A Dream of the Celestial Empire: Chinoiserie from Boucher to Yuxing Chen

Chinoiserie is one of the most paradoxical phenomena in art history. For centuries, Europe created an image of China that did not actually exist: pagodas, dragons, porcelain emperors, and girls in robes under willow trees. All of this was a beautiful fiction, a backdrop for aristocratic pleasures. And I have always been fascinated by this ability of artists to invent entire countries.

But the longer I looked at these pastoral scenes with Chinese umbrellas and Meissen teapots, the more I became interested in another question: what did the Chinese themselves think about this? How did they perceive this European obsession with the «Oriental»? And what happens when they themselves begin to use the very same techniques — but no longer to admire, but to criticize?

These questions became the starting point for me. My research is dedicated to the evolution of Chinoiserie from the 18th century to the present day, but not as a mere history of style, but as a dialogue. Europeans constructed a myth of «Chineseness»; the Chinese at first played along in export paintings, and then, especially in the 21st century, reclaimed this language and subverted it.

In selecting materials, I was guided by clear criteria. The research includes only those works that contain direct visual markers of Chinoiserie: pagodas, dragons, screens, «Sinicized» figures, porcelain with relevant scenes, willow and flower patterns, and more. I deliberately exclude general Orientalism (Middle Eastern or Japanese motifs), as well as traditional Chinese painting that has not entered into a dialogue with the European style. The genres I ultimately selected are: painting, graphics, furniture, architecture, porcelain, as well as photographs of installations and video art.

A unique feature of my approach is the parallel presentation of both sides: the European myth-makers and the Chinese artists who responded to this myth at different stages. For the 18th–19th centuries, these are masters of export art and the «counter-style» (occidenterie). For the 20th century, I chose Chinese artists who studied in Europe and synthesized traditions with modernism. For the 21st century, the focus is on authors working with installations and media, for whom Chinoiserie becomes a method of decolonial revision.

To understand what materials I needed for my research, I first traveled to see them in person. I visited the China Art Museum in Shanghai and then went to the 798 Art Zone in Beijing, whose website I also used to collect contemporary art materials. Additionally, I worked with the online collections of major museums (the Louvre, the Freer Gallery of Art), websites of contemporary galleries (Long March, Ullens Center), and catalogs of recent exhibitions. The theoretical framework is based on studies of Chinoiserie history, Edward Said’s works on Orientalism, and articles and interviews with contemporary artists.

The principle of categorization is based on a chronological method combined with a cross-analysis of European and Chinese visual lines. The research traces the path from the formation of the myth (18th century) through its modernist transformation (20th century) to a conscious postmodern revision (21st century). Each chapter is built on the principle of dialogue: from the Western impulse to the responsive gesture of Chinese culture, allowing us to see art history not as a one-sided influence, but as a complex process of mutual reflection.

18th-century «China» in Europe was a beautiful fairy tale that aristocrats told one another. One of the main storytellers was François Boucher, the first painter to King Louis XV. In 1742, he created a series of canvases for the Beauvais tapestry manufactory that shaped the visual language of the era.

In «The Chinese Garden,» we see an ideal, almost toy-like country, invented for the delight of the eye. The Chinese figures here are extras in whimsical costumes, resembling porcelain figurines come to life. The trees are too elegant, the pagodas unnaturally curved — it is all a mirage, behind which the real China is invisible, but the Rococo aesthetic is clearly seen. Even the porcelain vase in the foreground is not an everyday object, but a sign of «Chineseness» that a European was meant to recognize and appreciate immediately.In the pendant painting «The Chinese Emperor’s Court,» the story is less important than the decorative rhythm. The viewer’s gaze slides over bright spots — orange, blue, red — against a background of silvery-bluish foliage. This is no longer so much an image of China as it is a pattern ready to be transformed into a tapestry or a screen. The painting features plants not typical of China (for example, palm trees). This adds exoticism to the scene and creates a decorative effect.

The etching «Chinoiserie Ornament» is a perfect example of how Pillement uses a new visual vocabulary. There are no complex characters like Boucher’s, but there are unusual, intertwined lines and patterns that do not depict anything specific yet create a sense of «Oriental» complexity and ornamentality. There are also elements of rocaille, which create an effect of lightness and airiness.

Looking at Pillement’s «Chinoiserie Ornament» etching again, one might wonder: these fantastic birds, swirls, flowers… what do they have in common with the real China? The answer is simple: they are a pure product of European fantasy. Moreover, Pillement himself was not a pioneer. He drew on the tradition of French grotesques, reimagined by Antoine Watteau, merely adapting it to Eastern themes. Thus, a chain of borrowings was established: Watteau — Pillement — all of Europe.

The artist employs Western perspective and oil painting to create a document understandable to a European. This is a conscious step toward dialogue. However, a fundamental visual gap emerges: while Western architecture and ships gain volume and realism, the human figures remain small, flat, and almost «pasted» into the landscape. This is neither an accident nor an error. It is a manifestation of a deep cultural code. Unlike the Western tradition, where the individual is often the center of the composition and the primary actor, in classical Chinese landscape painting (shan shui), human figures—if present—are usually small and dissolved into the grandeur of nature. This creates a sense of human humility before the power of the universe and emphasizes the role of the person as an observer rather than a conqueror of space.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, European art influenced Chinese art, as seen in the example of the Suzhou scroll. This scroll combines Western linear perspective with traditional Chinese techniques, demonstrating the adaptation of European elements while preserving Chinese culture. The subject matter of the scroll is a realistic depiction of life in Suzhou, rather than Chinoiserie stereotypes. Chinese artists used European techniques to create harmonious compositions, maintaining their identity and producing a historical document of an 18th-century Chinese city.

By the beginning of the 20th century, European Chinoiserie, which had turned into a mass-produced pattern, gradually exhausted its relevance as a unified style. However, the interest in the «Oriental» did not disappear—it transformed. Instead of a holistic decorative system, separate, autonomous gestures emerged: aesthetic admiration, «Oriental-style» stylization, and the cynical appropriation of the language of mass culture. Meanwhile, Chinese artists, finding themselves in Europe, began to master Western techniques to find their own path in the modernization of national art.

Xu Beihong relied on realistic academicism, harmoniously integrating Western techniques into traditional Chinese Gongbi. His central subject is horses. In the painting «Six Galloping Horses» executed in ink on paper (referencing the classical Chinese school of painting), the artist conveys anatomy and movement with almost photographic precision—a skill that cannot be acquired without studying European drawing. The drawing shows complex and intersecting perspective points, which is also linked to the author’s Western European education. However, Xu’s protagonist is not «China for Europe» but China for itself—reforming and seeking its own path.

For Western Art Deco and Erté, China became a beautiful fairy tale — a set of fashionable clichés, gold, and glamour. At the same time, Chinese masters themselves used Western modernism as «fresh blood» to pull their tradition out of stagnation. The main point here is the struggle against inertia. While the West was turning the East into expensive packaging, Chinese artists took up European brushes to restore life and sincerity to art.

This was a moment of truth: the East ceased to be just a pretty picture in the eyes of a European and began to dictate the rules itself, rewriting the global code of art.

In the work «Bodhisattva from Tianlongshan Caves, Winged Victory of Samothrace», Xu Zhen performs a mirror gesture toward classical Chinoiserie: the key image here is the Winged Victory of Samothrace turned upside down — stripped of her triumphant flight, the pride of the Louvre is reduced to the function of a technical support, which finally shatters the old cultural hierarchy.

The rest of the photographs in the series extend this «archaeology of errors» to the entire landscape of the European garden.

The pagodas in scaffolding emphasize that Chinoiserie is an «eternally under construction» and editable myth. For Chen, restoration is not a return to truth, but merely a refurbishing of an old lie.

By painting over gazebos and bridges, the artist turns them into ghosts. She demonstrates how Orientalist clichés «clutter» real space, becoming blind spots that the viewer has grown accustomed to not noticing.

Concluding the research, it can be stated with confidence that over three centuries, the image of China has traveled the path from a decorative «screen» to a tool of rigorous intellectual reflection. We have seen how European Chinoiserie transformed from an innocent fantasy into an object of decolonial investigation.

It is interesting that contemporary authors, such as Wang Xingwei and Xu Zhen, have chosen the path of «reverse appropriation». They no longer try to fit into the Western canon; on the contrary, they use it as a construction set. This allows them to ironically juxtapose the Winged Victory of Samothrace with the Bodhisattva, exposing the absurdity of old stereotypes. In this context, Yuxing Chen’s work with the «white pagoda» at Kew becomes the logical finale of the entire story: to get rid of Orientalist layers, the artist chooses a radical «erasure» of the image itself.

Thus, the hypothesis put forward has been confirmed: Chinoiserie has indeed evolved from naive exoticism to conscious deconstruction. Contemporary Chinese artists today are not just creators but critics who, through irony and archival work, transform the old European fantasy into a space for a new, honest dialogue between cultures.