Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

In this paper, I question concepts artistic subjectivity and aesthetics by investigating the historiographical narratives around the collection of so-called “China Trade Art“ at the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) and the collection of “Asian Export Art“ at the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, MA, USA. The former is one of the few institutions world-wide to bring together pictorial art from both Chinese and Western artists of the 18th and 19th centuries; the latter shares many of HKMoA’s artists, and claims to be “the world’s largest […] collection of cross-cultural art from Asia.” These collections have accumulated objects that have previously been neglected by art historical canons, lying beyond simple national narratives. With this case study, I approach the following questions: In which way do these transcultural collections negotiate artistic subjectivity within and beyond Eurocentric art historiography? In which way do they perpetuate – or rupture – the power asymmetries of transcultural exchanges? And finally, how can we engage with them without simply reproducing assumptions of aesthetic value, artistic subjectivity and historical ‘truth’? Through an investigation of the underlying systems of differentiation – between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art, ‘ornament’ and ‘beauty’, ‘originality’ and ‘reproduction’ - I analyze the gendered, racialized concepts of art and its institutions, as well as the continuity and simultaneous porosity of these concepts. At the same time, I consider the meanings of the two collections in their specific contexts – the former colony Hong Kong in process of returning to China, and the settler-colonial USA.