Page 203 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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the discovery of difference”. 11 As Gupta and narrative effect due to the formal arrangements
Ferguson so aptly articulate: “Perhaps we should of the elements in the depicted scenes. The
say that in an interconnected world we are never painterly quality, the narrative images with
really ‘out of the field’.” 12 This concept of protagonists and staffage figures in Arcadian
location allows access to ‘situated knowledges’. 13 winter landscapes and their mysterious
Such ‘knowledges’ are neither temporally, nor atmosphere, made me curious about their
spatially fixed, but evolve from diverse factors meaning. 15 Moreover, almost nothing has been
that include local and other sources. They written about this genre, in which the artistic
depend on social practices and their relation to component of its use value (because of the genre)
local as well as transnational and global aspects predominates. 16 For a discussion about how the
202 that shape local culture, and vice versa. Hence, winter landscape became a subject matter for
field research is an ethnographic method and Chinese export painting, see Chapter 4.2.
adapted as a ‘locational’ understanding of both In order to say something about the meaning
the social practices being researched and the production of similar works, it is important to
researchers themselves. This kind of research is a understand that the paintings were produced
promising approach to the new art practices that more than 200 years ago and that the
focus on the analysis and creation of social space interpretation of these images today, by me, an
through ‘actions’ like intervention, interaction, art historian by training, takes places many years
process-based collaboration and a permanent later. According to Zijlmans,
maintenance and preservation, activation and
expansion of (social and cultural) networks. My our view of the past is not unbiased, rather it
field survey adopts this approach as both the involves a point of view, the articulation of
researched art practice and the researcher (me) particular questions and is always guided by
are focused on exactly these ‘actions’. My theory. The past is re-constructed in the present
evaluation is based on an extensive empirical and here the emphasis is on the word
research trajectory and a deep conviction that construction. [...] Nonetheless, the fundamental
the universal artistic nature of these transcultural fact of the transfer can equally never be totally
paintings needs to be communicated in a dissolved and is often crucial. 17
museum context. Yet, the visual efficacy of this
group of narrative paintings works only in When studying these early nineteenth-century
relation to its viewers. There is, in my opinion, paintings in a museum context, it is necessary,
no doubt that they have a range of material when interpreting or deriving (historical)
qualities, but, as Rose teaches us, “it is only information, to condition the analysis; that is,
when someone uses the image in some way that to include an awareness of a contemporary view,
any of those qualities become activated, as it their use value in a different context, their
were, and significant.” 14 The same is true for narrative power as a series, and their
this group of paintings. particularities. To paraphrase Hay in his article
‘Toward a theory of the intercultural’, it is
6.2. beyond doubt that the transfer of objects or
Value accruement by decoding images never leaves that which is transferred
In general, ‘curiosity’ and lacunae in academic untransformed, if only in terms of the effects of
research are good starting points for an in-depth the re-contextualisation of the reception of
study. Of all the paintings that I have studied for artworks. 18
this dissertation, these ten Tartarian winter views My research into the origins of these paintings
intrigued me the most. This group has its own was also inspired by the fact that they have

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11 Gupta & Ferguson 1997, 5.
12 Ibid., 35. But as http://anthropologicalfieldwork.blogspot.nl reads: “If we do in fact stretch the anthropological
boundaries for ethnography, we must find ways to defines our methods. We can't say that we are ‘always in the
field’, because then we have an all-inclusive situation where there are no boundaries left.”
13 I have borrowed the term ‘situated knowledges’ from Donna Haraway 1988, 575-599.
14 Rose 2007, 220.
15 Staffage figures are people or animals in, for example, a landscape, that are accessories, i.e. not the primary
subject of the painting.
16 In 2005, William Shang wrote an article on winter views as a genre in Chinese export painting. Shang 2005, 90-101.
17 Zijlmans 1997, 168-169.
18 Hay 1999-a, 7.