Jackie Chan, repatriation fighter
Calling the two 18th-century Qing Dynasty bronzes of a rat and rabbit, auctioned yesterday by Christie’s, “Chinese bronzes” (as I did in yesterday’s post) is a bit of a misnomer.
According to Christie’s catalogue entry:
These superb and remarkably realistic heads were almost certainly designed by Giuseppe Castiglione [an Italian Jesuit missionary living in China]. Clear similarities can be seen, for example, between the style of the bronze head of the monkey from the clepsydra (sold by Christie’s Hong Kong in April 2000) and that of the animal in the painting “A White Monkey” by Castiglione and now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei.
Although the looting of the Summer Palace in Beijing, to which these sculptures belonged, was deplorable, I think it’s legitimate to question why China has chosen to pick an international fight over these objects—not antiquities, not by a Chinese sculptor, pillaged almost 150 years ago. Even ardent repatriationists recognize that source countries’ claims, for the most part, should be subject to a cutoff date. Most objects illegally removed from the source country before that date should be granted repose, or thousands of pieces would be flying around the world. The 1860 date of the pillage of the Summer Palace would seem to predate any reasonable cutoff.
Even Patty Gerstenblith, a American lawyer specializing in international cultural property issues, who has become journalists’ go-to person for pithy quotes calling for repatriation of just about everything, said this to the NY Times about these bronzes:
My view is this was looted, but it would be difficult to get that
legally back. But it’s
got great historical significance and ought to be returned.
year’s Olympics in Beijing.
The seller of the objects, Pierre Bergé, had provocatively promised to relinquish the rat and rabbit to China “in exchange for Chinese human rights guarantees and permission for the
exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to return to Tibet,” as Maureen Fan of the Washington Post reported. (That offer was a non-starter.)
and will have serious effects on Christie’s development in China.”
Le-Min Lim and Stephanie Wong of Bloomberg have more details on what this could mean for the auction house:
London-based Christie’s must give details of the ownership
and provenance of any artifacts it wants to bring into or out of
China, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage [SACH] said
today in a statement on its website. [The “English” button on that website didn’t work for me.] Antiques that are without
papers won’t be allowed to enter or leave….China’s move today implies added paperwork on antiques
handled by Christie’s, and may make it tougher for mainland
Chinese to bring home artifacts they buy from the company’s
auctions.
Christie’s has a 23-year-old office
in Hong Kong and holds auctions there in May and November. Some 12
sales are scheduled at the end of this May. When I asked Christie’s if these are now in jeopardy, I received this reply from Toby Usnik, the auction house’s chief spokesperson:
Christie’s abides by all international and
local laws affecting us in our sale jurisdictions. Christie’s has a public
history of cooperating with customs and government officials in the few cases
where there were questions with legal ownership or cultural patrimony.In this
instance the legal ownership of the fountainheads was clearly confirmed, and we
have directly and honestly engaged with SACH in discussing the YSL [Yves Saint Laurent] sale over the
past months. We explained our obligation to offer the heads under a binding
contract with the vendor covering the entire YSL collection.We continue to
believe that sale by public auction offers the best opportunity for items to be
repatriated as a result of worldwide exposure. Christie’s remains committed to
China and is sincere in our respect for the government’s concerns. We stand ready to discuss the situation
with SACH.
As if things weren’t bad enough, Christie’s may also have to mess with martial-arts star Jackie Chan (who plans to make a film about repatriation of Chinese antiquities).
Great Britain’s Times quotes Chan saying this from Hong Kong about the Christie’s-auctioned objects:
They
remain looted items, no matter whom they were sold to. Whoever took it out
[of China] is himself a thief. It was
looting yesterday. It is still looting today.
At least Christie’s can console itself with the stellar results of the three-day series of auctions that, if not the Sale of the (still young) Century, was a major art-market watershed. The Saint Laurent/Bergé dispersal fetched a staggering $483.84 million and was 95.5% sold by lot, and 93% sold by value.
No one’s put up those kinds of numbers for a major sale since the global financial crisis began.