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34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Nottingham
Object, beeld en voorstelling: twee 19e-eeuwse Europese verbeeldingen van 'China'
“Fantasies, Images and Objects: Two Nineteenth-Century European Displays of ‘China’”
This article examines two contrasting representations of “China” in nineteenth-century Europe. One comes from the celebrated English performer, Albert Smith, who recounted his trip to Canton and Hong Kong in 1858 on stage at the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London. His ephemeral performance survives in the form of an optical device or “peepshow” and its accompanying lithographs. I consider the implications of reconstructing and re-interpreting a public entertainment on a small scale, in private, in a middle-class home, in contrast to Edmond de Goncourt’s private art collection in Paris
