Page 38 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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Chapter 2 18-10-2016 21:07 Pagina 37

Theories for new insights

into Chinese export paintings

37

By examining Chinese export paintings, with export painters and their practice, as treated in
their art and commodity character, in terms of Chapter 3.3.);
their use value through time and space, this 2. the site of the image itself with its assigned
chapter gives us insight into the theoretical value depending on the genre (sets, albums, and
frameworks that shed new light on this painting singular paintings executed in different media)
genre. It will deal with their commodity/export and the represented Chinese subject matter;
value, related cultural-biographical issues and 3. the site(s) where the paintings were seen
other value and meaning matters in their social and interpreted by various consumers, or
life. It also treats aspects of visual economy and audiences, along the total trajectory of their
the materiality of this specific painting genre social life (in general discussed throughout this
with its historical and artistic value accrued (or dissertation and explained in more detail in the
not) by the various mechanisms active along the case studies in Chapters 5 and 6).
trajectory of production, exchange and These three sites are active in relation to the
circulation, through to consumption, ‘freezing’ value accruement, or the opposite, the value
or de-commodification and, sometimes, dwindle, of the paintings.
revivification or re-commodification. The modalities (aspects) at stake at each site are:
1. technological (what an image looks like
2.1. and what it is made from effects what it might
Framework for visual analysis do and what might be done to it);
on a multiple level 2. compositional (referring to the specific
Among the numerous theoretical sources on material qualities of the paintings: content, set,
visual culture, I found Gilian Rose’s angle album, singular, colour and spatial organisation);
effective for interpreting the individual images 3. socially relevant (referring to “the range of
and in terms of achieving the underlying economic, social and political relations,
objective of this dissertation; that is, to revitalize institutions and practices that surround an image
3
the legacy of Chinese export painting in the and through which it is seen and used.” ).
1
Dutch collections. Therefore, this study deploys The aspect of ‘subject matter’ or ‘genre’ of all
her developed framework to approach objects, three modalities remains important to the social
in this case Chinese export paintings, which function and evaluation of Chinese export
(never innocently) render the world in visual paintings. Thus, this aspect will be discussed in
terms. To interpret these paintings, both the Chapter 4, which provides an inventory of the
meaning and use value of the corpus must be Dutch collections; that is, an aggregate amount
examined on multiple levels; what Rose calls the of sets, albums, and various genres.
2
‘sites’ and ‘modalities’. To qualify and evaluate To theorise the materiality of Chinese export
the large body of paintings involved and to paintings and in order to get the necessary
remain consistent with the theoretical frame of metaview with regard to the paintings and their
reference revealed in this chapter, it is important trajectories, I had to zoom out to a larger
to explore three sites: picture. This study, therefore, distanced itself
1. the site of the production of the paintings from the paintings’ material, the represented
(all aspects of the modus operandi of Chinese subject matter, stylistic and compositional

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1 Rose 2007 and 2012.
2 Rose 2007, 13 and 257-262.
3 Ibid., 13.