The Growth of Asian Arts in Europe and America - Coursework Example

The growth of Asian arts in Europe and America: The infiltration of pieces of Asian art into the museums and art houses of Europe and America goes back a long way. In spite of the obvious cultural differences between the hemispheric East and West, the exchange of artefacts across the divide is as old as international commerce. Asian art has not only found patronage in the West, but have also had a significant influence in moulding the European and American conception of art. This essay will explore these developments in greater detail and find out why Asian art and artists have found acceptance and patronage in the West. Scholarly sources in the form of journal articles have been perused for composing this essay. Recently in the United States of America, The Asia Society organized a couple of important exhibitions, which typify the changing perception of Asian art in the West. The exhibition called ‘Buddha of the Future’ featured a bronze statue of Buddhist deity Maitreya which is nearly twelve hundred years old. Originally sculpted in Thailand, the artefact drew the attention and admiration of patrons and scholars alike, who unanimously agreed that it is a masterpiece. This masterpiece was accompanied by other equally remarkable exhibits of Asian art dating back a millennium. One of the reasons for this connection between the audience and the exhibit is the general awareness of Buddhist philosophy among western intellectuals. Books on Zen Buddhism have found wide readership in Europe and America. So, this initial acquaintance to an alien philosophy of life had wetted the appetite for further exploration of the culture of the East, as manifest in the Maitreya sculpture. According to one visitor of the exhibition, he “admired the sheer beauty of the Maitreya figure and other related images in the first exhibition and appreciated the information that accompanied the displays. He explained that he could enjoy the images as great works of art because they "transcended" their time and place; the label information simply amplified his visual pleasure” (Desai, 1995). Further, the fact that such works were made of more durable materials have enhanced their value in the eyes of Western art critics, whose bias arises from equating durability with high civilization. This is reflected in the fact that “until the Western paradigm of the ‘authentic’ primitive art became firmly established, certain ephemeral yet nonetheless major areas of Indian art - such as folk textiles and tribal objects - remained outside the canon of Asian art history as practiced in the West as well as in the Asian countries” (Desai, 1995). The marketability of Asian art in Europe and America is also boosted by the tradition of art collection among elites here. Till very recently, before repatriation of art to its original society was not in practice, for most collectors and curators in the West the notion of collecting is equated with investment, wealth and property. Asian art served the same purpose that the bullion serves today – to provide investments with lasting value. Key historical events of the twentieth century had also helped promote Asian art markets in Europe and America. Also, “the relatively strong economic position of the United States after the World War II also made possible the continuous flow of fine Asian objects to the United States. It could be argued that such movement of works of art from relatively weak countries to more powerful ones was not very different from the early days of the founding of art museums in Europe, when institutions such as the Louvre were established to show off the war trophies of the victorious colonial empires. Although objects were no longer looted in the same manner, the economic lure of the United States guaranteed that Asian works of art found good homes abroad.“ (Desai, 1995) But, as the first few years of the new century has demonstrated, the change in balance of economic power across the globe has given rise to new markets for Asian art. Simultaneously, as the Asian nations such as China and India gain global recognition in the economic realm, the Western art market is impelled to pay more attention to sources of Asian art, which in the past had proved relatively easy. For example, “major North American art magazines have begun to address the art scene not only in Tokyo but also in Korea and Taiwan. Australia and Japan have undertaken regular programs of contemporary Asian art exhibitions and publications. Serious journals specializing in contemporary Asian are now being published in Hong Kong and Australia” (Pyne, 1996). The Asian artists who benefited the most as a result of this boom included David Chung, who is of Korean and German heritage, the legendary painter Chang Dai-Chien, Vishakha N. Desai and the like. Some of these artists’ paintings have even found a place in the historical refuge of finest art the Louvre in France. Helping the process of greater acceptance of Asian art and artists in the western world is the influential scholarship of such intellectuals as Edward Said. Said’s most important work, Orientalism, had played a crucial role in “diverse contexts on both sides of what has been termed the divide between East and West, and his critique of representational activity around the Orient continues to generate debates in societies seen as falling on both sides of this divide.” (Rastegar, 2008) The most important contribution of Edward Said’s work is its convincing polemic against the conventional view of this divide among western intellectuals. In many ways, Orientalism presents a historically informed study of the evolution of this perception and exposes its weaknesses. For instance, he documented the links between the notions of an unchangeable division between the East and West through the imposition of rigid ideological imperatives. Moreover, “With power comes the need to generate a kind of knowledge that reinforces this power, and so the academic field of Orientalism (and other representations of the parts of the world known as the Orient) is implicated in the power relations between West and East. This, Said argued, began with the advent of colonialism and was carried over in the global geopolitical power arrangements after the end of colonialism--arrangements that have certainly changed in the last thirty years, but arguably only in ways that underscore the importance of Orientalisms critique.” (Rastegar, 2008) Such seminal works as that of Said’s have had a profound effect on the way western collectors and curators began to view Asian art and its attendant cultural meaning. As a result of this new understanding, the Asian artists and their works began to be recognized for their own sense of aesthetic. This is true in the domain of painting and sculpture as it is in the domain of literature. The diverse and vibrant emergence of ethnic literature is a consequence of this radical change in the Western understanding of Asian art in particular and the Oriental culture in general. In other words, “in viewing anew these extraordinary works of art, we come to a better appreciation of the constellation of interests--material, aesthetic, ideological--that have come to frame the way in which the Orient, including the later permutations of this notion, has been imagined and represented in the West” (Rastegar, 2008). Alongside broader recognition given to art originating from Buddhist philosophical precepts, there have been other parallel developments. A particularly valid case is the understanding among Western art patrons the ways in which Taoism has shaped the evolution of Chinese culture. Previously, without this knowledge, Chinese art was seen and judged based on Western sense of taste and aesthetic appeal. But, with the benefit of a nuanced understanding of Taoism and Chinese culture, the true merits of Chinese art have come to be appreciated in Europe and America. Such eminent art commentators as Kristofer Schipper, Wu Hung, Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt and Patricia Ebrey have been at the forefront of this movement, which has opened up the Western world’s sensibilities with respect to Chinese art and Taoism. In other words, “conveying a new understanding of how Taoists have defined the structure of the natural and divine worlds, and situated humanity in the resulting matrix has impressed Western audiences due to the fact that Taoism is a living religion practiced by Chinese throughout the world today.” (Katz, 2002) Such art styles as Laozi and the Daode jing, have been explicated in the context of Chinese cultural history, making it easier for Western art aficionados to appreciate Chinese art. The uniquely Chinese art movement, referred in the West as the Celestial Master movement, along with other remarkable original art traditions founded upon Taoist precepts have not only enriched Chinese culture and history but have also opened new vistas of spirituality for Western art lovers. (Katz, 2002) The phenomenon of mass migration between regions of the world has also had a significant influence in the development of Asian art markets in the West. The twentieth century was especially relevant to the discussion as it saw unprecedented displacement of people from their native lands. The following passage presents a snapshot of these political developments which have had a profound effect on the art scene in Europe: “the great majority of German scholars in Chinese studies and East Asian art history left their country after the Act of 1933: in addition to professors Ferdinand Lessing (1882-1961) and Walter Simon (1893-1981), most of the promising young lecturers and recent Ph.D.s departed. We might therefore expect that this most important single event would have been publicly recognized and discussed in the years directly after 1945, so that we could draw on a rich fund of sources and studies.” (Kern, 1998) Of late, a refreshing attitude of pluralism is seen in Europe and America with regard to the various other cultures of the world, which has in turn encouraged the popularity of ‘World art’ in general and ‘Asian art’ in particular. Today, one could see exclusive museum collections and university departments dedicated to these art forms. A few of the world’s grandest and the most antiquarian assemblages of these art works are to be found in Europe and America. The most prominent among them is the British Museum, which hosts many masterpieces of Asian art far away from their native cultures, exhibited for ethnographical and cultural understanding of the East. The museum, by conserving, publishing, and exhibiting its collections, attempts to illuminate world cultures for British citizens. Such efforts to enlighten people in the West in their grasp of alien cultures mark a historical break with the conventional attitude of the Western democracies towards other cultures. Among such beautiful pieces of Asian art to be found in the British museum are those such as: “The painting transcription of the Admonitions of the Court Instructress picture scroll (Chinese: Nushi zhen tujuan), one of the treasures in the British Museum. It was collaboratively made at the British Museum in 1923 by Kobayashi Kokei (1883-1957) and Maeda Seison (1885-1977), two masters of Japanese neo-traditional painting, Nihonga. Since 1924, this Copy of the Admonitions of the Court Instructress (Japanese: Joshi shin zukan no mosha) has been in the collection of Tohoku University Library in Sendai in northeastern Japan.” (McCausland, 2005) Bibliography: Desai, V. N. (1995)., Re-visioning Asian Arts in the 1990s: Reflections of a Museum Professional. The Art Bulletin, 77(2), 169+. Katz, P. R. (2002)., Taoism and the Arts of China. The Journal of the American Oriental Society, 122(1), 141+. Kern, M. (1998)., The Emigration of German Sinologists 1933-1945: Notes on the History and Historiography of Chinese Studies. The Journal of the American Oriental Society, 118(4), 507+. Mccausland, S. (2005)., Nihonga Meets Gu Kaizhi: A Japanese Copy of a Chinese Painting in the British Museum. The Art Bulletin, 87(4), 688+. Pyne, K. (1996)., Portrait of a Collector as an Agnostic: Charles Lang Freer and Connoisseurship. The Art Bulletin, 78(1), 75+. Rastegar, K. (2008, June). Revisiting Orientalism: Edward Saids Controversial Book Is Now Thirty Years Old. A New Exhibition of Orientalist Paintings at Tate Britain Provides a Timely Opportunity to Revisit Its Argument. History Today, 58, 49+. Read More