Page 200 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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commodities and long-distance cultural traffic only feeds the discourse on differences, both in
over a long-term period, between local Chinese geography and value. In Made for Trade, I
business men, artists, foreign merchants, rather emphasise the mutual enhancements
missionaries, explorers of various types, between East and West relating to the cultural
collectors, fortune-seekers, and others. The exchanges over time. To escape the East-West
paintings studied for this chapter are emblematic dyad, the set of paintings at issue here, besides
examples of transcultural artworks. They are, to being transcultural, can also be labelled
5
use the words of Burke, “neither a reflection of ‘EurAsian’. This term (with a capital A for
social reality nor a system of signs without Asian), espoused by Grasskamp (see
3
relation to social reality.” They take up a Introduction and Chapter 2.5.), highlights the
variety of positions, this study argues, between intensifying interconnectedness of Europe and
6
these two extremities. Furthermore, this study Asia in recent millennia. I think EurAsian is an
often has to deal with two other extremities: appropriate term for these Tartarian winter
East and West. Although, East-West remains the views, not least because through this
most expedient term in the vocabulary of interconnectedness, they are modified, re-framed
cultural contact, it is, to concur with the idea of and re-layered into a new, transcultural genre.
Lionel Jensen, an “increasingly inaccurate means The representation of these Tartarian winter
of marking the difference between developed views is characterised by an entanglement of
4
and developing nations of the world.” The foreign and recognised layers including, among
meta-geographic entities of ‘the East’ and ‘the other elements: the Chinese subject matter, the
West’ beg the question: where is East and West composition of the twisted trees, the (for
in relation to me? The East-West binary division Europeans) familiar position of the figures, and

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3 Burke 2001, 183.
4 Jensen 2010, 108.
5 Grasskamp 2015, 363-393.
6 Hann 2016, http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/684625 (consulted March 2016).