Page 40 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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intended to show the difference between a Marketplace, or putting it up for public auction;
commodity and an object that is originally in yet others, by keeping it (and making sure
domesticated in a specific local community; that others know that you have one). 12 In all three
is to say, existing within a local horizon with a cases, values circulate. Exchange, then, is just
strong, sometimes ancient and ritual one of many possible forms circulation might
significance. In terms of this present research, take. Thus, in the case of Chinese export
the commodity aspect is an important parameter, painting, these terms can safely be used
most notably in relation to the meaning and use interchangeably.
value of Chinese export paintings. After its production and having being
In order to see a Chinese export painting as a exchanged to a Westerner as a commodity,
commodity with a ‘social life’, we must proceed a Chinese export painting became socially 39
methodically. Firstly, it is good to focus on placeless, ready to be appropriated in potentially
spatial and temporal aspects in order to identify distant and unknown meta local contexts. 13
its use value. Indeed, both their place of In addition to a life as a more-than-a-souvenir
production and of consumption, and the more object, I argue, in line with Van Binsbergen,
or less demarcated period of time in which they that the painting was ready to be measured there
are produced are significant in the process of against the universalising standards of a meta
their appraisal. Focusing on the forms of local medium of exchange – of which money is
functions of use (or exchange) legitimises the the principal example – thus endowing it with
conception that commodities, like people, have a new meta local meaning. 14
social lives. Secondly, we must deduce how the Regardless of their own particular object
artwork has acquired or, indeed, lost value; and story, network and provenance, the commodity
finally, we must consider the ways in which said aspect that objects such as Chinese export
values affected interactions between people and paintings acquire, makes them all, in principle,
objects and the ways in which these interactions similar in light of the great equaliser, i.e. money.
are to be determined. The impersonal principle of money creates a
According to Jane Fajans, researchers often multitude of potential circumstances in which
step into a trap when it comes to the use of the commodity may be exchanged into ever-new
terms like ‘exchange’ and ‘circulation’. 10 As we contexts and into ever-new hands, without, in
can read in David Graeber’s Toward an principle, being transformed in the process. As
Anthropological Theory of Value, she suggests such, most Chinese export paintings are more
making a consistent distinction between or less interchangeable with other things, in
exchange and circulation. Whereas exchange unlimited spaces and times, beyond the here and
occurs “when property of some sort passes from now. While in general we can apply this
one person to another,” the notion of circulation definition of commodity to Chinese export
is appropriate “when values or valued qualities paintings circulating in commercial art markets
are transferred.” 11 I argue that within a around the globe, in the case of this research, we
business-like market with global dimensions, cannot; at least, we cannot entirely. A number of
such as the Chinese export painting exchange, the paintings kept in the Dutch museum
these concepts usually come down to more or collections are currently withdrawn from further
less the same thing. In some cases it may be effective circulation. They are remain hidden due
possible to realise the high value of such a to their vulnerability or their damaged state and,
painting, perhaps it is as an heirloom, by giving so far, are not accessible through the internet.
it away to a museum; in others, by displaying it Other contexts in which this withdrawing is
as a saleable item on eBay or Alibaba’s Taobao imaginable is when they act as valuable

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10 Fajans’ view on exchange and circulation is discussed in Graeber 2001, 81.
11 Graeber 2001, 81. David Graeber is an American anthropologist. From 1998-2007 he taught Anthropology at Yale
University, where he specialised in theories of value and social theory. From 2008 to spring 2013, Graeber was a
lecturer and a reader at Goldsmith's College of the University of London. Since 2013, he is Professor of
Anthropology at the London School of Economics.
12 Since March 2015, Sotheby’s, one of the most prestigious auction houses, entered the digital arena by organising
one of the first public auctions via the internet. This resulted in a shift from physical to online art sales, also in the
highest segment of the market. Thus, sales of art have become more accessible to a wider audience, worldwide.
13 Chinese export paintings never became totally culturally placeless, because they are inscribed with a certain
kind of ‘Chineseness’.
14 Van Binsbergen 2005, 46.