Yuanming Yuan/Versailles: Intercultural interactions between Chinese and European palace cultures

Abstract

This article examines intercultural interactions between Europe and China in the eighteenth century. It focuses on China's greatest imperial palace, Yuanming Yuan, detailing its pivotal importance in contact with Europe. The first section compares Yuanming Yuan with Versailles in order to demonstrate that beneath their mutually exotic appearances lay similarities in how systems of art, architecture and gardens were deployed to reinforce structurally similar court societies. The second section argues that it was this systemic compatibility that made it possible for French and British cultural agents to make sense of Chinese arts through the playful distortions of chinoiserie. Mirroring Europe, the Chinese court simultaneously appropriated European arts in a symmetrical phenomenon of 'Européenerie'. This case study shows that unlike many later Orientalist relationships, the unique compatibility between China and Europe in the eighteenth century made it possible for each society to make the other culturally meaningful. © Association of Art Historians 2009.