The Many Names of Anonymity - by Winnie Wong (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This book challenges one of the most relentless features of Eurocentric modernity: the attachment of modern individuals to singular names, which are then attached to the fruits of their labor. Consider an equally important feature of Sinocentric modernity: the multiplication of socially contingent identities that often are not attached to material labor and sometimes even operate against it. Winnie Wong brings to life the "nameless and nameful" portraitists of Guangzhou during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when it was the sole port of trade between China and Europe. Forbidden to venture into the city and the rest of China, Europeans purchased spectacularly detailed artworks by Chinese artists, believing such images faithfully depicted the China they could not see for themselves. Here at the periphery of imperial power, neither Western nor Chinese traditions of authorship apply. An enormous number of Canton Trade paintings survive today, yet scholars have identified only a handful of artist names. Wong explores how a condition of artisanal anonymity has been inscribed on an entire oeuvre, upending numerous assumptions about the elusive painters' practices. Focusing on a group of artists known by the pidgin names Chit Qua, Chin Qua, Spoilum, Lam Qua, and Ting Qua, she reveals that each name existed in many forms and was used by several historical persons. Bringing together portraits executed in reverse painting on glass, watercolor on paper, oil on canvas, painted unfired clay, and daguerreotype, this lavishly illustrated volume is replete with fascinating details about Sino-European encounters during the long eighteenth century, conditions of cultural production in China, and biases that have marginalized these artworks in Asia as well as the West"--

Book Synopsis

Explores how the function, norms, and meaning of artists' names in Chinese modernity have been misunderstood.

Challenging contemporary procedures for establishing attribution, chronology, and authenticity in Chinese art, Winnie Wong explores the means, methods, and stakes of recovering the names of an anonymous community of artists. To examine how Western art history has misconstrued and miscategorized names and identities in Chinese art, she looks to conflicting features of modernity: the European attachment of singular names to individuals and their works, and the Chinese use of socially contingent names that often are not attached to material labor and sometimes operate against it. Wong charts the genealogy of this naming problem by bringing to life the artists of the Qing Empire's trade with Europeans at the port of Guangzhou, centering on a group of portraitists known by names that were recorded in a pidgin language: Chin Qua, Chit Qua, Spoilum, Lam Qua, and Ting Qua.

Many of these paintings survive today, yet scholars have identified only a handful of the painters' identities. Pushing against Western norms that have shaped our understanding of authorship, Wong reveals that these artists shared names, created works in multiples, and signed their pieces with different names or none at all. This lavishly illustrated volume explores portraiture across media, including unfired clay, reverse painting on glass, watercolor on paper, oil on canvas, and the daguerreotype, to propose new ways of studying anonymity, copying, and the emergence of author names in the Sino-European visual culture of the long eighteenth century.

About the Author

Winnie Wong is professor of rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Van Gogh on Demand: China and the Readymade and the coeditor of Learning from Shenzhen, both also published by the University of Chicago Press.