The Paradoxical Chinoiserie

Sino-French maritime trade, dating from the latter half of the16th century, made the French nobility come into contact with Chinese arts and crafts from the Orient. At the same time, China Travels, China Letters and other literature published by the Jesuits made the enlightenment thinkers begin to praise highly of Chinese culture and ideology. Therefore, Europe which center on France began to research about China through its superstructure, politics, economy, religious, literature and art. To the second half of the17th century, this study presents a way out of the visual arts, which was called Chinoiserie by academics. The artistic style originates from the collection and imitation of Chinese art and oriental handiwork. In the meantime, Baroque Art, especially Rococo Art, also affects it. Although Chinoiserie portrays the oriental exotic on the surface, it is in fact Europeans’manner for representing a Utopian land and their own spiritual while rooted in the Western aesthetic. Therefore, Chinoiserie not only represents the process of western understanding and investigation of Chinese culture, but also specifically reveals the method and strategies in seeing and depicting China. As a result, in-depth analysis of Chinoiserie works not only benefits the understanding of ideological differences and aesthetic taste between eastern and western cultures, but also helps recognize its cross-cultural significance in western art history.In recent years, with the development of comparative studies between Chinese and Western art, more and more scholars pay attention to Chinoiserie study. In the West, discussions on Chinoiserie set a new academic fashion from1960s, and give us a major breakthrough in case studies recently, however, most domestic researches just focus on the historical background or growth process of Chinoiserie, lacking of systemic study on its themes and schema.For these reasons, this thesis gives a microscopic account of China within French Rococo Art of18th century in a macroscopic vision. Meanwhile, the paper classifies Chinoiserie works according to its themes and schema by taking Rococo paintings and Beauvais Tapestry for examples which points out the figures of books like China Illustrata inspire Chinoiserie’s schema. Then through analyzing transformation of the schema, the article explores that Chinoiserie is artists’subjective cognition and stereotype which gives the reasons why Chinoiserie works portray a fancy China. The conclusion summarizes that the essential Chinoiserie is a deep misunderstanding of China and Orient. In fact, whether Chinoiserie is rise or faded away, its essence is to better express the will of the aesthetic and social needs of the times.