Page 194 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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It would be an exaggeration to say that during evaporation process), which consequently led
the process of circulation Chinese export to new meanings and values of the objects (the
paintings changed into an equivalent of condensation idea). 91 New material complex
something else, articulating the condition of situations emerged with the ultimate example
unequal exchange, as sometimes happens. On being the public reincarnation of the three
the contrary, these paintings are just as favoured Royer paintings in Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
again, because of their meaning-value as tokens Chinese export paintings move around the
of the very same China trade period. This world and, when objects move, so we learn
revivification, particularly in South China, from the writings of Gerritsen, “they establish
demands critical reflection and analysis connections across space. […] Objects arti-
regarding their meaning-value as historical culate exchange, taste, design and cultural 193
sources. Indeed, we know that most visual understanding on a global scale.” 92 Future
material from that time or written testimonials interpretation of other worthwhile Chinese
of contemporary eyewitnesses must be export paintings in the Dutch collections for
understood as a representation of a subjective possible revivification includes awareness of
(selective) reality. the fact that these artworks are the result of
It is clear that the existence of the paintings in different ‘layers’ of use, interpretation across
Dutch museum collections has its roots in Dutch space and restoration across time. 93 Likewise,
trading activities, enterprises and lives, the way of classifying, archiving and labelling
conducted by an eighteenth-century official add layers. The curators’ responsibility to take
VOC-merchant, the ‘actions’ of a remarkable care of the often fragile painting albums and to
collector, a Dutch consul-merchant, a brave prevent the run-down oil paintings from being
captain on a Dutch trading ship, and an early damaged further, by keeping them ‘frozen’ in the
twentieth-century bank official in ‘the East’. storerooms, conflicts with their other social
These artworks themselves, each with their duties to valorise their research and display their
different capacities and qualities, influenced collections to the public. We may hope that the
human practices and were ‘victims’ of current future of the other paintings in the Dutch
ideas and concepts, or, on the contrary, they museums is one of restorations, exhibitions,
actually profited from them over time and more permanent displays, pictures in digitised
accrued value. They have many types of image repositories, lemmas in museum
potential use value, including economic, catalogues and encyclopaedias, etc., because they
commodity/export, historic, artistic and material are worth it.
value. For the German philosopher Georg When we follow Strathern’s and Munn’s
Simmel, value “is never an inherent property of viewpoints, “giving value” can be addressed
objects, but is a judgment made about them by respectively as a matter of “making visible” or
subjects.” 90 By following the life stories of these as an act of recognition of this quality that
paintings I have challenged the seemingly already exists in potentia. 94 Social relations take
paradoxical statement within Western thought on value in the process of public recognition
that agents and objects used to be sharply and, more importantly, in the way people who
contrasted, in order to discover the agency of could do almost anything, assess the importance
these artworks. In most cases, the ideas about of what they do as they act. As noted in the
the paintings, because of their existence, subject Introduction, I argue that the paintings referred
matter and appearance resulted in the owners to in this study have all sorts of potential
feeling that they should ‘take action’ (the identities. They must be considered as

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90 Simmel 1978, 73, quoted in Appadurai 1986, 3.
91 See figure 2.11., demonstrating that ideas not only condense in objects, but also evaporate from them. In an
evaporation process a change of meaning from matter to new ideas (intentions) take place. These new intentions, in
turn, will be condensed in new material contexts.
92 Gerritsen 2015, 6-7.
93 Ibid., 8. Gerritsen uses this term (layers) when she writes about the presentation as well as the preservation and
representation of material cultures in exhibitions, films and museum displays.
94 Graeber 2001, 47. Whereas Marilyn Strathern (among other works on this subject: The Gender of Gift: The
Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia (1988)) starts her analysis from a web of social
relationships (meaningful difference), Nancy Munn (among other works on this subject: The Fame of Gawa: A
Symbolic Study of Value Transformation in a Massim (Papua New Guinea) Society (1986)) starts from a notion of
activity (value emerges in action).