.!:i;;a, ffi t,r,. ..' 1. -;t ,,1;ia!&!F!,,. ; ! -;* "Z:.:..':,'::. .i;;.r:.;?. -!:,. .. 3 r'' f g.# g+t d' .fF ,E.tr+1:' € # I g! ,'* tf F {";,? Je%tW & K&KW.&NHIWSK Y${M MKHTXNG *F "&SSAN &E.'X} K&JK$PKA]\1 ART ,q\ '" := d--* ::&: i: t, :, .:. _tt_!i+' !r _i: J 5- l+ "-s-.f5. i-{? 5 r' +*Fj5'-5: {+'-.:nF } *r+ qE=.' .-€ (lhina, Platc 26) .1 .,t, *dr Introduction 'Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain substantiall,v. Major among these have becn the shall meet, mo\rements called c b irtcti se rie xtcl-i aponi sn e, so namecl Till Earth and Sk,v stand presently at God's great fbr the use the \!'est has madc of st1'le, motif and tcchnicluc Judgement Seat'. cleveloped, or thought to have developecl, in China and Rudyard Kipling, Tbe BallacJ r,tf East ancJ lVest Japan. Another important phase of European art, mostly based on a perccption of Middle Eastern culture, is East and 'West have met, howe-"er, on this earth for Orientalism. On the other sicle has been the interesr in thousands of years. r'Xrestern stvle, rr-iotif ancl technique in the East, n hich nas 'Sf'e have chosen over 300 ceramics, prints, clrawings, at first calltious but later pursue d r,'ith great enthusiasm. paintings, sculptures, photoplraphs, lacqueru'ork, All n-orks in this exhibition have been chosen because metalwork and textiles from the collection of the Art the1. shou. some aspect of the meeting of Easr and \(/est. Gallery of South Austraiia to show some of the se patterns Some are clear example s of cbinoiserie. japonisme or of meeting in art from the sixteentl-r centur,v until todal'. Orientalism, and oltheir opposites in the East; others have Kipling meant Asia and Europe bv his East and'West, a usecl perhaps onl,v one forcign aspect to furthe r their oq'n meaning still accepted today and, indeed, used here. A purposc. major reason fbr this exhibition is Australia's position Some are majrtr q.'orks of art u'hich show r-rnderstanding between the historically named East and West, being for and profitable use of thc possibilities available from both the last 200 years part of the \(/est culturalll' r.et sides. Others are just fun: amusing because of the pure geographically in the East. Aseparate section onAustralian .rrrnrisc, rl t lre intcrch:lngr'. art's own relation with Asia follows those of Europe u,'ith Al1 havc thc clement conjurcd bl. Samuel Ta.vlor the arts of China, Japan, South East Asia, India and the Colcriclge's romantic poem about Kubla Khan in his Middle East. kingclorn of Xanaclu: thev are all of strange and forcign Mahv of the patterns of influence have been of great sorlcls and bccause of this thev are both liter:rllv :rncl importance to the receiving culture. shaping it n'retaphoricall1. exotic. 1 China and the.West rffrest Tl-rc historv of Chtna's contact w-ith the can be Iight and shade and distance. In thcir paintings all the relatively simpll' told. Fron the thirteenrh centurv figure s, builclings, and rre es cast shadows, ancl their brush .journev of Marco Polo onu.ards, the namcs, dates ancl and colours ere entirely difl'ercnt from those of Chine sc achieve ments of the Europe ans n ho u,'cnt there have been painters. Their views strctch out from broad (in the clearlv recorclcd. Equallu the fen'moments rr'-hcn China fbreground) to narrovv. (in the background) and are \i(/estcrn shor.veci inte rest in art fonns can bc quite easilv cleflncd (mathematically measured). \fhen they painr clistinguish ecl. houses on a wall peoplc are tcmptecl to walk into them. The rX/est's contact with Chir-rese culture is quitc diflercnt; Students of painting mav wcll take over one or two points the influencc u'as continuous aiicl, though of van-ing from them tct make their own paintings more attractive success and juclge d at timcs ve11. clifferentlv br. Iluropeans, to the e,ve. But these painters have no brush-manner it was perr,.asivc ideologicalll. and artisticalll'. u,'hatsoer.cr; although the.v possess skill, they are simply artisans and cannot consequentlv It began vr'ith thc import:rtlon of Chinese silk and then be classified as painte rs." porcclain into Europe, w{rich helpecl esnblish China's, or tabulous Catha,v's, reputation for beautiful encl cleverlv The rcndering of real space which rhe W'est so gleefully made goods. The secret of silk's manuf'acture had been came to understand during the Renaissance was scorned stole n rn B1'zantinc times ancl porcclain (though not the by the Chinese as unimportant compared with the secret of its rnaking)hacl been known in Europe from the nobilitv of thought and gesture captured b,v the fine fifteenth cenrur)., coming via the eastern X,ieditcrranean. calligraphic strokes ol their own artists in search of the The se a route to the East was found first b1, V2sco da Gama spiritual cssence of the subject, in 149f1 ancl clirect tradir-rg of goods and ide as soon began. Howcveq although finallv of small importance, there were The first large shiploads of porcelain q.'cre selling in insunccs of Chinese response to \Western ideas about art. Europe at the beginning of the sevenreentl'r ccnturr,; in the The Gallerl' owns four examples of one of the most same vears asJesuit missionarics started to be allowed into interesting: four engravings (nos 39 to 42 illustratecl p.5) Beijing. made for the Emperors Qianlong and Daoguang in the period 1790 to 1830, copying not only Western ideas of Among the se missionaries we re a numbcr of artists who space but also the new $Testern engraving technique. brought \ilestern books and engravings. ancl introduced These images, b1. unknown Chinese engravers, which \Veste rn tcchniqr-res ancl ideas about art to the Chincse. A include continuous, understandable space from the precrse. contemporzr\- response to this new arr is forcgrouncl to thc background, some perspective in the recorded b1. a Chinese court artist Zou Yigui: buildings, some shading of the forms, especially in the 'The $Testerners are skilled in ge ometry, and conseque ntlV clumps of tre es, and some shadows cast by the sun, were thcre is not the slightest mistake in their wav of rendering made to celebrate the Emperor's military campaigns. In ,b * lF I ar. 4- .4 E F+ t* t st # "tt. 'fl-t *,ft j[ cBd'n * E& &Xgft* f #€g',]3f/i\ @ g ffi e\, *" .fr,r( tt e r$,fi fi F fl * r€ ir$ge1$; China. The Banquet given b-v the Emperor Qianlong before the Ziguangge Hall in tseiiing 1792, cI79)-()L) (no. 39) 1160 the Emperor Qianlong hacl ha.J sixteen v!'all Jean-Baptiste Pillcnrent's etchings (nos 37 and 38) show- paintings of the East TLrkestan campaign made b_v Chincse fanciful littlc landscapes r.rsrng cmpt\- sprce to create an ertis:s under the direction of four European missionarics, airiness, n'rth notational elernents of a make believe including the finest of thc European artists in Cl-rina in the natural setting. periocl, sa\\,. Giuseppe Castiglione. Qianlong then N4ore specific motifs, often copied or developecl from cxamples of engraved battlescenes b,v the [iern-ian artist imported Chinese pieces. were used in thc decoration of Georg Philipp Rugendas and asked for the large paintings ceramics, metalwork. furniture. w-allpapers and to be redesigned in this medium, first sending them to be architectural details, though these works frequcntlv done in Paris, ancl later har.ing l-ris own Chinese ertists retainecl thcir Er,rropean shapes. The English siiver trained in engraving. Nlontcith bow-l (no. 1) ancl chest of drau'crs (no. l The rnissionaries had another function in thc link with illr,rstrated p.8), both basicallv W'esrcrn in design, are European art. \Xl'ith the traders, ther. began the long cor,-erecl in irnaginarv scenes from Chinese life. The histor,v of direct Chinese influence on thc \X/est. The most Me issen cup ancl saucer (no. 5 illustrated p. 17) has a quitc successful Europeans in China, like the Jesr,rit Mattco Ricci, complcx, brigl-rtl.v colou red cbirtoiserie scene painted on learnt to understand and ful1y apprcciate Chinese culture, it. Othe r Chinese subjects rccur again ancl again. like the and wcre instrumental in scnding back information about 'bird and rock' motif. the 'bircl ancl blossornl the 'flamrng China to Rome. The engraving (no. J6 illustrate d p 6) b,v pearl', the 'tobacco leaf', and, pervasive still, thc 'n illorl. the tsolognese Giuseppe Maria Mitelli, made some patternl Some, like thc flaming pearl, l-rad gcnuine c,rigins sevcntl-fivc vcars after Ricci lirst E/ent to Beijing and at in Chinesc clesign but others. like the willorn'pattern, \\.cre the same time as Chinese books first bccamc known in cntirel\ Eltr( )ncan [ahrications. Northern Itall', show.s sorne knou,'leclp4e Chincsc of The re arc clifferenccs of opinion about tirc imporLlncc of costume, even subject matter somen.hat if the is lhis cblnoiserie to the arts of Er,rrope. One point of vieu,. capricious. holds that the rclationship rvas supcrficial and of little importance. Ceruinlr,', some of the motifs u,'ere of fanciful and transitort' taste but on the other hand the tech n ique of prtrcelain making. fir-rallr, discovered bv thc scienrrsrs ofAugustus of Saxonr. in I 710, the use of underglazc blue (or the famous 'blue and u,'hite') clecoration, glazes like the 'threc colour' tvpe used on W'hicldon plate (no.