In 1780, architect Jean-Baptiste Pillement was commissioned by Marie Antoinette to design a Chinese tent for her gardens at Trianon...[more]
A glowing example of 18th-century German Chinoiserie, the Chinoise at Oggersheim was designed by architect Paul Egell in the 1750s...[more]
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Dreams of China
Chinoiseries
by Bernd H. Dams and Andrew Zega
Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., New York, NY; 2008
164 pages; hardcover; 50 color illustrations; $60
ISBN 978-0-8478-3046-2
Reviewed by Nicole V. Gagné
In 1962, the seminal American minimalist composer La Monte Young first sketched out the series of chords that would become the score he entitled The Four Dreams Of China. The piece was inspired by what Young later described as “a powerful image of the sound and timelessness of China,” which he’d received not from any Chinese artifacts or travels but from listening to the long sustained chords of his own earlier work, the Trio For Strings. This peculiar dynamic, in which the Western creative mind is compelled by its fantasies of China to reinvent Western aesthetic methodologies, is the essence of Chinoiserie, and it will continue to thrive as long as creative people can envision a domain and existence outside their own familiar realities.
Something so vital of course has deep roots, and a new and beautiful examination of Chinoiserie as a European design trend of the 16th and 17th centuries is now available from that gifted duo of architectural historians/artists, Bernd H. Dams and Andrew Zega. Published in a handsome hardcover edition by Rizzoli, Chinoiseries gathers together 42 of their watercolor paintings, which had previously been available only in a limited-edition collector’s volume, into a new volume that’s certain to stand alongside their notable previous works, such as Pleasure Pavilions & Follies and Palaces of the Sun King. With Chinoiseries, Dams and Zega have applied their expertise in European architecture and garden history to a unique facet of Western architecture too often overlooked: the fascination with design inspired by the mysterious Far East. Granted, most of the follies, tents, bridges, pagodas, pavilions, belvederes, shelters, etc., that fall under the rubric of Chinoiserie have about as much to do with authentic Chinese architecture as a package of frozen egg rolls has to do with authentic Chinese cuisine. But this lack of cultural authenticity is a minor cavil; the importance of this unusual mode of architectural expression lies in its unfettered imagination, transforming Western design conventions into something exotic, colorful and original.
Marco Polo’s 13th-century excursion to China awakened medieval Europeans to some of the wonders of this vast empire, and by the mid-16th century, Portugal had become the wealthiest nation in Europe thanks to its trade monopoly with China. Throughout this era, the European fascination with all things Chinese was, like La Monte Young’s composition, more an excursion into the dream realm than an exploration of a foreign country: “By the late-17th century, the simple scarcity of reliable information, induced by the Ming dynasty retaining a policy of self-willed isolation, [...] acted to untether China from reality. Europeans projected the winsome fantasy of Cathay into this void, inspired by tall tales of Eastern adventurers and their own imitation trinkets. [...] Quite simply, China in all spheres stood in diametrical opposition to the European consciousness of the baroque age, rendering it a virtual cipher.”
This quote is taken from Dams and Zega’s intelligent introduction to Chinoiseries, charmingly entitled “The Architecture of Joy.” The duo’s captivating talent as artists can tend to obscure an appreciation of their authority and eloquence as writers, especially with a book such as this one, which is dominated by its art. But Chinoiseries is in fact a well written volume, filled with thoughtful and revealing information.
As part of their study, Dams and Zega provide a useful look at the career of the English architect Sir William Chambers (1723-1796), who had actually traveled to China and studied its architecture in the 1740s. Chambers published his book The Design Of Chinese Buildings in England in 1757, and although “he mistook the Cantonese style as representative of Chinese architecture as a whole, Chambers’ observations and drawings were executed from an architect’s viewpoint, and he was the first to provide accurate, if not always genuine, details of architectural elements [...] Though the book’s impact was minor in England, where Chinoiserie was already in irrevocable decline, Chambers’ vision fell on particularly fertile ground in France.” This and other works by Chambers would eventually spell the end of European Chinoiserie, thanks to their emphasis on facts instead of imagination. But just as a light bulb burns most brightly before it goes out, so too did Chinoiserie rise to a high style of execution in late-18th-century architecture and garden design, most spectacularly in France. Those last glistening decades of Chinoiserie were carefully documented by the 18th-century French cartographer George Le Rouge, another defining figure in the history of this style, who also receives a thoughtful account in Dams and Zega’s text.
Perhaps the greatest satisfaction of Chinoiseries is its awareness of the value of the dream. Only the most stolid of pedants could dismiss the designs depicted by Dams and Zega because of their Sinological inaccuracies. Those very lapses are the heart and soul of Chinoiserie, and they’re celebrated with unabashed enthusiasm by this team of authors and artists. Indeed, Dams and Zega go that extra mile and offer up loving watercolors not just of Chinoiserie-style structures that were razed long ago, but also projects that never saw the light of day and which have previously existed only as plans and descriptions. Scrupulous at re-creating authentic color schemes (and admirably forthright when acknowledging instances where they had to rely on their own imagination and historical knowledge), Dams and Zega have produced an indispensable if not definitive study of this magical moment in Western architectural design, when imagination meant just as much as cultural precedence. 
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