The Modern and Contemporary Art Seminar Series: (mis)Translation and Absorption: Chinese Art in the British Art World 1870-1925

Dr Charlotte Ashby (Birkbeck, University of London)

There was a drastic increase in the import of Chinese antiquities into Britain in over the period 1870-1925. Expertise in the evolving category of ‘Chinese art’ was a prominent note in the rapidly expanding art world and the emerging professions of art writers and curators. These objects were not just consumed, they acted on the British imagination. The desire to translate these poorly-understood objects into the new currency of art history propelled an emphasis on certain analytical tools – formal analysis and affective looking – making Chinese art both a subject and a driver for modern conceptions of what art was.