Chinoiserie

Chinoiserie (English: /ʃɪnˈwɑːzəri/, French: ; loanword from French chinoiserie, from chinois, 'Chinese'; Chinese: 中国风) is the European interpretation and imitation of Chinese and East Asian artistic traditions, especially in the decorative arts, garden design, architecture, literature, theatre, and music. The aesthetic of Chinoiserie has been expressed in different ways depending on the region. Its acknowledgement derives from the current of Orientalism, which studied Far East cultures from a historical, philological, anthropological, philosophical and religious point of view. First appearing in the 17th century, this trend was popularized in the 18th century due to the rise in trade with China and East Asia. Cuboid vase; circa 1870; bone china; 20.8 × 10.2 × 10 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)Pair of round and flat bodied bottles; 1870-1880; porcelain; first bottle: 26.4 × 21 × 10.6 cm, second bottle: 25.7 × 20.2 × 10.2 cm; Metropolitan Museum of ArtWall clock; circa 1880; bronze and enamel; probably made by Escalier de Cristal (Paris); Art Institute of Chicago (USA)Wallpaper in the chinoiserie style, with a picture frame as its central motif, Rex WhistlerA Medici porcelain bottle; 1575-1787; Louvre. The Casino of San Marco's porcelain manufactory was one of the oldest successful attempts to imitate Chinese porcelain in European history.Austrian coffeepot; circa 1720; hard-paste porcelain; 17.8 × 15.9 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)Covered vases; circa 1770; soft-paste porcelain; height: 38.7 cm, width: 16.5 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art Chinoiserie (English: /ʃɪnˈwɑːzəri/, French: ; loanword from French chinoiserie, from chinois, 'Chinese'; Chinese: 中国风) is the European interpretation and imitation of Chinese and East Asian artistic traditions, especially in the decorative arts, garden design, architecture, literature, theatre, and music. The aesthetic of Chinoiserie has been expressed in different ways depending on the region. Its acknowledgement derives from the current of Orientalism, which studied Far East cultures from a historical, philological, anthropological, philosophical and religious point of view. First appearing in the 17th century, this trend was popularized in the 18th century due to the rise in trade with China and East Asia. As a style, chinoiserie is related to the Rococo style. Both styles are characterized by exuberant decoration, asymmetry, a focus on materials, and stylized nature and subject matter that focuses on leisure and pleasure. Chinoiserie focuses on subjects that were thought by colonial-era Europeans to be typical of Chinese culture. Chinoiserie entered European art and decoration in the mid-to-late 17th century; the work of Athanasius Kircher influenced the study of orientalism. The popularity of chinoiserie peaked around the middle of the 18th century when it was associated with the rococo style and with works by François Boucher, Thomas Chippendale, and Jean-Baptist Pillement. It was also popularized by the influx of Chinese and Indian goods brought annually to Europe aboard English, Dutch, French, and Swedish East India Companies.Though chinoiserie never fully went out of fashion, it declined in Europe by the 1760s when the neoclassical style gained popularity, though remained popular in the newly formed United States through the early 19th century. There was a revival of popularity for chinoiserie in Europe and the United States from the mid-19th century through the 1920s, and today in elite interior design and fashion. Though usually understood as a European style, chinoiserie was a global phenomenon. Local versions of chinoiserie were developed in India, Japan, Persia, and particularly Latin America. Through the Manila Galleon Trade, Spanish traders brought large amounts of Chinese porcelain, lacquer, textiles, and spices from Chinese merchants based in Manila to New Spanish markets in Acapulco, Panama, and Lima. Those products then inspired local artists and artisans such as ceramicists making Talavera pottery at Puebla de Los Angeles. There were many reasons why chinoiserie gained such popularity in Europe in the 18th century. Europeans had a fascination with the exotic East due to their increased, but still restricted, access to new cultures through expanded trade with East Asia, especially China. The limited number of European first-hand experiences of East Asia and their restricted circulation created a level of mystification and misinformation that contributed to the mystification of East Asian cultures. The 'China' indicated in the term 'Chinoiserie' represented in European people's mind a wider region of the globe that could embrace China itself, but also Japan, Korea, South-East Asia, India or even Persia. In art, the style of the Orient was considered a source of inspiration; the atmosphere rich in images and the harmonic designs of the oriental style reflected the picture of an ideal world, from which to draw ideas in order to reshape one own's culture. For this reason the style of Chinoiserie is to be regarded as an important result of the exchange between the West and the East. During the 19th century, and especially in its latter period, the style of Chinoiserie was assimilated under the generic definition of exoticism. Even though the root of the word 'Chinoiserie' is 'Chine' (China), the Europeans of the 17th and 18th centuries didn't have a clear conceptualization of how China was in reality. Often terms like 'Orient', 'Far East' or 'China' were all equally used to signify the region of Eastern Asia that had proper Chinese culture as a major representative, but the meaning of the term could change according to different contexts. Sir William Chambers for example, in his oeuvre A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening of 1772, generically addresses China as the 'Orient'. In the financial records of Louis XIV during the 17th and 18th centuries were already registered expressions like 'façon de la Chine', Chinese manner, or 'à la chinoise', made in the Chinese way. In the 19th century the term 'Chinoiserie' appeared for the first time in French literature. In the novel L'Interdiction published in 1836, Honoré de Balzac used Chinoiserie to refer to the craftworks made in the Chinese style. From this moment on the term gained momentum and started being used more frequently to mean objects produced in the Chinese style but sometimes also to indicate graceful objects of small dimension or of scarce account. In 1878 'Chinoiserie' entered formally in the Dictionnaire de l'Académie. After the spread of Marco Polo's narrations, the knowledge of China held by the Europeans continued to derive essentially from reports made by merchants and diplomatic envoys. Dating from the latter half of the 17th century a relevant role in this exchange of information was then taken up by the Jesuits, whose continual gathering of missionary intelligence and language transcription gave the European public a new deeper insight of the Chinese empire and its culture. While Europeans frequently held inaccurate ideas about East Asia, this did not necessarily preclude their fascination and respect. In particular, the Chinese who had 'exquisitely finished art... whose court ceremonial was even more elaborate than that of Versailles' were viewed as highly civilized. According to Voltaire in his Art de la Chine, 'The fact remains that four thousand years ago, when we did not know how to read, they knew everything essentially useful of which we boast today.' In other words, somewhere, on the other side of the world, there existed a culture so rich that it rivaled the civilizations of Rome and Greece. Chinoiserie created a juxtaposition between something new and exotic for Europeans while at the same time reflecting the values of the 4,000 year old culture from which these objects came. Chinoiserie was not universally popular. Some critics saw the style as '…a retreat from reason and taste and a descent into a morally ambiguous world based on hedonism, sensation and values perceived to be feminine.' It was viewed as lacking the logic and reason upon which Antique art had been founded. Architect and author Robert Morris claimed that it '…consisted of mere whims and chimera, without rules or order, it requires no fertility of genius to put into execution.' Those with a more archaeological view of the East, considered the chinoiserie style, with its distortions and whimsical approach, to be a mockery of the actual Chinese art and architecture. Finally, still others believed that an interest in chinoiserie indicated a pervading 'cultural confusion' in European society. Chinoiserie persisted into the 19th and 20th centuries but declined in popularity. There was a notable loss of interest in Chinese-inspired décor after the death in 1830 of King George IV, a great proponent of the style. The First Opium War of 1839–1842 between Britain and China disrupted trade and caused a further decline of interest in the Oriental. China closed its doors to exports and imports and for many people chinoiserie became a fashion of the past.