Page 72 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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that culture, to resist those things that are truly cities. Indeed, we are forced to consider whether
alien and to compart-mentalise those things that, we can actually speak of ‘local culture’ in the
while different, can nevertheless be enjoyed and case of Chinese export painting. This suggests a
celebrated as different.” 39 Although we have view of culture as an internally coherent system
serious doubts about whether Chinese export that can come into contact with another culture.
painters were touched by Western painting Is it not more adequate to speak of the
conventions like linear perspective and the use of constitutively hybrid character of a cultural
shadows and colours, we are aware of another system itself? According to Jonathan Hay,
gratification, which came to the fore in this questions of viewpoint and power are at issue
period; namely, the profitable business that arose when geographically widely separated cultures
alongside this painting production and its come into contact with each other, as in the 71
movements around the world. Lamb explains case of the historical China trade. 42 Further-
that “the marketing, funding and infrastructure more, problematising China as a monolithic
behind a product may come from a global unity and the ideological efficacy of the China
corporation, but the local level dictates what concept are widely acknowledged. Moreover,
finished form that product will take. In this way, we can argue that since the beginning of the
glocalisation is a bottom-up system of nineteenth century the Chinese nation state,
governance for globalisation.” 40 I agree with as a complex imperial and united cultural form,
Lamb that, when taking the economic model of was increasingly on its last legs.
glocalisation as a guide, and applying this to Finally, the description of this term by Paul
larger cultural and political issues, you have a Wildman and Iona Miller is appropriate when
new way of looking at the world. The global studying Chinese export painting:
economy, which was clearly present in the
nineteenth century, did not lead to the [g]localisation proposes both theory and practice
destruction of the South Chinese local identity. for bridging global-local scales in an alternative
On the contrary, in Canton, local peoples have equitable international system, using a mosaic of
always innovatively incorporated products and committed key actors. The meaning of globally
social forms for economic purposes. They accessible information and economy becomes
ingeniously appropriated new techniques and organised in its local context. Intense local and
materials to account for the taste of overseas extensive global interaction is a dynamic that
merchants and seamen for the highly desired operates in fractal embedded spatial and cultural
Chinese (exotic) goods, which can be considered dimensions to mobilise and interface social and
as global commodities. With Chinese export economic interaction at the local, national and
paintings in mind, we turn to Dikötter, who tells transnational levels, that is, glocal. 43
us that “the local in this process of cultural
bricolage was transformed just as much as the Yet, the historical China trade, with its major
global was inflected to adjust to existing export goods like tea, porcelain and silk,
conditions.” 41 engendered the derivative trade in export
The ultimate goal of thinking in terms of paintings as other desirable commodities. This
glocalisation is to ensure a globalised world as created a strong and successful local painting
an integrated place, while also protecting the industry with its own actors, who, in turn, were
cultural heritage of local areas and, above all, let well embedded in that particular place of trade,
the agential ‘local’ be characteristic in its full of global transnational and transcultural
material output at the artistic production-end. exchanges.
However, further study must be done before we For now, this chapter does not intend to
can wholly paste this definition onto the pursue the debates on globalisation and
managed meeting of the growing global arena of glocalisation further. We can conclude with
the nineteenth century with those elements that Appadurai’s words in 1996: “Yet a framework
make up the local culture – with all its values, for relating the global, the national, and the
beliefs and traditions – of southern Chinese port local has yet to emerge.” 44 Furthermore, it is

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39 Lamb 2015.
40 Ibid.
41 Dikötter 2006, 7.
42 Hay 1999-a, 7.
43 Wildman & Miller 2012, 840.