Collecting Objects / Excluding People: Chinese Subjects and American Visual Culture, 1830-1900

by Lenore Metrick-Chen

Overview

Combining aesthetic and political history, explores the influence of Chinese people and objects on American visual culture.

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438443256
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	09/17/2012
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Lenore Metrick-Chen is Assistant Professor of Art History at Drake University.

Table of Contents

Illustrations and Credits ix

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Politics of Chinoiserie: The Disappearance of Chinese Objects 13

Section I The Early Nineteenth Century 15

1 The Presence of Chinese Objects in the United States 15

2 Opium, Politics, and American Perceptions of the Chinese 19

3 The Chinese in the United States 24

4 Americans Assess China's Artistic Ability 27

5 The Influence of the Chinese Aesthetic on American Art 35

Section II The Late Nineteenth Century 37

1 Regarding "Oriental": Whose Aesthetic Is It? 37

2 American Confusion of Japanese and Chinese Objects 46

3 Politicized Perceptions of the Chinese 55

4 Politics Become Aesthetic Criteria 63

Chapter 2 The Power of Inaction: Chinese Objects and the Transformation of the American Definition of Art 73

Section I Chinese Objects and the Aesthetics of Museums 75

1 Aesthetic Morality and Nationalism, America's Ruskin-Based Art 75

2 The Educational Premise: Inaugurating Two American Art Museums 80

3 Expanding the Canon of Art; Plaster Casts as an Art Form 87

Section II Chinese Objects and the Business of Museums 93

1 Art Museums Founders and the Issue of the Public 93

2 Museums, Art, and Commodities 101

3 Merchandising Art 104

4 The Change of Paradigm 110

Chapter 3 From Class to Race: The New York Times Reconstructs "Chinese" 121

Section I A Brief Historical Contextualization 121

1 Introduction 121

2 Newspaper History and The New York Times 125

3 A Glance at History of Labor, Politicians, and Anti-Chinese Agitation 127

Section II Creating a "Them": The Strategies of Demonization 128

1 Part Becomes the Whole: Turning Chinese into Coolies 128

2 Hordes 131

3 Heathen 134

4 Barbarity and Contamination 136

5 Sex and Drugs 138

6 Ignorance 142

7 Effeminizing the Chinese Man 144

8 Chinese into Coolies into Demonized Race 146

Section III Defining the "Us": The Exclusion Debate: Four Voices Struggle Over Imaging Chinese 150

1 The Exclusion Debate: Four Voices Struggle Over Imaging Chinese 150

2 The Opposing Race Arguments from the Congressional Debates 151

3 The Times Doublespeak: Blame California, Profess Fatigue 158

4 The Chinese View through Word and Action 163

Chapter 4 The Chinese of the American Imagination: Nineteenth-Century Trade Card Images 169

Section II The Politics of Chromolithography 179

1 Power Struggles Over Definitions of Art 179

2 Between Two Worlds: The Dual Role of Trade Cards 183

3 An Addition to Visual Language: Floating Signifiers 184

Section III The Chinese Figure as Outsider 194

1 Dislodged Objects as a New Art 194

2 Paper Nations 195

3 The Safety of Exotic Distance 199

Section IV The Chinese Figure and American Self-Definition 204

1 American, Un-American 204

2 Disjunctions, and Collisions: The Iconography of Displacement 207

3 Hybridity, Cultural Margins, and Incorporation 215

Conclusion 223

Notes 225

Name Index 265

Subject Index 269