Collecting Objects / Excluding People
Chinese Subjects and American Visual Culture, 1830-1900
- 294 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Collecting Objects / Excluding People
Chinese Subjects and American Visual Culture, 1830-1900
About This Book
In Collecting Objects / Excluding People, Lenore Metrick-Chen demonstrates an unknown impact of Chinese immigration upon nineteenth-century American art and visual culture. The American ideas of "Chineseness" ranged from a negative portrayal to an admiring one and these varied images had an effect on museum art collections and advertising images. They brought new ideas into American art theory, anticipating twentieth-century Modernism. Metrick-Chen shows that efforts to construct a cultural democracy led to the creation of unforeseen new categories for visual objects and unanticipated social changes. Collecting Objects / Excluding People reveals the power of images upon culture, the influence of media representation upon the lives of Chinese immigrants, and the impact of political ideology upon the definition of art itself.
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“Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.—Arthur Conan Doyle, “Silver Blaze”
SECTION I. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
1. The Presence of Chinese Objects in the United States
With the West anxious to enlarge its vocabulary of naturalistic ornament, Japanese art was a revelation that provided a new visual language of birds, animals, sea creatures, and flowers. Monkeys and dragons, cranes and chickens, elephants and eagles, chrysanthemums and cherry blossoms; these are just a few of the motifs that Americans discovered at the Japanese display.13
tea along with textiles, porcelain, furniture, and fireworks…. mandarin heads, umbrellas, ciphered fans, flower seeds, bamboo washstands, sweetmeats, tea waiters, boxes of paints, ivorywork caskets, sugar, cassia, clay images, paper hangings, furniture, satin, lacquerware, bamboo blinds, floor mats, fans, and whangee canes.17
I, TSUNG ZEQUAY, issue my proclamation to the inhabitants of the city of Brooklyn, situated on the beautiful bay of New York, on whose waters sail the great ships bringing the produce of far off lands, that I, TSUNG ZE-QUAY having left my kindred and my nation, and having been led to your goodly land, proclaim my design of offering for sale the products of the Celestial Empire. I have with me much Tea, Coffee, Cocoa, Chocolate, &c. of the choicest gatherings which I will give you for your smallest pieces of gold and silver; and may health, joy and length of day attend you. All you who want the finest, choicest flavored Teas, come to me, and you shall have the purest that China can produce. Also, a beautiful assortment of Lacquer-ware work tables, Lacquer-ware centre tables, Lacquer-ware work boxes, Lacquer-ware Tea-Caddies, Lacquer-ware checkerboards, Lacquer-ware writing desks, flower Vases of every size & elegance, Chinese Pipes for tobacco, Chinese Pipes for Opium, Flowered Fans, Sandal wood Fans, Sandal wood Boxes, Chinese Lanterns, Ornamental Stone figures, Fairies & Toys, Stuffed Birds, Ivory Fans, Pomatum Jars, Buddhist Rosaries, Chinese Shawls, Teapots, Teacups, Chinese chop-sticks, Wrought silver bracelets, Feather Fans ALL FROM CHINA!—My place of traffic is at the corner of Schermerhorn and Court Sts., Brooklyn.19
500 Palm Leaf Fans, 500 painted Silk fans, 500 embroidered do do, 500 Rice fans [?pith paper], 600 cut and painted bone...
Table of contents
- Title page
- Illustrations and Credits
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- CHAPTER ONE. THE POLITICS OF CHINOISERIE: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CHINESE OBJECTS
- CHAPTER TWO. THE POWER OF INACTION: CHINESE OBJECTS AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE AMERICAN DEFINITION OF ART
- CHAPTER THREE. FROM CLASS TO RACE: THE NEW YORK TIMES RECONSTRUCTS “CHINESE”
- CHAPTER FOUR. THE CHINESE OF THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION: NINETEENTH-CENTURY TRADE CARD IMAGES
- Conclusion
- Notes