instance, in his report, Zhuang Shangyan went to great

lengths to explain the use of multiple layers of velvet bags, cotton cases, wooden crates

and finally steel cases to prevent any material damage from occurring during the acts of

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transporting, packing, displaying, and storing. Even John C. Ferguson, an art collector,

dealer, Executive Yuan consultant, and a one-time advisor to the Qing court, observed

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that “Unusual care was taken in their shipment so as to insure their safety.” Realizing

that the object’s correct and proper transport could substantiate the responsibility of the

new Republican government over all things related to the “nation,” Chinese museum

scholars and researchers thus attached extreme importance to the objects’ fragility and

substantive condition. In so doing, their concerns illuminated the Chinese organizers’

preoccupation with the materiality of the sent objects.