How China rubs off on America

NEW YORK’S METROPOLITAN Museum of Art will be celebrating centuries of China’s influence on the West in its new exhibit, which focuses on how Western fashion designers were inspired by and incorporated elements of its art into fashion pieces.
“China: Through the Looking Glass” opens on May 4 in the Met’s Chinese galleries and the Anna Wintour Costume Centre. It runs through August 16.
“With the world’s largest population and one of the oldest cultures, China is a leading force in economics and politics, so there is the need to engage with China, understand its culture,” says Maxwell Hearn, head of the Met’s Department of Asian Art.
“This exhibition underscores the key role that an encyclopaedic museum like the Met can play in exploring the many ways in which Chinese culture has for centuries influenced and inspired the West.”
Filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, best known for his stylish “In the Mood for Love”, is the exhibition’s artistic director.
“When we look at a mirror, we see ourselves,” Wong says. “But when this mirror turns into a window, we will see a world around us. We hope this exhibition will serve as a window for the Met’s audience to have a better view of the historical and contemporary Chinese culture and aesthetics. Instead of reinforcing the difference, I hope this show will be an event to bring us and our two cultures together.”
The show will have more than 130 examples of haute couture and ready-to-wear clothing juxtaposed with art. Clips from such films as “Farewell My Concubine”, “In the Mood for Love” and “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” will also be incorporated to illustrate how China is portrayed through popular culture.
“In Lewis Carroll’s ‘Through the Looking Glass’, Alice enters an imaginary, alternative world by climbing through a mirror,” notes Andrew Bolton, curator of the Costume Institute. “In this world, everything is topsy-turvy, and back-to-front. Real life roles are reversed.
“Like Alice’s make-believe world, this exhibition presents an image of China that is a fabulous invention, a fictional universe that embraces an alternate reality with a dreamlike object. This fictional universe reveals itself through a series of carefully curated juxtapositions of Western fashion and Chinese costumes and decorative arts.”
Bolton says there will be two series. “From Emperor to Citizen” will focus on the Qing dynasty, the Republic of China and New China, with clothing worn in those periods such as the changshan, qipao and zhongshan.
“For designers, the appeal of these garments lies in their cultural and historical specificity. They serve as a kind of sartorial shorthand for China and the shifting social and political identities of its people,” Bolton says. “These three types of garments in turn tell a story of the gradual introduction of Western technique with Chinese dressmaking traditions.”
The second segment, “Empire of Signs”, will address signifiers that Westerners associate with China, such as jade, lacquer and porcelain.