This week we discussed Western collectors, comparing them against the Chinese collectors we discussed last week. Unlike Chinese collectors, Western collectors did not share the same standard for the art they collect (or in the case of Western collectors the art they took). The way Western collectors came across to me is that they operated only to ‘conquer’ and take what they viewed as exotic in order to display to other westerners that they had something that others may not have. Acquiring or collecting art insinuates that you have the intention of preserving the work and that you went through a process to obtain the work. The works we looked, specifically Mogao cave #323, which did not follow what I associate with acquiring or collecting; instead they were removed forcefully and altered to what the western “collector” wanted. How does one take only part of a work that is in the middle of the piece as a whole and think that’s okay?
When we broke into smaller groups to discuss the repatriation of Chinese artwork that was taken my group agreed that the work should return to the country it was taken from. However we were concerned that if a work was sent to a country we could guarantee would not use the work as political ammo. It is such a weird dynamic returning something you should have not taken in the first place, but realizing that at the current time the work may be safer if it remains where it is kept presently.
On Thursday we were given class time to work on developing our final projects which I greatly appreciated. My draft for my final project still has a long way to go but I was able to work out what I wanted to cover throughout that working period.
Sources
Meyer, Karl E, and Shareen Blair Brysac. The China Collectors : America’s Century-Long Hunt for Asian Art Treasures. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Leave a Reply