Page 50 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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painting conventions plays a determining role. I concur with Allen F. Roberts when he discusses
Moreover, the effect of the characteristic the recolonisation of an African visual economy
module-orientated method of working, along “that all economies, including visual ones, are
with the mass-production seen in Chinese fluid as to relationships that they imply, create,
painting studios, was a spectacular expansion of and strengthen, for actors, ideas, and means
both the quantity and the accessibility of come and go constantly, making it impossible to
Chinese images. This technological aspect served define the boundaries of any given economy.” 44
to distribute the paintings and, along with them, The sense of ‘scapes’ formulated by Appadurai is Fig. 2.9. The emperor’s
ideas and ‘knowledge’ about China. These also useful here, so Roberts argues, as it suggests audience (from set of
‘images of China’, further explored in Chapter 4, “dynamic transactions developed and under- 19), anonymous, oil on
were primarily constructed from the various stood through cultural frames that produce glass, 1785-1790,
subjects depicted, which were painted again and ‘fuzzy sets’ rather than rigidities of political 52.5 x 81 cm,
again. Furthermore, there is a tendency to hold delimitation.” 45 With Chinese export painting in Museum Volkenkunde/
the vibrant trade system as a whole responsible mind, we must swap the pejorative word ‘fuzzy’ Nationaal Museum van
for the practices and the production of these for the more relevant and positive term ‘hybrid’. Wereldculturen,
kinds of paintings. This term, however, is not entirely straight- inv.no. RV-360-1122.
The third level at which an economy of vision forward and needs some elaboration. In the
must be assessed is, as Poole argues, “the discourse of hybridity, the description of this Fig. 2.10. The emperor’s
cultural and discursive systems through which concept is selectively used by scholars who audience, anonymous,
images are appraised, interpreted, and assigned resist defining cultural forms as such, and by oil on canvas, c. 1820s,
historical, scientific and aesthetic worth.” 43 others who apply this word as “a way of 72 x 100 cm,
Here, it becomes important to ask how the acknowledging the mixed descendancy of certain Museum Volkenkunde/
paintings accrue value(s) – rather than what objects and practices.” 46 In every culture, Nationaal Museum van
specific paintings mean – taking time and place- certain mixed cultural forms are naturalised as Wereldculturen,
specific aspects into account. In this respect, belonging to that particular heterogeneous inv.no. RV-360-1139.