Page 111 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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examination of the concepts globalisation and Trividi so aptly calls it? 229 Indeed, they played a
glocalisation; the major ‘protagonists’ active in role in mediating between cultures, but, and I
this painting market, including the techniques will borrow the words of Shannon again, “they
used, working methods, and formal aspects of obscured as much as they clarified each side’s
the paintings; and, lastly some viewpoints that perception of the other.” 230
lead to the conclusion that these paintings must The following chapter sheds light on the
be treated as a shared cultural visual repertoire, Dutch corpus, its meaning and use value. The
as emblems of a historical period of time, and concepts of ‘sites’ and ‘modalities’, as
forever connected to a global trade frame of highlighted in Chapter 2, are essential for the
mainly Western audiences. The interesting qualification and evaluation of visual material.
110 process in which space was created to mix Besides study of the (sets of) paintings
existing visual conventions in China with a themselves, a broad variation of documentary
foreign visual language, resulted in this sources on the distinguished genres are also
transcultural, integrated painting genre with taken into account to appreciate the joint Dutch
works of art that, notwithstanding the low collections. In doing so, as we shall see,
status at the time and place of their production, ambiguity regularly rears its head.
have transformed from ‘vulgar’ to ‘elegant’.
In former times, translation, in one way or
another, allowed Western buyers of Chinese
export paintings, on their return home, to
journey back to adventurous times on the other
side of our globe. The question is whether, in
recent times, when translating, literally, these
transcultural artworks into intelligible language,
viewers, curators, collectors and connoisseurs
are able to experience the same audacity, once
they are connected with this specific cultural
heritage? As translation is an ongoing cultural
act with temporal and spatial properties, present
actants – either the paintings themselves or
human activity around them – could work
towards a positive answer on this question. For
my part, I am more than happy to contribute to
achieving this.
Chinese export paintings were produced with
specific audiences and aims in mind, but the
painters seldom controlled who ultimately saw
them. What is indisputable, however, is that
through the fusion of Western and Chinese
painting conventions and technology a unique
own painting style has been created of
remarkable innovation and enduring beauty. Yet,
as Shannon states, regarding the use value of an
Indian tomahawk, “this hybridity also created
ambiguity.” 228 The world of Chinese export
paintings, with its multiple discourses and
interdependencies, has shaped ambiguous
understandings of what China means. Can these
paintings be understood as a “more complex
negotiation between two cultures?” as Harish

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228 Shannon 2005, 623.
229 Trivedi 2005. Harish Trivedi, professor of English at the University of Delhi, is the author of Colonial
Transactions: English Literature and India (1993), and has co-edited Interrogating Postcolonialism (1996), Postcolonial
Translations (1998) and Literature and Nation: Britain and India 1800-1990 (with Richard Allen, 2000). He also
translates from Hindi into English.
230 Trivedi 2005.