Szilágyi András (szerk.): Ars Decorativa 24. (Budapest, 2006)

Györgyi FAJCSÁK: Exibition of Oriental Arts, 1929 - Collecting Chinese artefacts in Hungary in the 1920s and 1930s

condition of dealing with arts. A pillar of this method was to regard the work of art as a product of nature, to study it with a procedure imitating those of exact sciences, that is, carefully examining its material and techniques. As for Chinese objects, it was the production of porcelain and the examination of earthenware objects that received special attention. The first works on Chinese ceramics and Chinese art were published as a part of the comprehensive history of ceramics.

8 As for the, history of applied arts (which, at that time, was considered as a branch of classical history of art), examining Chinese objects on the basis of material and technique was a vivid example of the shift of emphasis that posed a threat in the late 19

,h century and in the first decades of the 20

th century.

9 For those examining artefacts from the point of view of the history of art, Far Eastern artefacts meant a strong temptation, since they were made of exotic materials (porcelain, lacquer, jade) that were unknown in Europe for a long time. The other pillar was the demand to place artefacts within historical co-ordinates. In China, archaeological studies and historiography had a considerable tradition; nevertheless, at the beginning of the century - due to lingual and methodological obstacles - they turned out to be inaccessible. The European conception of history contributed to the commencement of archaeological explorations in China. It is a fact that at the beginning only foreigners (mainly Europeans) executed excavations; the objective of the expeditions was to explore the oasis cities along the Silk Road in Xinjiang province (a Chinese border province). In the first years of the 20

,h century, English. French, German, Swedish and Russian explorers set out to get to know China's northwest region. They worked along the Silk Road, mainly in Xinjiang and in Gansu province. Aurel Stein (1862-1943), in the course of his three major expeditions (1900-1901, 1906-1908, 1913-1916)

10 discovered the sealed library of the Dunhuang cave temples along the Silk Road and thus obtained more than a thousand objects for the British Museum and Library. Paul Pelliot (1878-1945), a Frenchman, acquired the other treasures of the Dunhuang library for the Musée Guimet, Paris and the French national library." The German Turfan expeditions, led by Albert Grünwedel (1856-1935) and Albert von LeCoq (1860-1930) collected a considerable amount of material in four phases (between 1902 and 1914) in the oasis cities of Turkestan (Kizil, Chotscho, Bezeklik etc.).

12 The archaeological material of the Silk Road was given special attention because - due to the Greco-Roman connections - its comparative examination could relate Chinese archaeological findings to the history of European art and thus provide a clue to getting acquainted with the sculptural material of Chinese grand art. In Japan, Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908), an American lecturer and art critic, and Okakura Kakuzo (1863-1913) took the first steps in turning towards history and the past. In their publications and lectures they made an attempt to re-discover Japanese roots and old Japanese art, and considered China as the birthplace of Japanese culture and art. Their movement and books highly contributed to the development of knowledge of ancient Chinese art.

13 The historical aspect provided experts at Oriental arts with a new system of notions and directed attention to the hitherto completely unknown art of Chinese historical periods. They had the opportunity to examine works of art as a manifestation of the spiritual life of Chinese society; China's art got displaced from its static, seemingly timeless world. The history of Oriental art appeared in education as well. Joseph Strzygowsky ( 1862— 1941), an Austrian art historian was among the first professors to give lectures on the history of Oriental arts at the universities of Vienna and Graz in the first decade of the 20

th century. The school related to his name emphasizes value and provides a timeless viewpoint; as far as the relation of Oriental and European art is concerned, it denies development and thus highlights the significance of Oriental traditions.

14 He paid special attention to the material culture of the early Middle Ages and the migration period, and centred his examinations on ethnic units, which he considered to be a principal determinant fac-