1 00:00:07,284 --> 00:00:15,774 Craig is professor emeritus of the History of Art, here at Oxford. 2 00:00:15,774 --> 00:00:23,074 And amongst his other important legacies, he's left us with a post teaching the History of Chinese Art here at Oxford, 3 00:00:23,074 --> 00:00:29,154 which is a very important development in our department's history and profile. 4 00:00:29,154 --> 00:00:33,564 So Craig, let me start by asking you what might be the obvious question. 5 00:00:33,564 --> 00:00:41,664 How did a nice boy from Aberdeen get interested in art and its histories? 6 00:00:41,664 --> 00:00:54,374 Well. I mean, there was art around when I was growing up, so Aberdeen in the nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties, 7 00:00:54,374 --> 00:01:04,214 I left Aberdeen the year they struck oil, which kind of changed the city quite considerably. 8 00:01:04,214 --> 00:01:14,984 But, you know, there was a distinguished kind of standard British provincial art gallery with kind of loads of interesting stuff in it. 9 00:01:14,984 --> 00:01:26,864 And my parents were the kind of people who believe that, you know, introducing children to an art gallery was something that you ought to do. 10 00:01:26,864 --> 00:01:36,104 And, you know, there are reproductions on the walls. I was at the Wallace collection last week to see the Franz Hals exhibition of, you know, 11 00:01:36,104 --> 00:01:40,934 my grandmother had the Laughing Cavalier on the staircase, a big reproduction, 12 00:01:40,934 --> 00:01:47,484 the laughing cavalier on the staircase in the nineteen sixties, which is not something that people would do now. 13 00:01:47,484 --> 00:01:52,164 But that would that would have been a fairly kind of standard, standard way of carrying on. 14 00:01:52,164 --> 00:01:58,184 And I mean, I suspect you've asked that question because you've read something that I sent you which says that 15 00:01:58,184 --> 00:02:06,104 I'm fed up of people asking me why I got interested in China and nobody ever asks me what I mean. 16 00:02:06,104 --> 00:02:12,474 But it's true. You know, people always ask me why I get interested, why did I get interested in China? 17 00:02:12,474 --> 00:02:18,794 They don't ask me why I get interested in art, because I guess they think that's the sort of that's a kind of no brainer. 18 00:02:18,794 --> 00:02:29,384 That's an obvious one. Why wouldn't you? But it is a perfectly legitimate question. 19 00:02:29,384 --> 00:02:41,024 But I do think it has to do with the availability of art in a provincial city where, you know, the art gallery is something that you go to. 20 00:02:41,024 --> 00:02:48,884 So I don't remember the first time I went into an art gallery because it must have been when I was like, 21 00:02:48,884 --> 00:02:57,584 really quite little and quite frequently it just seemed to sort of a natural thing to do or a natural place to go, 22 00:02:57,584 --> 00:03:06,944 either with parents when I was very little or kind of by myself when I was when I was a teenager. 23 00:03:06,944 --> 00:03:12,614 And then there's the impact of things that happened at a certain age. 24 00:03:12,614 --> 00:03:23,444 So I was exactly the right age to be kind of bowled over by the Kenneth Clark Civilisation series in 25 00:03:23,444 --> 00:03:30,914 the late 1960s when David Attenborough needed something in colour to make people buy colour sets 26 00:03:30,914 --> 00:03:40,004 when BBC two was new. So you get the kind of block civilisation series Hardaway's and then you get John Berger 27 00:03:40,004 --> 00:03:44,834 Ways of Seeing immediately after it on the television 28 00:03:44,834 --> 00:03:54,224 and I thought civilisation was kind of great, although actually even then this is something that I'm sure I'm right about, 29 00:03:54,224 --> 00:03:58,124 but it suggests what a weird kid I might of been. 30 00:03:58,124 --> 00:04:01,604 I can remember the very first episode in which Kenneth Clarke says, well, 31 00:04:01,604 --> 00:04:06,764 basically there are things called civilisations in other parts of the world, but we're not going to talk about them because they don't count. 32 00:04:06,764 --> 00:04:17,324 We're just going to talk about Europe. And I thought kind of - even as I must have had about 13 or something - thinking, hang on, that can't be right. 33 00:04:17,324 --> 00:04:23,054 And then Berger comes along and looks kind of hip. 34 00:04:23,054 --> 00:04:33,254 He's got the loon pants. And he's doing all this stuff about gender and how this picture shows that it's the ruling class and so on. 35 00:04:33,254 --> 00:04:36,744 And and by that time, I'm, I don't know, 15 or whatever. 36 00:04:36,744 --> 00:04:42,464 And this seems hot and exciting and stirring it up. 37 00:04:42,464 --> 00:04:51,674 and I'm struck by the way that still, even in my last round of admissions interviews, 38 00:04:51,674 --> 00:04:57,074 students wanting to study history of art would say that they've read Berger's Ways of with Seeing and thought it was exciting. 39 00:04:57,074 --> 00:05:03,254 And I'm thinking this was on the television when I was younger than you, you know. 40 00:05:03,254 --> 00:05:08,594 So I think those things, which are things that you have no control over, 41 00:05:08,594 --> 00:05:15,164 stuff that's in your environment, I think that has to be a part of the story. 42 00:05:15,164 --> 00:05:20,414 GB: Still, there is a bit of a jump from seeing provincial art in Aberdeen to deciding to study 43 00:05:20,414 --> 00:05:25,664 the Chinese language and then ultimately becoming an expert in the History of China. 44 00:05:25,664 --> 00:05:38,054 GB: So how did that jump actually occur? CC: So, yes, it's true that by my mid teens I had decided I wanted to learn Chinese. 45 00:05:38,054 --> 00:05:46,064 There are numerous explanations for this, depending on whether it's at a dinner party 46 00:05:46,064 --> 00:05:53,364 or I'm giving sort of official versions of this. 47 00:05:53,364 --> 00:05:59,804 I mean, all of them are masks. All of them are, if you like, screen memory is designed to. 48 00:05:59,804 --> 00:06:06,254 Well, I mean, the whole notion of a screen memory is that it's something that you don't want to think about or can't remember. 49 00:06:06,254 --> 00:06:11,594 So I can't remember and I can't think about it. 50 00:06:11,594 --> 00:06:22,304 But, you know, education heavy and long ago and far away, very good at history, good at languages, at school, dead languages, Latin, classical, Greek. 51 00:06:22,304 --> 00:06:26,684 I mean, the way I've often thought about it is that in your teens, 52 00:06:26,684 --> 00:06:37,724 when you're sort of interested in a whole range of things, for me the roulette wheel was spinning and the ball stopped at China, 53 00:06:37,724 --> 00:06:42,824 but it might have stopped at something else that was long ago and far away, you know, 54 00:06:42,824 --> 00:06:51,824 Arabic or the Byzantine world or something that was long ago and far away. 55 00:06:51,824 --> 00:06:56,894 GB: So I wonder, I mean, when did Nixon go to China and was that kind of a little opening up? 56 00:06:56,894 --> 00:07:00,194 CC: That is something that definitely wouldn't be part of it. 57 00:07:00,194 --> 00:07:10,544 And I mean, I suppose in a way, the really curious thing about it is that I was really interested in China at a point when 58 00:07:10,544 --> 00:07:21,284 you know, if we take the official date of the Cultural Revolution as being sixty six to seventy six, 59 00:07:21,284 --> 00:07:27,764 the years when I'm really getting interested are the last four years of the nineteen sixties. 60 00:07:27,764 --> 00:07:31,634 Now there's also the question about May sixty eight, 61 00:07:31,634 --> 00:07:39,634 which I'm old enough to watch on television and see it happening, but far too young to take part in any way. 62 00:07:39,634 --> 00:07:50,264 I'm in Aberdeen, not Paris. And so the Cultural Revolution is something that one is kind of aware of. 63 00:07:50,264 --> 00:07:58,964 And I mean I'm not I'm not doing I was a teenage Maoist because, again, I wasn't formally involved then. 64 00:07:58,964 --> 00:08:08,364 But my family background and my own dispositions predisposed me to find this kind of 65 00:08:08,364 --> 00:08:11,874 interesting and exciting and so, you know I think like anything, 66 00:08:11,874 --> 00:08:17,874 it's overdetermined and there are multiple reasons why I got interested in it, 67 00:08:17,874 --> 00:08:23,244 because it certainly was if you could square the circle between long ago and far away and the Cultural Revolution. 68 00:08:23,244 --> 00:08:24,174 And, of course, 69 00:08:24,174 --> 00:08:31,584 that's a ridiculous squaring because the Cultural Revolution is all about saying that long ago is is rubbish and needs to be junked and the 70 00:08:31,584 --> 00:08:41,844 whole lot should be should be smashed into smithereens with all the human fallout and misery and suffering that that entails. 71 00:08:41,844 --> 00:08:50,244 But, you know, when you're 16, it's possible to be interested in completely incompatible things. 72 00:08:50,244 --> 00:08:58,374 And I suppose those are two completely incompatible things that I was interested in when I was 16. 73 00:08:58,374 --> 00:09:05,154 GB: So after you did study the Chinese language, you got a position of the V & A in fact you were there for 15 years, 74 00:09:05,154 --> 00:09:16,914 CC: I think I didn't intend to be an artist historian 75 00:09:16,914 --> 00:09:25,584 There was a bit of art history in our second year, undergraduate year studying Chinese language, 76 00:09:25,584 --> 00:09:32,784 and it was a lecture series given by a man who had been a very distinguished 77 00:09:32,784 --> 00:09:37,674 archaeologist of China in a particular vein and a particular kind of philosophy. 78 00:09:37,674 --> 00:09:47,274 And I have this memory of lectures which consisted of innumerable numbers black and white slides, compare and contrast. 79 00:09:47,274 --> 00:09:54,404 And I kind of came away from that with the sense that I wasn't interested in that. 80 00:09:54,404 --> 00:09:57,084 That seemed to be completely uninteresting. 81 00:09:57,084 --> 00:10:08,034 I was interested in Chinese literature and my doctoral work that I began immediately after I was an undergraduate because I'm 82 00:10:08,034 --> 00:10:14,544 so old that you didn't have to do you didn't have to have a master's degree in those days. 83 00:10:14,544 --> 00:10:18,654 You could move straight from an undergraduate degree to start again. 84 00:10:18,654 --> 00:10:29,364 So I started a PhD. in nineteen seventy seven, which was on Chinese literature or other Chinese and Mongolian literature by 19th century fiction, 85 00:10:29,364 --> 00:10:35,394 essentially the Mongolian 19th century romantic novel. 86 00:10:35,394 --> 00:10:45,834 And the first grown up job that I ever applied for was a job teaching Chinese literature at Macquarie University in New South Wales, 87 00:10:45,834 --> 00:10:49,194 which I didn't get and I didn't even get shortlisted for. 88 00:10:49,194 --> 00:10:52,014 But had they offered me that job, I'd have taken it. 89 00:10:52,014 --> 00:11:01,044 I would have gone to New South Wales and been a teacher of Chinese literature and felt like my life had worked out really well in the way I wanted. 90 00:11:01,044 --> 00:11:12,144 So it's just that there are so few jobs, you know, there were so few opportunities that would pay you to be interested in China. 91 00:11:12,144 --> 00:11:20,184 And I was two thirds of the way through this literature PhD when a sort of entry level 92 00:11:20,184 --> 00:11:27,654 like officer. That kind of job that doesn't exist anymore it's a kind of entry level 93 00:11:27,654 --> 00:11:39,294 but permanent curatorial, kind of officer could get a job at the V&A came up and I was fortunate enough to get that job in nineteen seventy nine. 94 00:11:39,294 --> 00:11:46,494 And then part of my pitch for that job was that I had specialised in the 95 00:11:46,494 --> 00:11:52,634 kinds of premodern Chinese literature that were crammed with descriptions of things material culture, 96 00:11:52,634 --> 00:11:57,534 chairs, tables, clothes, what people wore for the what the rooms looked like. 97 00:11:57,534 --> 00:12:03,954 A part of my pitch was that this knowledge of mine would be a valuable skill. 98 00:12:03,954 --> 00:12:11,454 I did have a little museum experience because I had worked during my university vacations 99 00:12:11,454 --> 00:12:19,374 as an unpaid intern in the Asian Department of what are now the National Museums of Scotland. 100 00:12:19,374 --> 00:12:23,674 The National Museum of Scotland used to be called Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh. 101 00:12:23,674 --> 00:12:29,094 I worked for them unpaid and then I got a little bit of paid work translating 102 00:12:29,094 --> 00:12:35,754 inscriptions on objects because they didn't have anybody who read Chinese. 103 00:12:35,754 --> 00:12:46,614 So that was the crucial. I had just enough experience to make me look like a plausible candidate, I guess, for this entry level job. 104 00:12:46,614 --> 00:12:51,534 And that's how I was fortunate enough to to enter the V&A 105 00:12:51,534 --> 00:13:00,964 One of the most valuable parts of that was that I could finish the doctorate. 106 00:13:00,964 --> 00:13:05,664 It took me a very long time of getting up early in the morning because I was then working full time. 107 00:13:05,664 --> 00:13:15,054 And it's a museum job. So it's like nine to five or six or you have to be in the office all day in those days. 108 00:13:15,054 --> 00:13:22,104 But it meant that I had a secure job at the age of twenty five, 109 00:13:22,104 --> 00:13:30,944 which I'm conscious it feels insulting to people nowadays, to young people nowadays, 110 00:13:30,944 --> 00:13:37,644 to say this was what happened to me because it's so removed from what anybody 111 00:13:37,644 --> 00:13:43,014 can expect from the regimes of employment that they have to deal with. 112 00:13:43,014 --> 00:13:49,374 But I had the good fortune then and it meant that I've never published my doctoral thesis. 113 00:13:49,374 --> 00:13:55,494 It's sitting on the shelves of SOAS, not doing anybody any harm. 114 00:13:55,494 --> 00:14:06,684 I didn't need to parlay that into tenure or the next post or the next kind of step. 115 00:14:06,684 --> 00:14:15,524 So it meant that I could kind of, not take it easy, but I could certainly, you know, there was a lot of slow learning 116 00:14:15,524 --> 00:14:16,634 that went on In the beginning, 117 00:14:16,634 --> 00:14:28,814 I felt I could take my time to learn certain skills and certain forms and technologies that I hadn't apart from formal education, 118 00:14:28,814 --> 00:14:33,194 I could learn on the job with the with the collection around me. 119 00:14:33,194 --> 00:14:39,374 GB: So I was wondering, Craig, whether this sort of dynamic between an immersion in literature, 120 00:14:39,374 --> 00:14:46,514 Chinese literature and now a 15 year immersion in Chinese objects, 121 00:14:46,514 --> 00:14:50,534 that is that is a relatively unusual way forward throughout art history. 122 00:14:50,534 --> 00:14:55,544 But I wonder whether that exposure to objects and the sort of necessity as a 123 00:14:55,544 --> 00:14:59,264 museum employee to be constantly writing about objects in their collections, 124 00:14:59,264 --> 00:15:04,064 whether that you think has informed the kind of art history that you have gone on to do. 125 00:15:04,064 --> 00:15:10,244 CC: Again, you know, I've often been asked that and it must do, 126 00:15:10,244 --> 00:15:15,294 but not necessarily in ways that I can point to the kind of affiliations between 127 00:15:15,294 --> 00:15:21,794 that experience and what's come out the other end once I seriously started writing. 128 00:15:21,794 --> 00:15:29,644 But I do like to correct people when they say, you know, his first book was because they often name a book that was actually my 129 00:15:29,644 --> 00:15:38,794 third book, because I'd written books in the V&A that were very closely focussed on things in the collection, and I had done that sort of, 130 00:15:38,794 --> 00:15:48,454 you know, well, connoisseurship, that sort of is it is it mid 15th century or late 15th century? 131 00:15:48,454 --> 00:16:00,274 I still remember one of the thrills of my career is the first time I held a volume of Chinese paintings up to the up to the light, 132 00:16:00,274 --> 00:16:08,824 or I put them on a light box and I saw the watermark which showed that they were on a particular kind of very sturdy paper, 133 00:16:08,824 --> 00:16:14,314 which was manufactured by a paper mill in England in the late 18th century for the East India 134 00:16:14,314 --> 00:16:19,084 Company that was supposed to stand up to the rigours of the of the climate of Asia. 135 00:16:19,084 --> 00:16:26,644 It was for writing ledgers and so on. But some of this paper had found its way into a painting workshop and it was this 136 00:16:26,644 --> 00:16:32,164 Chinese artist using it so I could still remember, you know how fantastically exciting this was. 137 00:16:32,164 --> 00:16:38,174 So I certainly did that. I think. I think also 138 00:16:38,174 --> 00:16:43,064 I mean, even if we compare the fields of Chinese literature and Chinese art, 139 00:16:43,064 --> 00:16:51,734 Chinese literature is definitely a field where there began to be through the proximity of people who taught Chinese 140 00:16:51,734 --> 00:17:00,014 literature to people who taught other kinds of literature that began to be some kind of theoretical interests, 141 00:17:00,014 --> 00:17:11,144 some kind of bleeding in of literary theory into that literature, literature that I was reading at a time when the literature on Chinese art 142 00:17:11,144 --> 00:17:23,354 had a somewhat kind of narrower range of interests, just wasn't wasn't doing that sort of stuff. 143 00:17:23,354 --> 00:17:24,674 So, again, 144 00:17:24,674 --> 00:17:35,384 I think probably trying to square the circle between an interest in this watermark and then reading Said when it first came out or 145 00:17:35,384 --> 00:17:44,924 reading stuff about Chinese fiction because it was Chinese fiction, premordern fiction that was my interest in literature. 146 00:17:44,924 --> 00:17:54,374 It was trying to square that that must have fed into the set of ideas, the set of things that you think I'm most interested in. 147 00:17:54,374 --> 00:17:58,844 GB: I was going to ask you about that because, not your first book, but perhaps the first academic 148 00:17:58,844 --> 00:18:04,904 book was sort of about the discourse about things rather than about things themselves. 149 00:18:04,904 --> 00:18:11,124 And I did wonder whether you like me, you're a bit of a product of the postmodern moment, I mean you mentioned Said 150 00:18:11,124 --> 00:18:18,354 but I know you've mentioned other people in other interviews, for example Jim Clifford. 151 00:18:18,354 --> 00:18:24,524 So I wonder whether this emphasis in your earliest academic work on the power of discourse and the importance 152 00:18:24,524 --> 00:18:31,874 of looking at discursive formations did come out of this sort of postmodern moment of the 70s and early 80s? 153 00:18:31,874 --> 00:18:36,234 CC: Sure. I think it must have. I mean, you know. 154 00:18:36,234 --> 00:18:45,684 In real life people don't read things in the right order. 155 00:18:45,684 --> 00:18:52,194 So I read Orientalism the minute it was published. 156 00:18:52,194 --> 00:18:57,984 Because it was a big deal, you know, it was in the SOAS library and it was on the new bookshelf. 157 00:18:57,984 --> 00:19:03,634 And I thought, well, this looks kind of interesting. And I kind of picked it up and I didn't understand large chunks of it. 158 00:19:03,634 --> 00:19:09,894 And I was bored by bits of it, but there were bits of it that just kind of bothered me. 159 00:19:09,894 --> 00:19:20,034 And I thought, this is kind of amazing. Now, at that point, I may have heard of, but I'd certainly never read Foucault. 160 00:19:20,034 --> 00:19:29,784 And so I had no idea when I read Said that Said is kind of riffing on Foucault to a large extent. 161 00:19:29,784 --> 00:19:39,394 But I then, you know, I was reading while I was working in the museum, the work kind of unsatisfied, 162 00:19:39,394 --> 00:19:46,714 I mean, I think it's partly because my formal education was so devoid of any kind of theoretical perception. 163 00:19:46,714 --> 00:19:54,514 I mean, I was at Cambridge at a time when people in literature, in French literature and English literature, you know, 164 00:19:54,514 --> 00:20:04,444 friends of mine, people I knew are experiencing - in the 1970s - are experiencing the first impact of a kind of theory wave. 165 00:20:04,444 --> 00:20:09,634 But there's like zero evidence of that in my education, 166 00:20:09,634 --> 00:20:17,674 which was entirely about technical skills and linguistic competencies and abilities 167 00:20:17,674 --> 00:20:24,364 to understand certain things about variant readings or all of that kind of stuff. 168 00:20:24,364 --> 00:20:33,334 I was like zero. So in a way, I did slightly feel kind of starved of ideas while I was an undergraduate. 169 00:20:33,334 --> 00:20:42,664 and I could remember one teacher saying, you ought to read this and handing me Braudel 'Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world' 170 00:20:42,664 --> 00:20:47,074 The second blew my mind. I thought oh, this is fantastic. I wish I could write this kind of stuff 171 00:20:47,074 --> 00:20:50,494 somebody should write this kind of stuff for China. 172 00:20:50,494 --> 00:21:00,964 So you know, because I was never taught anything about theory 173 00:21:00,964 --> 00:21:06,814 it has the sort of not forbidden fruit, but it has the allure of the unknown. 174 00:21:06,814 --> 00:21:13,084 So I'm a kind of kid in the sweet shop where I don't really understand what it is I think 175 00:21:13,084 --> 00:21:26,714 this looks interesting and what about this, you know. Now, there was a slightly more structure to that in that in the middle of the 80s, the V&A started up 176 00:21:26,714 --> 00:21:35,284 a master's programme which still runs on the history of design and the then director hired Charles Saumarez Smith, 177 00:21:35,284 --> 00:21:42,794 later director of the National Gallery and chief executive of the Royal Academy. They hired Charles. 178 00:21:42,794 --> 00:21:49,694 and as you might think, this is going to sound like one of these absolute kind of established British establishment stitch ups. 179 00:21:49,694 --> 00:21:55,724 But Charles and I were in the same year, the same College of Cambridge. 180 00:21:55,724 --> 00:22:01,184 We weren't particularly chums at Cambridge, and I doubt if we'd exchanged a sentence or two. 181 00:22:01,184 --> 00:22:12,884 But when he joined the V&A, we talked and we invented between us, and we really were making it up as we were along, 182 00:22:12,884 --> 00:22:17,354 a kind of methodology, material culture, methodology, course. 183 00:22:17,354 --> 00:22:21,974 And that's where we got the tools in to talk to the students. 184 00:22:21,974 --> 00:22:31,874 And so we were looking for a methodology to talk about objects because art history wasn't a great deal of help, to be honest. 185 00:22:31,874 --> 00:22:40,694 You know, if your interest is in chairs and tables, you know, Wölfflin and Panofsky and so on, they don't have much to say to you. 186 00:22:40,694 --> 00:22:48,854 So we were kind of struggling, you know, we're stumbling around and we're finding stuff and we're bumping into things. 187 00:22:48,854 --> 00:22:55,554 And one of the things that we bumped into was Arjun Appadurai's The Social Life of things 188 00:22:55,554 --> 00:23:09,404 and that became part of the intellectual underpinning of what you refer to as my first academic book, 189 00:23:09,404 --> 00:23:15,194 although I like to think that the earlier ones have good stuff in them, too. 190 00:23:15,194 --> 00:23:20,894 But you mean Superfluous Things, which was published in 1991 and has this kind of underpinning. 191 00:23:20,894 --> 00:23:33,434 And I think the experience of kind of trying to work with very bright students to create a kind of methodology course on design. 192 00:23:33,434 --> 00:23:39,994 I mean the other thing is design history wasn't that helpful because design history as it was then 193 00:23:39,994 --> 00:23:46,474 really, its interest only started with industrialisation and a lot of 194 00:23:46,474 --> 00:23:53,554 the literature on that saw the great exhibition of 1851 as a kind of zero hour. 195 00:23:53,554 --> 00:23:57,694 So again, if you want to help students to think about, I don't know, 196 00:23:57,694 --> 00:24:07,444 16th century armour, students who are interested in kind of gloves. What can you read that will help them think about gloves? 197 00:24:07,444 --> 00:24:13,654 And that took us and me towards this kind of anthropological literature. 198 00:24:13,654 --> 00:24:21,014 But again, it's very unsystematic, but then 199 00:24:21,014 --> 00:24:29,654 I've never had the benefits of any kind of methodological course, so it was just like picking stuff up and seeing what might work. 200 00:24:29,654 --> 00:24:35,234 GB: But I do wonder if there is a benefit. We could debate that sometime because I was like you 201 00:24:35,234 --> 00:24:40,664 I was taught Wöfflin and things like that, some sort of art history, but I never had to do 202 00:24:40,664 --> 00:24:45,554 A compulsory theory class, the way I know I have insisted my students do it. 203 00:24:45,554 --> 00:24:52,364 And just like you therefore came to it as a personal passion rather than as a requirement. 204 00:24:52,364 --> 00:24:59,174 I do wonder whether forcing students to do it is a matter of academic requirement takes joy out of it. 205 00:24:59,174 --> 00:25:03,224 CC: In fact, you know that sometimes you're going the other way to forbid them to read X or Y, 206 00:25:03,224 --> 00:25:11,234 that students are going to be sneaking off to the library 207 00:25:11,234 --> 00:25:18,104 GB: So let me ask, Craig, if you have to describe your own historical method where you fit within the continuum of practises, 208 00:25:18,104 --> 00:25:26,264 is material culture how you would describe yourself as an academic or as a scholar? 209 00:25:26,264 --> 00:25:34,364 Almost everybody you refer to - I realise it's still early in your career - but still this is a moment that very much shapes your identity as a scholar. 210 00:25:34,364 --> 00:25:40,994 CC: I mean, it's interesting because, of course at the V&A, you know, 211 00:25:40,994 --> 00:25:46,304 all of the V&A curators that I hung out with when I was one used to refer to kind of almost dismissively, 212 00:25:46,304 --> 00:25:52,604 like a flat art was like paintings and drawings and photographs and so on. 213 00:25:52,604 --> 00:26:01,604 And, you know, because I think we all had a kind of a bit of a chip on our shoulder about the decorative arts or whatever it was. 214 00:26:01,604 --> 00:26:10,424 And so I think I certainly probably seized on material culture as a way of giving what seemed like 215 00:26:10,424 --> 00:26:18,554 a new and slightly higher status to what had previously been called the decorative arts i.e. not real art. 216 00:26:18,554 --> 00:26:27,874 It's only decorative. But at the same time, there's also the kind of visual cultural thing kind of going on, 217 00:26:27,874 --> 00:26:37,364 because I have written books which are, you know, which are about canonical Chinese art 218 00:26:37,364 --> 00:26:47,064 But I wanted to look at that in the same framework. I wanted to try and think of it in the same way as the chairs and tables. 219 00:26:47,064 --> 00:26:51,914 People used to say to me: 220 00:26:51,914 --> 00:26:58,184 What kind of art are you most interested in? And the answer I would give was, I'm interested in how it all fits together. 221 00:26:58,184 --> 00:27:06,254 I mean, the V&A was a good school for thinking about discourse because the V&A 222 00:27:06,254 --> 00:27:13,604 there's a Department of Ceramics and the Department of Sculpture and a Far Eastern department that I was in. 223 00:27:13,604 --> 00:27:21,344 And the official V&A line was that this was a completely rational structure. 224 00:27:21,344 --> 00:27:26,414 The first time I read Foucault and that stuff about things from a long way off 225 00:27:26,414 --> 00:27:31,664 At the beginning, I thought this describes the structure. This is the structure of the V&A. 226 00:27:31,664 --> 00:27:35,994 It makes absolutely no kind of logical or rational sense. 227 00:27:35,994 --> 00:27:40,334 It's just, you know, sculpture has a higher status than ceramics 228 00:27:40,334 --> 00:27:45,794 and Asia is a thing where linguistic expertise 229 00:27:45,794 --> 00:27:52,424 GB: So let me ask about that, Craig, because you are making a reference to a fable, 230 00:27:52,424 --> 00:27:58,724 as I remember it, about Chinese culture or Chinese attitudes or Chinese worldviews. 231 00:27:58,724 --> 00:28:07,694 So, of course, the relationship between East and West must have been a constant tension that scholars like yourself must always have to negotiate. 232 00:28:07,694 --> 00:28:13,574 And I was struck when I did read through your CV that your earliest writings were about things like 233 00:28:13,574 --> 00:28:20,494 metalwork and jade and lacquer work and things that we Western art historians never even think about 234 00:28:20,494 --> 00:28:25,194 let alone write about. You mentioned a minute ago that you have published books on Canonical Art 235 00:28:25,194 --> 00:28:31,664 but I assume that you mean that art that is considered canonical in the West 236 00:28:31,664 --> 00:28:40,334 CC: Oh no, no. GB: So I guess what I'm asking you is, in China 237 00:28:40,334 --> 00:28:51,034 is there a hierarchy in which painting is higher than jade and metalwork and lacquerware, or are these categories that we've imposed from the West? 238 00:28:51,034 --> 00:28:58,814 CC: Oh, no, there's an absolute Chinese hierarchy with calligraphy at the top painting next and everything else. 239 00:28:58,814 --> 00:29:02,094 You everything comes lower than that. 240 00:29:02,094 --> 00:29:05,024 So it's not a hierarchy we've imposed. 241 00:29:05,024 --> 00:29:12,584 I mean there are hierarchies we imposed in the way Western museums rate some things higher than others. 242 00:29:12,584 --> 00:29:26,594 But both in pre modern times and now there's definitely a kind of hierarchy within China that was well understood in the past. 243 00:29:26,594 --> 00:29:30,794 And that hierarchy both affected the financial value of things 244 00:29:30,794 --> 00:29:37,184 you know, calligraphy was always dearer than anything else. 245 00:29:37,184 --> 00:29:50,244 And the cultural capital value, if you like, of those things as well. 246 00:29:50,244 --> 00:30:03,984 One of the distinctive things I think about studying Chinese art is that, you know, there is a vast vast discourse. 247 00:30:03,984 --> 00:30:08,124 There are named artists. There are biographies of artists. 248 00:30:08,124 --> 00:30:15,834 For thousands of years there have been books about art theory and so on. 249 00:30:15,834 --> 00:30:25,884 Baxandall famously had to invent a period eye because he was sent to work, 250 00:30:25,884 --> 00:30:32,154 he was a V&A curator, he was sent to work on the Northern European sculpture. 251 00:30:32,154 --> 00:30:39,954 And while 15th century Italy has a lot of art theory, 15th century Germany has no art theory at all. 252 00:30:39,954 --> 00:30:52,794 So he had to go elsewhere and look at dance and calligraphy and other forms 253 00:30:52,794 --> 00:30:59,544 and people have written about this, that for Baxandall, the period eye comes comes out of that. 254 00:30:59,544 --> 00:31:11,334 But for China, you have to engage with what they said about themselves at the time because they said plenty. 255 00:31:11,334 --> 00:31:21,074 GB: So let me ask a question that comes out of that: If there is indeed a voluminous literature within China about Chinese culture 256 00:31:21,074 --> 00:31:27,534 does that mean we need to adopt - that is we scholars who are interested in writing about Chinese art - 257 00:31:27,534 --> 00:31:36,024 a Chinese historiographic approach? I mean, is there such a thing that is somehow distinctive from the approach we might take from the West? 258 00:31:36,024 --> 00:31:41,724 CC: Well, I think you need to know about it. You absolutely need to know about it. 259 00:31:41,724 --> 00:31:50,154 And you absolutely need to understand it. Some people would say yes. 260 00:31:50,154 --> 00:31:57,504 And indeed, this would be a very hot topic in China itself. 261 00:31:57,504 --> 00:32:03,774 And if I was talking to a Chinese audience, one of the questions that would be sure to come up is, you know, 262 00:32:03,774 --> 00:32:13,914 you should be using Chinese theory for Chinese art 263 00:32:13,914 --> 00:32:23,454 I suppose my view would be, well, you know, if you're studying the art of the Italian renaissance, you need to know what Vasari said. 264 00:32:23,454 --> 00:32:30,854 Right. And as I understand it - though there are people listening to this who know a lot more about this than I do. 265 00:32:30,854 --> 00:32:32,534 So I might be about to say something stupid. 266 00:32:32,534 --> 00:32:42,254 But one of one of the central lines of Vasari is that Florence is the greatest centre of all because God loves Florence more than he loves Venice. 267 00:32:42,254 --> 00:32:51,314 Right. Well, you know, you don't need to believe that God loves Florence more than he loves Venice in order to work with Italian Renaissance art. 268 00:32:51,314 --> 00:32:56,804 And nobody would ask a scholar of Italian renaissance whether they needed to believe that. 269 00:32:56,804 --> 00:33:02,444 You know, ask do you actually believe that God loves Florence more than Venice? 270 00:33:02,444 --> 00:33:09,644 But you need to know that that's what Vasari thought. And you need to know why these kind of ideas made sense. 271 00:33:09,644 --> 00:33:15,474 But it doesn't stop you bringing other stuff in 272 00:33:15,474 --> 00:33:21,174 So this is me now, this would be my view is that absolutely, you need to understand 273 00:33:21,174 --> 00:33:25,434 how this stuff has been understood, 274 00:33:25,434 --> 00:33:33,864 but I think the great risk of the Chinese approach is that it can come to seem kind of utterly timeless and static. 275 00:33:33,864 --> 00:33:41,504 And a great deal of what we think of as the Chinese approach, in my view, 276 00:33:41,504 --> 00:33:51,464 has its origins in a particular moment of Chinese culture and an early 20th century moment when, for utterly understandable reasons, 277 00:33:51,464 --> 00:34:00,104 Chinese intellectuals felt the again completely understandable need to insist on the kind of separateness 278 00:34:00,104 --> 00:34:09,534 and difference of abounded and more homogeneous thing called Chinese culture. 279 00:34:09,534 --> 00:34:24,464 Now, if you go back to the very long historical process in China, it might not have look how it looked in 1920, might not be how it looked in 1520. 280 00:34:24,464 --> 00:34:33,434 GB: when I was reading one of the reviews of your work, the reviewer made a distinction between picture and painting 281 00:34:33,434 --> 00:34:39,184 the Chinese scholarship has a distinction there, which I couldn't even, I couldn't understand, 282 00:34:39,184 --> 00:34:44,914 but maybe you could explain to us what is the distinction within Chinese thinking between picture and painting? 283 00:34:44,914 --> 00:34:52,574 Is this the sort of difference that we in the West don't tend to hold or are even told about? 284 00:34:52,574 --> 00:35:04,864 CC: I've got a whole book which is kind of about that. The Pictures and Visuality book is kind of very much based on that. 285 00:35:04,864 --> 00:35:12,464 I could point you to specific sources from the 16th century in which somebody says painting and pictures and painting are different. 286 00:35:12,464 --> 00:35:21,264 I'll get back to trying to explain that in a minute. 287 00:35:21,264 --> 00:35:27,954 but whether that distinction was quite as pervasive or quite as widely held and quite as widespread, 288 00:35:27,954 --> 00:35:31,304 I'm a bit more sceptical now. But to come back to it, 289 00:35:31,304 --> 00:35:36,674 the distinction as it was made in the kind of media sources that I drew on for 290 00:35:36,674 --> 00:35:43,214 that book would be that picture is the larger kind of category. 291 00:35:43,214 --> 00:35:50,174 So any form of anything representational or mimetic could be a picture. 292 00:35:50,174 --> 00:36:02,664 Right, but painting is about brushwork and is about the artist's touch and is a higher practice 293 00:36:02,664 --> 00:36:07,064 I mean, it's almost Greenbergian stuff. 294 00:36:07,064 --> 00:36:13,664 I mean, this is stuff from the 16th century. You'll read some of the stuff from the Europeans, 295 00:36:13,664 --> 00:36:20,564 from the 20th century about how it's all about the artist's touch and so on. 296 00:36:20,564 --> 00:36:26,564 But so every every painting is also a picture. 297 00:36:26,564 --> 00:36:36,674 Right, but not every picture is also painting because it might be a woodblock print or a map or a kind of painting, which is to mimetic, 298 00:36:36,674 --> 00:36:51,024 you know, too concerned with capturing the experience of the external world and not enough with capturing 299 00:36:51,024 --> 00:36:55,734 the inner life of the artists and the artists inner life in the world, and again, 300 00:36:55,734 --> 00:36:59,664 this sounds like stuff that people were arguing about in 301 00:36:59,664 --> 00:37:10,364 France in the late 19th century about Pompier and academic art versus what Cezane's doing 302 00:37:10,364 --> 00:37:19,494 I mean, in a way, it's Chinese engagements with that and that Cezane kind of moment in the early 20th century that elevate this distinction, 303 00:37:19,494 --> 00:37:29,684 I think now to kind of a central thing of Chinese art and whether actually that was really the case in the 15th century or the 11th century. 304 00:37:29,684 --> 00:37:35,864 But there's plenty of Chinese theory in which, from the 11th century onwards or even earlier, 305 00:37:35,864 --> 00:37:40,014 people are saying if it's too mimetic, then it's not really art. 306 00:37:40,014 --> 00:37:44,054 And it's not really painting. It's just kind of picture. 307 00:37:44,054 --> 00:37:47,984 It's capturing the appearance of the external world. 308 00:37:47,984 --> 00:37:54,674 And that's not what art does. Real art is not about capturing the appearance of the external world. 309 00:37:54,674 --> 00:37:56,674 And we could say -and this is a conversation that would 310 00:37:56,674 --> 00:38:02,814 be interesting to have in great length of time - which is that that's one of the reasons why 311 00:38:02,814 --> 00:38:08,694 photography doesn't cause Chinese painting to have a nervous breakdown in the 19th century, 312 00:38:08,694 --> 00:38:14,424 because, you know, yes, photography is fantastic at capturing that the external world. 313 00:38:14,424 --> 00:38:17,214 But if that's not what art was meant to do anyway, 314 00:38:17,214 --> 00:38:25,114 it doesn't provoke a kind of rethinking of central principles of what the artist is going to be doing. 315 00:38:25,114 --> 00:38:33,924 GB: Let me ask you a broad question, Craig. I know you've written about the way museums collected, 316 00:38:33,924 --> 00:38:40,084 Chinese artefacts and culture is very much framed by the history of imperialism. 317 00:38:40,084 --> 00:38:47,604 But I'm wondering then what is mediating the way scholars like yourself in the field in general are dealing with China today, 318 00:38:47,604 --> 00:38:54,624 now that China is an active part of the global economy and certainly the part of the world I come from considered to be an imperial power, 319 00:38:54,624 --> 00:38:58,554 a threatening imperial power in its own right. 320 00:38:58,554 --> 00:39:05,664 Are things shifting in the way that we're regarding China and its own position in the world? 321 00:39:05,664 --> 00:39:11,274 I guess what I'm really asking is to what degree is art history, and your art history in particular 322 00:39:11,274 --> 00:39:18,444 always addressing the present, always about the present and the present now is quite different than it was, say, when you started out in the field. 323 00:39:18,444 --> 00:39:25,504 CC: Well, I think it's always addressing the present, whether you think about it or not. 324 00:39:25,504 --> 00:39:30,224 I mean, I think there is a difference in that 325 00:39:30,224 --> 00:39:40,094 I'm much more conscious now than I was when I started my career, that what I write may well be read in China, 326 00:39:40,094 --> 00:39:49,934 because books are translated. I mean, a lot of the things I write about are very mainstream in China and 327 00:39:49,934 --> 00:39:56,594 well, it might be kind of what is it, sixty three people who are interested in the in the West 328 00:39:56,594 --> 00:39:59,804 Or I might give a lecture and fourteen people might come, you know, 329 00:39:59,804 --> 00:40:06,974 I'm writing about some very mainstream and canonical stuff, that in a very big country like China, 330 00:40:06,974 --> 00:40:14,534 even if only one percent of the population is interested in that, still is in absolute terms, an enormous number. 331 00:40:14,534 --> 00:40:21,974 So I am much more conscious of a global audience, if you like, 332 00:40:21,974 --> 00:40:27,204 even though I'm writing in English, I'm much more conscious of a global audience than ever 333 00:40:27,204 --> 00:40:33,074 than of a purely Anglophone one. 334 00:40:33,074 --> 00:40:37,814 I suppose maybe I'm the wrong person to ask because somebody like 335 00:40:37,814 --> 00:40:43,364 me who started when China was really over there and nobody knew about it, 336 00:40:43,364 --> 00:40:52,154 nobody ever went there. And people who were interested in it were a tiny minority of weirdos. 337 00:40:52,154 --> 00:40:58,364 I'm marked by that, that's stamped on me. 338 00:40:58,364 --> 00:41:03,674 So even if I'm kind of changing, that's essentially the point from which I came in. 339 00:41:03,674 --> 00:41:08,894 I mean, it would be interesting to compare it with people who have, as it were, grown up with - 340 00:41:08,894 --> 00:41:16,034 and I remember saying this almost the last time I taught the modern China course - 341 00:41:16,034 --> 00:41:27,224 I remember saying to the undergraduates, look, you all have lived in a world in which for your entire lifetimes, in which China is powerful, 342 00:41:27,224 --> 00:41:30,164 but if we're going to go back to the beginning of the 20th century, 343 00:41:30,164 --> 00:41:36,184 we have to think about a period when Chinese intellectuals were really worried that China was going to disappear. 344 00:41:36,184 --> 00:41:40,174 You know, it was going to be colonised, carved out. 345 00:41:40,174 --> 00:41:46,694 You know, it was going to be like Poland, which would sort of cease to exist on the map of of the of the world. 346 00:41:46,694 --> 00:41:56,654 And this seems incredible to you now because they've grown up in a hallway in the world. 347 00:41:56,654 --> 00:42:02,594 But I didn't grow up in that world. I grew up in a world where China was kind of like nobody had ever been there. 348 00:42:02,594 --> 00:42:15,714 Nobody knew anything about it and so on. So I'm still probably stamped by that, even as the conscious part of it changes to think 349 00:42:15,714 --> 00:42:24,454 I'm not only interested in addressing a Chinese audience which already knows a great deal about Chinese art 350 00:42:24,454 --> 00:42:32,034 I am interested in trying to bring people who don't think: 'Oh I don't know anything 351 00:42:32,034 --> 00:42:38,544 about China' to give them some material or ideas or just images or things to think with, 352 00:42:38,544 --> 00:42:45,504 GB: Yeah, I might just pause for a moment and remind people if they'd like to ask a question themselves, 353 00:42:45,504 --> 00:42:50,784 they can just write one into the chat function and I'll read it out to him in a minute. 354 00:42:50,784 --> 00:43:00,474 I was thinking similarly, Craig, whenever I have to show Warhol portraits of Mao students, I have to remind them what that meant when Warhol made them. 355 00:43:00,474 --> 00:43:05,394 We look back at Mao now as a kind of pop culture figure, in part because because of Warhol. 356 00:43:05,394 --> 00:43:15,624 But at the time those would have been seen as quite threatening and quite strategic choice of image. CC: They are quite in your face images. 357 00:43:15,624 --> 00:43:21,534 GB: But when I was looking I was noticing that in your most recent writings, 358 00:43:21,534 --> 00:43:26,814 words like transnational and contact and exchange seem to be the key words, 359 00:43:26,814 --> 00:43:31,014 and that seems to be informed by this sort of new globalism that we're all living in. 360 00:43:31,014 --> 00:43:37,944 Now, as you say, China is now a major player and completely different from the situation when you first came into the field. 361 00:43:37,944 --> 00:43:42,444 So, I mean, let's talk about global art histories. 362 00:43:42,444 --> 00:43:49,074 Is this a desirable aim or something in fact, we should be arguing against? What is a global art history? 363 00:43:49,074 --> 00:43:59,084 Well, let's put it this way. What would be a good global art history from your point of view? 364 00:43:59,084 --> 00:44:03,504 CC: I mean, what I'm going to say kind of really 365 00:44:03,504 --> 00:44:20,214 well, it sounds like Warholian fake naive, but, you know, I do think it's a good idea for people to know stuff about a range of different stuff and, 366 00:44:20,214 --> 00:44:42,464 you know, just to be curious about or to be interested in a bigger range of things and to seek out stuff that they don't already know about. 367 00:44:42,464 --> 00:44:55,304 I suppose I'm not really interested in those claims to a global art history, which is here is one key that will work for it all. 368 00:44:55,304 --> 00:45:03,114 You know, I'm more interested in 369 00:45:03,114 --> 00:45:14,154 knowing about a bunch of different things and thinking about what is the appropriate way to think about those different things, 370 00:45:14,154 --> 00:45:25,044 I suppose I'm interested in comparison. Comparison has to start - 371 00:45:25,044 --> 00:45:31,094 I suppose if you think that everything is the same, then you're not really comparing it because it's kind of the same. 372 00:45:31,094 --> 00:45:39,834 GB: But you can only compare like with unlike. And so therefore, if you have a comparative global history, of course, you'd begin from your own culture 373 00:45:39,834 --> 00:45:51,424 the West and you put China in second place, don't you. 374 00:45:51,424 --> 00:45:58,764 CC: Well, there's a book on Artemisia Gentileschi 375 00:45:58,764 --> 00:46:08,094 that made a big impact on me because it's a book which argues for forms of - I agree with you 376 00:46:08,094 --> 00:46:13,144 that by and large comparison tends to take a norm and then a deviation from it. 377 00:46:13,144 --> 00:46:16,854 And so here is the norm and here's the deviation. 378 00:46:16,854 --> 00:46:23,484 And indeed, most of the history of China written in European languages from the 19th century to the late 20th century, 379 00:46:23,484 --> 00:46:30,304 implicitly or explicitly does that. And I suppose I am very aware of that. 380 00:46:30,304 --> 00:46:37,914 I'm conscious of that. I've tried to not do that. It's not for me to say whether I've succeeded in doing that or not. 381 00:46:37,914 --> 00:46:44,934 But I have been aware of that kind of norm and deviation - we do this, but they do that. 382 00:46:44,934 --> 00:46:49,614 You know, with they are that, being implicitly kind of - 383 00:46:49,614 --> 00:47:01,824 But a number of people have tried to think about ways of: we do this and they do this, 384 00:47:01,824 --> 00:47:07,414 you know, and that don't start from the norm, 385 00:47:07,414 --> 00:47:13,794 that don't start from one of those being the norm for which the other one has to be the deviation. 386 00:47:13,794 --> 00:47:22,254 Now, maybe, again, that's naive, but it's what is what I believed in. 387 00:47:22,254 --> 00:47:26,514 I haven't always believed in the execution of it. 388 00:47:26,514 --> 00:47:30,804 Or put it this way 389 00:47:30,804 --> 00:47:37,004 I've wanted to believe in the possibility of that. GB: There's a couple of people with hands up. 390 00:47:37,004 --> 00:47:44,214 But it would be easier, I think, if you put a question in the chat, write it out, and then I can read it out to Craig as we go along. 391 00:47:44,214 --> 00:47:49,204 So I think, I notice, if you wouldn't mind putting your question in the chat function, that would be helpful. 392 00:47:49,204 --> 00:47:54,944 Thanks. I was wondering about that because, 393 00:47:54,944 --> 00:47:59,054 you know, we in the West, we like to think we can know, 394 00:47:59,054 --> 00:48:07,244 and that indeed we come out of this enlightenment model where knowledge for its own sake, all knowledge should be available to us. 395 00:48:07,244 --> 00:48:15,764 But isn't it politically strategic that some knowledges are not available to us? 396 00:48:15,764 --> 00:48:21,494 Shouldn't any global history be telling the reader from the West that there's just parts of other 397 00:48:21,494 --> 00:48:28,374 cultures that you cannot know and you should not seek to know? 398 00:48:28,374 --> 00:48:32,454 You know, why can't we leave some knowledge within Chinese hands, if you know what I mean? 399 00:48:32,454 --> 00:48:38,844 CC: Well, I mean, I'm not kidding myself. 400 00:48:38,844 --> 00:48:42,714 It remains within Chinese hands whether I address it or not. 401 00:48:42,714 --> 00:48:50,434 Right. I mean, you know, where where is the bulk of the art history of China? 402 00:48:50,434 --> 00:48:54,294 Where and in what language is the bulk of the art history of China written? 403 00:48:54,294 --> 00:49:04,074 It's written in Chinese in China. Where are the critical mass of doctoral student scholars, museums, museum curators? In China. 404 00:49:04,074 --> 00:49:10,314 GB: That's a very recent development, though, isn't it? 405 00:49:10,314 --> 00:49:17,214 CC: Well, it's a 50 year development now, I mean, it's arguably one hundred year development. 406 00:49:17,214 --> 00:49:20,694 I mean, art history only has one hundred years. 407 00:49:20,694 --> 00:49:27,624 I'm not counting Vasari and Winckelman and all of that. 408 00:49:27,624 --> 00:49:32,134 I mean, those are those are kind of ancestral totems. 409 00:49:32,134 --> 00:49:40,344 If we count our history as the point at which you could get an art history degree, 410 00:49:40,344 --> 00:49:44,674 It's maybe a hundred and fifty years. 411 00:49:44,674 --> 00:49:49,584 So in China, you know, in Japan, it's easily as long as that. 412 00:49:49,584 --> 00:49:56,334 And in China, it's easily one hundred years. 413 00:49:56,334 --> 00:50:02,814 So I hope I've never been so arrogant to think that, um, you know, 414 00:50:02,814 --> 00:50:08,964 that I could take it out of Chinese hands even if I wanted to, because that's just, 415 00:50:08,964 --> 00:50:15,684 you know, given where the activity is and where the thinking is and where the right thing is, 416 00:50:15,684 --> 00:50:22,314 that's just preposterous. You know, it's just it's just not viable. 417 00:50:22,314 --> 00:50:27,234 Now, I think people did think that. I mean, I think 418 00:50:27,234 --> 00:50:34,044 when I went through the faculty of Oriental Studies in the early 1970s, at the point when China was over there, you know, 419 00:50:34,044 --> 00:50:41,064 the professor of Chinese, the head of the Chinese department at Cambridge, when I was there, had never been to China. 420 00:50:41,064 --> 00:50:49,104 Now in a way that wasn't really his fault, because, I mean, it was the geopolitics of the Cold War that stopped him from going to China. 421 00:50:49,104 --> 00:50:59,394 But he'd never been there, he couldn't have ordered a beer in Chinese spoken Chinese to save his life. 422 00:50:59,394 --> 00:51:06,534 So that was different then. There was a period when the West thought that it had taken it out of the hands of China. 423 00:51:06,534 --> 00:51:11,004 And certainly institutions like the Victoria and Albert Museum kind of believed that as well. 424 00:51:11,004 --> 00:51:22,204 But that probably only seemed true then and it's certainly not true now and hasn't been true for, you know, most of my career. 425 00:51:22,204 --> 00:51:30,384 GB: I've got a question it is a general question about art history in general. 426 00:51:30,384 --> 00:51:37,044 He was wondering, Craig, how important do you think Canonicity or fundamental texts are for the study of history of art? 427 00:51:37,044 --> 00:51:42,804 He was talking to some younger history of art students who never had a Riegl's Dutch group portrait. 428 00:51:42,804 --> 00:51:48,174 And he's wondering whether you think these 19th century canonical texts are important going forward, 429 00:51:48,174 --> 00:51:53,064 even if what is not, as I do, going to specialise in the history of German art history. 430 00:51:53,064 --> 00:51:58,524 Let's just quickly say we do discuss that regularly in the history of courses here, 431 00:51:58,524 --> 00:52:16,054 CC: Well. I do think it's important if it helps critical thinking, 432 00:52:16,054 --> 00:52:22,504 which I hope we would all agree is a good thing if people know where certain ideas come from. 433 00:52:22,504 --> 00:52:27,544 Otherwise, they just take them as kind of fallen from the heavens. 434 00:52:27,544 --> 00:52:32,624 Now, I mean, Riegl's Dutch forefronts is a good one, because 435 00:52:32,624 --> 00:52:44,724 I don't think I've ever read it. No, I'm pretty sure I've never read it. 436 00:52:44,724 --> 00:52:49,004 I kind of vaguely know what's in it 437 00:52:49,004 --> 00:52:51,714 I've read stuff. I mean, I have read some of the Western canonical 438 00:52:51,714 --> 00:53:01,994 although it's true to say that when I started teaching art history at Sussex, I had literally never read the Western Canon texts. 439 00:53:01,994 --> 00:53:07,454 I hadn't read Panofsky, I hadn't read Wofflin and I had to teach this stuff - absolutely terrifying. 440 00:53:07,454 --> 00:53:13,214 I was like one page ahead of the students, literally. GB: It's a great learning experience actually 441 00:53:13,214 --> 00:53:17,204 CC: It was great. You know, my colleagues said sink or swim. 442 00:53:17,204 --> 00:53:30,044 Well, maybe I sank, but I'm sure some days the students thought I sank, but but so 443 00:53:30,044 --> 00:53:37,184 What is the canon? Is that is that a Riegl thing? Part of the canon? Is that one of the things that you absolutely have to kind of know about? 444 00:53:37,184 --> 00:53:49,394 Would you. Is it interesting? Yes, quite probably. Did it have an impact on, you know, the way more recent people have written? 445 00:53:49,394 --> 00:53:55,504 But I think, you know 446 00:53:55,504 --> 00:54:06,094 one of the things that struck me about working in museums was that these supposedly logical structures had changed massively over time. 447 00:54:06,094 --> 00:54:11,794 So the British Museum and the V&A, if you study the structures, they keep changing them, there was a big hoo-haa at the V&A 448 00:54:11,794 --> 00:54:16,984 last year about changing the departmental structure. They've always changed the departmental structure. 449 00:54:16,984 --> 00:54:20,344 I mean, I happen to think that the change proposed was a bad one. 450 00:54:20,344 --> 00:54:24,274 But the fact of changing happens all the time. 451 00:54:24,274 --> 00:54:33,064 And I think the same is true of the canon, you know, I mean, James Elkins has done these kind of graphs of who gets mentioned. 452 00:54:33,064 --> 00:54:42,754 And I mean, Riegl's an interesting one, because Riegl falls off a cliff in about 1950, you know, in the Gombrich Panofsky era, 453 00:54:42,754 --> 00:54:47,014 Riegl was like the oldest old hat and nobody read him 454 00:54:47,014 --> 00:54:50,214 And then in the last 20 years, Riegl becomes hip again. 455 00:54:50,214 --> 00:54:57,904 And then actually there's probably more people reading Riegl now than they were in the golden age of art history, 456 00:54:57,904 --> 00:55:06,124 which, of course, as we all know, did not ever actually exist. So what is the canon? 457 00:55:06,124 --> 00:55:10,444 If it shifts and it changes. 458 00:55:10,444 --> 00:55:17,404 And institutions make cannons and the cannons make the institutions. 459 00:55:17,404 --> 00:55:18,934 And we all kind of understand them. 460 00:55:18,934 --> 00:55:26,434 But I don't think we can say this is the list that's carved in stone that everybody has to have read 461 00:55:26,434 --> 00:55:33,544 One: everybody should read as widely as possible. Two: Nobody, 462 00:55:33,544 --> 00:55:37,864 and that includes me and you has read enough. 463 00:55:37,864 --> 00:55:47,074 GB: I of course think of the golden age of art history as your tenancy here at Oxford but we'll talk about that another time. 464 00:55:47,074 --> 00:55:52,054 Someone has a question for you. She wants to follow up on my question about global history, 465 00:55:52,054 --> 00:56:06,464 Could you elaborate on the differences between shared history and connected history and why have you cautioned against focussing only on the connected? 466 00:56:06,464 --> 00:56:17,554 CC: Because I think focussing only on the connected does risk leaving out things that are extremely important but aren't connected. 467 00:56:17,554 --> 00:56:28,434 So, I mean, China, I suppose the canonical example would be, as I mentioned earlier, 468 00:56:28,434 --> 00:56:36,274 you know, in Premodern, China, the well understood system of the art has at its apex the art of calligraphy, 469 00:56:36,274 --> 00:56:39,524 the writing of Chinese characters with a brush. 470 00:56:39,524 --> 00:56:47,974 These are the most valued works, the most expensive works, the works people want to own, want to know about, want to write about. 471 00:56:47,974 --> 00:56:54,004 There are many, many more people. In the Ming period, 472 00:56:54,004 --> 00:56:58,324 not being interested in painting was not a career break. 473 00:56:58,324 --> 00:57:05,434 You didn't have to be interested in painting. A lot of the elite were interested in painting, but a very large number of them were not. 474 00:57:05,434 --> 00:57:10,144 But being utterly uninterested in calligraphy or even worse, yourself, 475 00:57:10,144 --> 00:57:20,644 writing a hand which looked uneducated and crude, that melted your social capital 476 00:57:20,644 --> 00:57:25,174 but that is not connected. 477 00:57:25,174 --> 00:57:31,054 In the sense that until the 20th century, with the exception of Japan, 478 00:57:31,054 --> 00:57:35,974 obviously in Japan and Korea and elsewhere in what some people have called and I know this term is controversial, 479 00:57:35,974 --> 00:57:40,984 but some people call a sign of a sphere that is those parts of the world where 480 00:57:40,984 --> 00:57:45,424 written Chinese is being used as a language of kind of status in addition. 481 00:57:45,424 --> 00:57:55,624 and that would include Korea and Vietnam and Japan. you know, porcelain 482 00:57:55,624 --> 00:58:01,204 the first global brand, it's being treated all over the world. there are fragments on the beach in Australia and in Brazil. 483 00:58:01,204 --> 00:58:04,904 And then some. But then calligraphy, no, it doesn't make it outside of China. 484 00:58:04,904 --> 00:58:11,634 One of the reasons it doesn't make it outside China is that, you know, it's too valuable to leave, 485 00:58:11,634 --> 00:58:22,594 Even when China is kind of on its uppers in the early 20th century, important works of art don't leave. 486 00:58:22,594 --> 00:58:32,794 So, for example, there's no flow of calligraphy into Western museums. 487 00:58:32,794 --> 00:58:41,524 very few Western museums have a collection of calligraphy that anybody who's really interested in this subject would cross the road to look at. 488 00:58:41,524 --> 00:58:52,204 I mean, certainly no European museum, the Met maybe saw a couple of bits and other major North American museums. 489 00:58:52,204 --> 00:59:03,244 But, it's not an art form that's connected, but it's importance is in inverse ratio to its connectedness. 490 00:59:03,244 --> 00:59:12,904 I mean, can't we agree that it's valuable to both study those things that are connected and to look for connexions where it exists, 491 00:59:12,904 --> 00:59:20,974 but also to pay attention to those things which aren't connected and are valued kind of within the culture, 492 00:59:20,974 --> 00:59:29,444 Within the cultural record of a particular place itself. 493 00:59:29,444 --> 00:59:36,614 GB: OK, sounds like a cogent argument to me, Craig, we've just about run out of time. 494 00:59:36,614 --> 00:59:42,434 I just wanted to, of course, remind people that you continue to publish and that your work can be sold out, 495 00:59:42,434 --> 00:59:46,904 but also that you're in the process of curating an exhibition for the Freud Museum in London. 496 00:59:46,904 --> 00:59:51,164 Do you want to say quickly something about that and more particularly when it will actually open? 497 00:59:51,164 --> 00:59:56,744 CC: So this exhibition called Sigmund Freud and China will open at the Freud Museum 498 00:59:56,744 --> 01:00:01,574 in Meresfield Gardens in London on the twenty sixth of January next year, 499 01:00:01,574 --> 01:00:09,464 and it will go on until June. And let me urge a visit to the museum on anybody who's never been, because it's a very wonderful place. 500 01:00:09,464 --> 01:00:16,494 This is Sigmund Freud's last home when he came to England as a refugee from the Nazis in 1938. 501 01:00:16,494 --> 01:00:25,274 But Freud's status and powerful political protection meant that he was able to bring his entire library and his entire collection of antiquities, 502 01:00:25,274 --> 01:00:28,934 not to mention his famous couch to London with it. 503 01:00:28,934 --> 01:00:36,884 And although Chinese antiquities are only a relatively small part of Freud's collection, 504 01:00:36,884 --> 01:00:42,494 they are a part that he turned to very significantly in the very last decade of his life. 505 01:00:42,494 --> 01:00:47,714 And so the exhibition focuses on the Chinese objects in its collection, 506 01:00:47,714 --> 01:00:56,154 but also looks at some of the ways in which Freud's reading about Chinese culture and particularly 507 01:00:56,154 --> 01:01:03,554 his misunderstandings of the Chinese language fed into his ideas about the interpretation of dreams, 508 01:01:03,554 --> 01:01:06,554 which is obviously one of the kind of central Freudian ideas. 509 01:01:06,554 --> 01:01:18,584 So this is a very small exhibition because the museum is just a house and and it's very small, but there will be a small publication to go with it. 510 01:01:18,584 --> 01:01:23,174 And whether you see it then or see it some other time before the exhibition, 511 01:01:23,174 --> 01:01:27,164 the Freud Museum is, in my view, a very kind of magical and wonderful place. 512 01:01:27,164 --> 01:01:31,084 And everybody should visit it at least once 513 01:01:31,084 --> 01:01:35,234 GB: Very good, well that obviously should be in January. Twenty twenty two. Great. 514 01:01:35,234 --> 01:01:42,374 Thanks so much for chatting to us. It's wonderful to hear you speak and to get some small moments for insights into the 515 01:01:42,374 --> 01:01:47,504 complexities of the Chinese culture that you study. On behalf of all of our listeners 516 01:01:47,504 --> 01:01:53,144 I want to thank you for your time and for your expertise. And I hope everybody - people are clapping - 517 01:01:53,144 --> 01:02:01,244 I hope everybody will join us next week at 5:00 pm for another round of the art history Radio Hour. 518 01:02:01,244 --> 01:02:02,114 Thanks, everybody, and thanks again Craig. 519 01:02:02,114 --> 01:02:11,654 CC: Just wishing that all colleagues and students and everybody, wishing everybody a safe and healthy and successful time. 520 01:02:11,654 --> 01:02:19,381 GB: Thanks very much. CC: Thank you.