February 20 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Shades of Gray: Eighteenth-Century Chinese “Ink-Color” and Grisaille Porcelains in Cross-Cultural Context
Thursday February 20, 2025
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Online via Zoom
The Ann Walker Bell Lecture
Speaker: Dr. Kristina Kleutghen, David W. Mesker Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis
In the early 18th-century, Chinese porcelains decorated with painterly images in black and sepia overglaze enamels began to appear among Qing court works. As the products of recent technological advancements in enameling, new stylistic interests in European goods, and new ways to render traditional Chinese ink painting on porcelain, these works inherently combined cross-cultural elements into their forms and decorations. Today such porcelains are best known as export wares intended for European and North American markets, but a closer look at their origins and varieties reveal a story set as much at home as abroad.
This virtual focuses on the Gardiner’s pair of grisaille and gilt plates decorated with European floral patterns and a Chinese-style bird-and-flower painting that communicates a traditional auspicious message, demonstrating how such porcelains combine European and Chinese features into unique 18th-century decorative arts.
About the Speaker
Dr. Kristina Kleutghen
Dr. Kristina Kleutghen is Director of Undergraduate Studies, Art History and Archaeology and David W. Mesker Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is a specialist in Chinese Art, particularly of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). Her research investigates cross-cultural interaction, the imperial court, optical devices, and connections to science and mathematics. Her first book, Imperial Illusions: Crossing Pictorial Boundaries in the Qing Palaces, was published in 2015 by University of Washington Press. Her second book, The Local Exotic: Fabricating Foreign Taste in High Qing Court Decorative Arts, is under advance contract with University of Washington press and currently under peer review. A third book project, Lens onto the World: Optical Devices, Art, Science, and Society in China, is also under advance contract and in progress.