Art with a French connection
Louis XIV and the Qing emperor Kangxi never met. But the two emperors, who made their mark on history at a similar time but 8,000 kilometres apart, were brought into constant contact by a stream of emissaries.
These were cultural, gift-bearing ambassadors with travel in their blood, who journeyed for months along the silk road, or by sea around the great land masses from Europe to China.
It was through these objects, and their influences on the artists and craftspeople who saw them, that two different cultures caught a glimpse of each other.
In an important exhibition opening this week at the Museum of Art, 150 items, ranging from porcelain to painting and enamel works will be on show, demonstrating the cultural links between Europe (and specifically France) and China up to and including the 18th century.
The exhibition promises to be one of the headline events of the 1997 Le French May festival - which includes shows, concerts and dance - and has been curated by Jean-Paul Desroches, chief curator of the Guimet Museum in Paris.
The Guimet Museum houses France's premiere collection of Asian arts, and the loan - its first of this scale - has been made possible because of an extensive renovation programme in the museum's buildings in Paris.
The show includes gifts from China to France, from France to China, and examples of how European art of the 18th century absorbed influences from the Middle Kingdom and vice versa. A 1757 painting by Giuseppe Castiglione shows such a strong Asian influence that it is extraordinary to find it was painted in Italy rather than Guangzhou. Similarly a cup and saucer created in southern China 17 years earlier is decorated with pictures of very European-looking Jesuit priests, and is very much to the Western taste.
The museum presentation which runs from Tuesday until June 15, will be augmented by a series of lectures, a conference on Exchanges Between Civilisations, concerts of 18th century European music, and an installation exhibition at the Fringe Club by several Hong Kong-born contemporary artists who acknowledge how their travels and studies abroad have strongly influenced their work.
From Beijing To Versailles: Museum of Art, April 29-June 15. 10am-6pm Tuesday-Saturday, 1pm-6pm Sunday, $10 ($5). Wednesday free.
Lectures: The First French Voyage to China in 1698, by Jean-Paul Desroches, chief curator of the Guimet Museum. April 30, 6.15pm Qing Dynasty Court Painting, by art researcher Yang Chenbin (Putonghua). May 3, 2.30pm
