Page 44 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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the end of their use value? Do people create constructed objects may produce certain
value based on imagined futures, or also on psychological effects, including the attribution of
imagined pasts? The various biographical details value as “the enchantment of technology.” 27 In
reveal a tangled mass of judgements about use doing so, objects are designed to elicit a certain
value that shape our attitudes to these paintings. psychological effect by exploiting certain sensory
Similar questions may be asked on a larger scale characteristics. In this formulation of material
to determine the social history of a class of ‘performance’, I argue, in tandem with Gell’s
things. This refers to a long-term view of how idea, that human engagement with material
the meanings and uses of a painting change over culture also lends Chinese export paintings
time. As Charles Orser Jr. wrote in 1996: “[I]n a agency. Another mode for identifying value is to
cultural biography, a particular object is determine the performance characteristics, i.e. 43
followed through time, with its changing context how well the object can be used to achieve the
noted at each stage of its life. The social history purpose of its use, relative to objects of a similar
of things focuses on the large-scale dynamics of type. For example, a large Chinese export oil
supply, demand, and meanings of whole classes painting serves a different purpose from a small,
of items and tracks their changes through time.” 25 loose sheet of pith paper with a watercolour on
The sum of many of these cultural biographies it. This is ultimately reflected in its value and
forms the social history of the class of Chinese price. The value of the huge panoramic
export paintings. As will be shown in chapter 5, Leembruggen View of the waterfront of Canton
this history, in turn, affects the cultural biography painting may be ascribed value by society at
of them: a circular ‘chicken-and-egg’ process. large at the time of its production, while the
value of a watercolour on pith paper may be
Commodification: Exchange as source of value passionately personal. The value of both
The commodity candidacy, the second aspect of paintings, I argue, is inseparable from their
commodity-hood, is less a temporal than a material existence, which is always substantive.
conceptual feature. It refers to standards and We must bear in mind that, in the case of
criteria that define the exchangeability of an Chinese export painting, the intercultural
object in any particular social and historical exchange is characterised by different standards
context. Furthermore, the ‘candidacy’ affects, of value. We cannot maintain the idea that it is
as Fridberg argues, “the ability of an object to just the cultural framework that defines the
operate as a commodity in a certain situation commodity value of these paintings. The degree
in line with the needs and desires of buyer and of value coherence between, for instance, buyers
seller, the cultural framework in which the and sellers varied considerably. In the
exchange takes place, and other situational Netherlands at that time, Chinese export
factors.” 26 In the Dutch situation, with a lot of paintings belonged to one or more external,
Chinese export paintings living their overlooked globally circulating classification that was
lives in museum storerooms, removed from imposed on owning such an artwork. In most
circulation, this candidacy aspect gives a respects, the classification by Western merchants
promising perspective. Yet, it also presents the differs markedly, we can presume, from the
possibility that the involved paintings can always classification applied by the Chinese painters
regain their exchange value and function as who produced them. It is therefore preferable to
artistic commodities. How an object came to follow Appadurai and use the term ‘regimes of
hold a particular value depends on the specifics value’, which does not imply that every act of
of its creation, use and ultimate value. For commodity exchange presupposes a complete
example, the degree of rarity of a product, the cultural sharing of assumptions. 28 Using this
level of expertise required to create an object, or term, we can consistently work with both a very
the transformative processes involved in creation high and a very low sharing of standards by the
may provide clues to value. The British social actors involved in this particular sector of trade.
anthropologist Alfred Gell, whose most The production process of these paintings was
influential work concerned art, language, an intentional, productive action, with a certain
symbolism, ritual and agency, even refers to the goal in mind. This process required a set of
way in which beautifully made or skilfully material processes in which painters had to

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25 Orser 1996, quoted in Fridberg 2008 (online article, n.p.).
26 Fridberg 2008.
27 Gell 1994, 43-44.
28 Appadurai 1986, 15.