How did the thousands of African art objects that form the collections of contemporary ethnography museums find their way to Europe and the United Kingdom? Who decided that such objects were valuable enough to be collected? What kind of value were they given? And how was value established in the interaction between the collector and the African trader of the object?
We value objects depending on what we think they are. Being as sure as possible about the date and place of origin of something is one way of allaying anxiety about its 'authenticity', and its reliability as evidence. If an object has been made deliberately to seem something it is not, then we are saying it is a forgery: intended to deceive.
Tourist art can be defined as, "a form of contemporary art produced locally for consumption by outsiders" (Jules-Rosette. 1984.p9). It can be perceived generally as an object made for purposes of commerce in a general market. Tourist art is thus a product of both social and economic processes, like all material culture, and has been relegated by critics, to a sub-category that implies cheapness, crudeness, and mass production.
The objects on display in museums and galleries are usually treated as belonging to that institution (unless the label says 'On loan from...'), but there are many others ways in which they can be regarded as owned. For example, there may be doubt about the circumstances under which they were acquired: perhaps they were looted.
African sculptures were the first ethnographic acquisitions made by the Sainsburys. They reveal the impact that African art had on European artists of the early 20th century and its fundamental importance to the development of Cubism. In the collection this is seen particularly in the paintings and drawings of Modigliani, Picasso (from 1907) and Epstein.
How did the thousands of African art objects that form the collections of contemporary ethnography museums find their way to Europe and the United Kingdom? Who decided that such objects were valuable enough to be collected? What kind of value were they given? And how was value established in the interaction between the collector and the African trader of the object?
On 14 September 1793 the Qianlong Emperor received a mission from King George III at his summer resort in Jehol (modern Chengde). It was the Emperor's birthday, and the ambassador, Lord George Macartney, presented him with gifts of glass, copperware, pottery, carpets, scientific instruments, clocks, globes, a telescope and a planetarium.
Of the three countries that comprised the greater part of eastern Asia, China, Korea, and Japan, China was the largest and most populated, and its civilisation was the first to evolve. It expected to play the dominant role in the triangular relationship, and generally did so.
When Lord Macartney came face to face with the Qianlong Emperor in 1793, his hope was to open up broader lines of communication between West and East. He was not the first to harbour this ambition. Leaving aside Marco Polo and many other Europeans and Middle Easterners who had settled in China under the Mongols, what might be called the modern era of contact had begun in the 16th century, when Portuguese ships arrived in the South China Sea.
The hilly island of Hong Kong (no 1 on the map above) was first offered to Great Britain in 1841 during the First Anglo-Chinese War, or 'Opium War'. The following year, under the Treaty of Nanjing, it was ceded 'to be governed by such laws as Her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain etc. may see fit to direct'.
Portuguese merchant venturers began to explore the south China coast in the early 16th century. After discovering Japan in 1542 they traded Chinese silk there and were anxious to obtain a base of their own on the China coast, but Chinese law made this impossible and instead a number of Portuguese sailors found themselves imprisoned. In 1556, however, they gained permission for limited trading access to Guangzhou, and negotiated the lease of a small peninsula which they were already occupying on the coast nearby, known as Oumen, 'Gateway to the Bay'.
Taiwan is the large volcanic island lying opposite the province of Fujian off the south-east coast of China. It measures 250 miles in length by 90 miles at its widest point. Together with the Penghu (Pescadore) Archipelago and the islands of Jinmen and Mazu, it has been known since 1949 as the Republic of China. In that year Mao Zedong's communist armies took control of China and established the People's Republic. Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) and the Nationalist government, which had previously ruled the mainland from Nanjing, fled to Taiwan.
It was only in the Tang dynasty that the territory to the south of the Yangzi River began to be fully incorporated into the Chinese empire. Northerners still regarded it as semi-barbarous, and Guangzhou was so far from sophisticated life in the metropolitan centres that it was used as a place of exile for disgraced officials.
Wuhan commands a central position in China roughly midway between Beijing and Guangzhou, and nearly half way up the navigable stretch of the great Yangzi River from Shanghai to Chongqing. It is the capital of modern Hubei province and is sometimes called a 'triple city', being made up of three ancient towns (Wuchang, Hanyang, and Hankou) that confronted each other at the confluence of the Yangzi and Han Rivers.
When it comes to seafaring the Chinese make no claim to having great traditions. Demand for their goods in the Tang period was high across East Asia, yet it was their neighbours the Koreans whose ships commanded maritime trade across the China Sea.
One of the measures that accompanied the unification of the Chinese empire under the First Emperor in 221 BCE was standardisation of axle-gauges on carts. Previously, carts had varied in width from one feudal state to another, and so likewise the ruts into which their wheels fitted as they trundled along the muddy tracks. This meant that carts could not easily cross the frontiers between states: they would not fit the neighbouring ruts.
