Page 218 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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will not solve all our questions. Thus, these phenomenon, especially when it comes to their
transcultural landscape paintings, which are a visual strength and their material features, this
part of the collection of Museum Volkenkunde, past will never look the same as when it is
will always induce new questions that previous memorialised purely by historical written
museum workers almost certainly did not think sources. The valuation of these qualities in and
of. We must take into account the dynamic of themselves is an important aspect that must be
aspect of meaning, and, in doing so, the involved in the formulation of a future policy
derivative value dwindle or just the increase of regarding these paintings. Their potential value
value that comes with changing views of reality must be weighed up in the context of the bigger
and policies. Current museum systems with picture that the paintings are now part of. But is
checklist information about these paintings it true that one cannot have any meaningful 217
recorded on registration cards give us the approach to value without some notion of
opinions of one or more people in a specific totalities? When totality is understood as
social context and over a specific time. The something that exists in the actors’ imagination,
accurate documentation is valuable and harmful as Graeber, who is not entirely comfortable with
at the same time. In times when little the word ‘totality’, states, “we can yet take up a
information about ethnological collections was reference to this term, when we study the
available, properly executed documentary work concept of meaning.” 95 The conclusion in
provides us useful information. Presently, it is Graeber’s chapter ‘Value as the importance of
more interesting to take a social-science view on actions’ convincingly reads: “It is surely one
culture and these paintings in museum thing that almost all classic traditions of the
collections, which, moreover, are not inalienable study of meaning agree on, it is that for human
goods. Here, we come back to human beings, meaning is a matter of comparison.” 96
interpretation, a process that enables us to The process, in which this comparison takes
understand reality. We need, as Ter Keurs so place, realises value in the multifarious
clearly states, “to integrate material culture into expressions of this notion.
the complex world of human activities, in order It is clear that their interesting early life story
not to become ‘objects freaks’, who are only did not add substantially to the value of the
interested in the objects themselves, and not how winter landscapes in Museum Volkenkunde.
they can be useful in understanding human They certainly did not benefit from their
society,” and, as he continues, we must be aware flourishing period at the Royal ‘curiosity’
that “the study of material culture has such Cabinet after they left its premises. 97 But by
fascination and promising horizons, that restoring their former glory in times to come, I
materiality cannot be stressed enough.” 93 It is will once again situate them so that they can tell
important to keep attention for this group of their story and amuse the eye. The marvellous
winter views alive, thus justifying their and detailed execution and the haunting
brilliance. atmosphere of these Leiden paintings with their
Again, returning to the materiality of Chinese narrative images inhabited by figures in idyllic
export paintings, we may not forget that winter landscapes, have the potential to hang on
“human action, or even human thought, can walls again, like they did in Room 2 of the
only take place through some kind of material nineteenth-century Royal Cabinet. When
medium and therefore cannot be understood restored, their universal qualities of shared
without taking the qualities of that medium into cultural heritage will emerge, hale and hearty,
account.” 94 Chinese export paintings have and will lead to a new use value.
qualities in and of themselves. In memorialising I should say that if these paintings are not
the past by studying the many and multifaceted getting looked at and are sitting in storage and
visual aspects of this specific painting collecting dust, they become pointless. ‘Frozen’

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93 Ibid., 205.
94 Graeber 2001, 83.
95 Ibid., 86.
96 Ibid.
97 Until the late nineteenth century (1883) these paintings were part of a collection of curiosities. This is
significant, because ‘curiosity’ as Rose (2007, 225) writes, was “increasingly understood as an inferior form of
knowledge, prevalent among sailors for example rather than officers, and what were seen as more scientific and
judgemental modes of knowing became dominant.”