Silk Road: Trade and Cultural Exchange

• Technology's development enables instant cultural contact, yet international communication has always been vital for national development.
• Few cultures have been completely isolated due to trade, war, exploration, colonialism, and imperialism.
• Cross-cultural exposure and artistic influence are constants throughout history.

Trading Materials and Techniques

• Societies have long produced materials and objects that other cultures collect, replicate, and modify.
• Ceramics (especially porcelain), glassware, leather, and metalwork have significantly impacted various cultures.
• The Silk Road facilitated the exchange of materials, techniques, and technology between civilizations.
• The Silk Road linked trade routes connecting the Middle East, the Mediterranean, China, Central Asia, and parts of northern India.
• The Roman Empire and Han China's rise provided the stability needed for the Silk Road to develop.
• Travel along the Silk Road was dangerous, involving high mountains, grasslands, and deserts.
• Merchants often traveled only partway to exchange luxury goods.
• Silk was a key luxury good and a form of currency on the Silk Road.
• Caravans heading east carried gold, precious stones, metals, ivory, coral, spices, tea, paper, and china.
• Westbound caravans traded furs, ceramics, incense, cinnamon, rhubarb, and bronze weapons.
• Traders were exposed to diverse cultures, lifestyles, religions, social structures, and political relationships.
• Buddhism spread from India to China via the Silk Road, like Islam in West Africa via trans-Saharan routes.
• The traveling coffer is a Chinese luxury item from the Southern Song or Yuan Dynasty, reflects Asian and Islamic aesthetics is 17 inches long
• Thick black was spread and gold leaf or colored lacquer applied to designs engraved on the surface.
• The techniques—qiangjin (“engraved gold”) and qiangcai (“engraved color”)—developed in China under the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279).
• Designs on the coffer are similar to those in Islamic book decoration, art, and architecture.
• Porcelain originated in China as early as the Shang Dynasty (1600-1046 BCE).
• Porcelain development involved heating kaolin in a kiln over thousands of years, with transformations across dynasties.
• Underglaze cobalt blue decoration became popular during the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1367) and was widely exported.
• Père D’Entrecolles described Jingdezhen (the city where porcelain was manufactured) in 1812 as appearing to be on fire due to the kiln flames and smoke.
• Iznik in Turkey created remarkable porcelain-like ceramics, emulating Chinese porcelain.
• By the 14th century, the Islamic world admired and collected Chinese pottery.
• Ottoman artisans in the late 15th century began producing blue-and-white fritware to mimic Chinese porcelain.
• Fritware was made by adding silica and glass to clay, covering it with liquid clay (slip), and painting with cobalt blue.
• The fritware was covered with a colorless, shiny glaze.

Artistic Influence

• Artistic influence moved in both directions between cultures.
• Chinese porcelain from the mid-14th century features Islamic designs.
• The Yuan Dynasty plate includes a sea perch swimming through aquatic plants.
• Concentric bands of disparate patterns, a variation of Arabic text and line decoration on Islamic metalware decorates surface.
• Cobalt compounds, used in Egyptian sculpture and Persian jewelry as early as 3000 BCE, added regional influence.
• Islamic artisans developed inlaid metalwork, woodwork, textiles, and beautiful glass.
• Glass was commercially produced in Mamluk-controlled areas (Syria and Egypt) during the 13th and 14th centuries.
• Luxury glass items were collected in Southeast Asia, northern China, Europe, and the Islamic world.
• Damascus was a major glass manufacturing center, decorated with animals, birds, flowers, and foliage.
• Enameled and gilded glass was the most treasured type of Islamic glass.
• The process involved applying gold and enamels to a glass surface and fixing them in a kiln.
• Mamluk glassmakers likely developed a process to apply and fix all colors in a single firing.
• Glass production declined in the late 14th century due to events such as the destruction of Damascus in 1400 and the fall of Constantinople in 1453.
• The center of enameled glass production shifted to Venetian workshops by the late 15th century.
• Venetian artisans mastered and modified glassblowing.
• Venetian blown glass was decorated with Islamic motifs and patterns,.
• Venice was the main European trading partner of the Mamluks.
• Mamluks profited from their position as intermediaries between South and Southeast Asia and Europe.
• In the late 14th century, Damascene and Cairo artisans created metalwork with inlaid silver and gold for European export.
• Venice played a key role in the Mediterranean trade of Islamic metalwork.
• Wealthy Venetians acquired Islamic metal objects, and local craftsmen copied Islamic techniques.
• The Ottoman Empire had commercial and diplomatic relations with Venice during the 15th century.
• The trade relationship significantly impacted decorative arts in Venice, incorporating Ottoman techniques and motifs in furniture, textiles, metalwork, and pottery.
• Sultan Mehmet II captured Constantinople in 1453 and sought to commemorate his achievements with art.
• Mehmet II brought Italian painters, sculptors, and bronze casters to his court.
• The Venetian painter Costanzo da Ferrara created a medal with Mehmet II's portrait.
• Gentile Bellini, the official Venetian court painter, went on a diplomatic mission to Constantinople, where he painted Mehmet II's portrait in 1480 (repainted in the 19th century).
• Mehmet II, identified as Victor Orbis, is depicted in a Western style, highlighting his origins.
• He is surrounded by a golden arch, wears a red caftan and turban, and a jeweled carpet is draped on a ledge.
• Bellini spent about a year and a half in Constantinople, creating other works, including a gouache depicting a seated scribe.

Commerce and Colonization

• Portugal was the first European country to send ships into the Atlantic Ocean.
• Explorers reached Ceuta in Morocco in the early 15th century.
• Bartholomew Dias reached Africa’s Cape of Good Hope in 1488.
• Vasco da Gama opened direct communication between Europe and East Africa and India by the end of the 15th century.
• By the 16th century, Portugal established forts and settlements on the coasts of the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans.
• Portugal’s empire was based on trade rather than territory.
• Maps, books, manuscripts, paintings, and prints promoted an understanding of world geography and cultures in 15th-century Europe.
• Lisbon provided shelter for sailors and merchants unlike other harbors.
• Portugal remained relatively isolated from the Black Plague.
• Exposure to Islamic expertise in mathematics and maritime technology helped Portugal develop its fleet.
• The high cost of bread and a hungry population drove Portugal to expand.
• Portuguese mariners established sugar plantations and accessed spices, fabrics, gold, and ivory in West Africa.
• Merchants imported luxury items carved in ivory, specifically made for the Portuguese trade.
• A 16th-century saltcellar carved in Benin, Nigeria, features Portuguese figures.
• Salt and spices were highly sought-after commodities.
• The saltcellar features Portuguese figures in tall hats, britches, doublets, and crosses.
• The Bini-Portuguese style reflects a shared African and Portuguese aesthetic.
• Ivory workshops were well-established in Benin and Sierra Leone before the Portuguese arrival.
• The hybrid aesthetic combined European tableaux with African static human forms.
• After colonizing parts of Africa, the Portuguese reached India, China, and Japan.
• Portuguese Jesuits arrived in Japan in 1549.
• Francis Xavier secured patronage from the daimyo of the Otomo clan, establishing a mission at Nagasaki.
• By 1582, there were an estimated 150,000 Christian converts.
• Kyushu became the primary Jesuit center for trade.
• Toyotomi Hideyoshi took over Kyushu and was displeased with Jesuit intervention in local politics.
• In 1587, Hideyoshi ordered Christian priests to leave Japan but welcomed traders to remain.
• The Portuguese profited from China’s ban on Japanese ships due to piracy allegations.
• China allowed Portugal to establish a settlement at Macao in 1557.
• Beginning in 1571, the "Great Ship" sailed yearly from Goa to Macao to Nagasaki, trading silk, gold, rhubarb, sugar and silver
• The interchange between Portuguese Jesuits/merchants and the Japanese was recorded on gold-leafed byobu (folding screens).
• The screens, commissioned by Japanese warlords and merchants, depict the Portuguese which were called namban ("southern barbarians").
• The screens portray the arrival of Spanish-style galleon ships at Nagasaki with missionaries, merchants, and sailors.
• Japanese are depicted observing the foreigners, who wore pantaloons, pointed shoes, and tall hats.
• Cultures converged when economic interests (trade) were linked to the expansion of religion.
• Great Britain gained control of India through the East India Company.
• Sir Thomas Roe secured exclusive rights to live and build factories in Surat and other areas around 1601.
• The East India Company had a monopoly on trade in cotton, silk, indigo, saltpeter, and tea.
• By the 18th century, British influence in India exceeded any other power.
• The British victory at the Battle of Plassey in 1757 led to greater control of the region.
• Wealth from the Bengal treasury allowed the Company to strengthen its military and establish colonial rule.
• British soldiers decided to remain in India during colonial rule.
• Members of the East India Company commissioned paintings by Indian artists, known as "Company paintings."
• Company paintings were painted on English paper, for display in the humid climate.
• Indian artists favored watercolor over jewel-like gouache painting, influenced by imported European prints.
• A watercolor by Dip Chand depicts William Fullerton of Rosemount, a surgeon in Calcutta in 1751.
• Fullerton smoking a hookah is waited on by three male Indian attendants.
• The artist depicted colonial power dynamics, exposing a British audience to indigenous cultural activities, products, and décor.
• Indian women bore children fathered by members of the East India Company, who were excluded from both Indian and British society.
• In Latin America, Spanish colonizers had children with the native population and African slaves.
• This variety was documented in casta paintings in 18th-century Mexico.
• Casta paintings demonstrated the racial hierarchies and were sent to Spain as souvenirs.
• Socioeconomic status was determined at birth, with each caste having different privileges and obligations, even though mixed marriages were permitted.
• The paintings promoted the illusion that Mexican society was ordered and hierarchical, defined by race.
• Emphasizing racial differences was a strategy used by Spanish authorities to control the population.
• Casta paintings were assembled in sets with vignettes depicting couples of different races and their offspring.
• Names for the main groups were mestizo (Spanish-Indian), mulatto (Spanish-Black), and zambo (Black-Indian).
• The paintings conveyed that it was most desirable to be of purely Spanish descent.
• Miguel Cabrera was among the artists who produced these works.

Hybrid Images

• Hybrid images incorporates images from colonial and indigenous cultures.
• Conversion to Christianity was a motive of the Spanish conquest.
• Cortés replaced images of native gods with crosses and images of the Virgin Mary.
• Images were vital to transforming spiritual beliefs and organizing a new society with Roman Catholic conversion.
• Religious themed art between the 16th and 19th centuries in Mexico and Latin America legitimized conquest and colonization.
• One strategy for converting the native population was to have them build churches and create Christian-themed art.
• Spanish clergy such as Juan de Zumárraga praised indigenous children for their cleverness, “especially in the art of painting.”
• Fray Toribio de Motolinia described how Indian artists completed frescoes for the Capilla de Belen in Tlaxcala in four days.
• Fray Pedro de Gante set up an artisan center for Indians, introducing them to masonry, carpentry, ironwork, sculpture, and painting.
• A commercial market for artwork developed in the New World and Europe.
• Spain consolidated its political influence and economic rewards by combining spirituality and commerce.
• Spanish colonizers gained access to Aztec riches through the Roman Catholic Church.
• Catholic images and products were imported and appropriated by the native population for export to Europe.
• Although Spanish tried to obliterate the influence of indigenous spiritual beliefs, certain elements survived persecution.
• Catholic religious festivals, such as Corpus Christi, were “Andeanized” by incorporating Inka costumes, constructing a new identity based on the colonial relationship.
• Indigenous artists incorporated pre-Columbian iconography within artworks dedicated to their newly adopted religion.
• A 16th-century wall painting in Cuauhtinchan, Mexico, frames an Annunciation scene with an eagle and a jaguar from Aztec mythology.
• An indigenous embroidered work from Guatemala depicts Spanish royalty, the monogram of Our Lady, and a marker for the Order of Carmelite nuns, along with figures in headdresses and the quetzal bird native to Central America.
• Religious works integrated symbolic images from Andean cosmology with those from the Catholic Church.
• Our Lady of Cocharcas Under the Baldachin (1765) depicts a procession in the Peruvian Andes with a statue of the Virgin and Jesus.
• The baldachin refers to the Spanish practice of placing brocaded fabric over an altar, as well as the Inka practice of using parasols to shield nobility.
• The Virgin’s cloak is decorated in the Inkan tradition of wrapping sacred figures in woven cloth.
• The Virgin’s pyramidal shape alludes to the Andean concept of Pachamama and her sacred mountain manifestation.
• Christianity was brought to Ethiopia during the fourth century.
• Emperor Ezana's interest in solidifying a trading relationship with Rome prompted his conversion to Christianity.
• The emperor was the first world leader to decorate coins with an image of the cross.
• The production of religious art begun during Ezana’s reign continued for centuries.
• Surviving examples were produced during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Gondar.
• Artists created manuscripts and icons that depicted Christian imagery with an Ethiopian aesthetic—simple forms, vibrant colors, and bold outlines.
• An icon is a diptych depicting Mary and the Christ child, and the Covenant of Mercy.
• Some diptychs were small enough to be worn as pendants by the nobility.
• Imagery appropriated from one culture by another has included secular as well as religious subject matter.
• European artists developed a fascination with Japanese decoration and art during the mid-19th century.
• Trade with Japan was nearly impossible prior to that point because of the seclusionist policies of the bakufu.
• In 1854, Commodore Matthew C. Perry signed the Treaty of Kanagawa to open Japanese ports to foreign vessels.
• By the 1860s, most restrictions had been lifted, opening trade for Western countries.
• Different art forms from Japan began flooding into Western countries.
• Ukiyo-e prints by Japanese masters influenced European artists living in Europe, as well as the American expatriate Mary Cassatt.
• Cassatt began experimenting with print techniques to emulate the flat planes and simple lines of Japanese woodcuts.
• In 1890-91, Cassatt created a print series that focused on the lives of women.
• James McNeill Whistler was enamored with the art and culture of Japan, introducing it to London society.
• Whistler integrated Japanese objects into his earlier works, and later only used Japanese shapes and designs.
• What most intrigued Whistler about Japanese art was its foreignness.
• He had a dismissive attitude toward the Japanese artists that influenced him.
• Mortimer Menpes tried to explain that the Japanese artist Kyosai was a great master of painting, but Whistler dismissed him.
• This Eurocentric attitude of cultural authority characterized contemporary British imperialists.
• Modernism was deeply influenced by cultures outside of Europe.
• One of the first artists to integrate Western techniques into Japanese art is Kuroda Seiki.
• Kuroda Seiki was born into a wealthy family and educated in both French and English.
• Seiki went to Paris to prepare for a career in law but began a career as a painter studying pleir air and Impressionist painting.
• His financial background and fluency in French brought him success.
• Upon his return to Japan in 1893, Seiki opened a painting school based on the model of a private French art academy.
• He also served as a cultural ambassador for Japan at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition.
• For the Exposition, Seiki presented two paintings, including the triptych Wisdom, Impression, Sentiment (1897-1900).
• Seiki adopted a Western palette and style of painting, as well as an idealized vision of how the female body should be portrayed.
• The gold background recalls the gilded folding screens popular in Japan during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Globalization of Culture

• Advances in communication technology have made it possible for different cultures and communities to exchange information and ideas.
• The United States has had a pervasive influence on global culture, perceived as a threat to regional and local traditions.
• Miguel Luciano addresses this issue in his works.
• Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Luciano explores the complicated relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico.
• Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the United States after the Spanish-American War in 1898.
• Puerto Rico was declared a commonwealth in 1952, subject to U.S. jurisdiction and sovereignty with its own government.
• Puerto Ricans may enlist in the U.S. military but may not vote in U.S. elections or host embassies.
• Luciano’s work is satirical, using elements from popular culture to question the colonial relationship between Puerto Rico and the United States.
• He examines how colonial subordination is extended through globalization, using visual references from popular, religious, commercial, and consumer iconography.
• In Pelea de Gallos (2002), Luciano appropriates images from advertising, such as Cornelius from Kellogg’s Corn Flakes and Picu from Pollos Picu.
• The roosters are caught up in a macho fight to the death, a commentary of violence and the rooster being a major source of revenue, generating nearly $42 million in 2004.
• Colonel Sanders is transformed into “San Colonel Sanders,” feeding fried poultry to the chickens, a parody of factory farming.
• Luciano creates Pop Art with a colonial twist.
• Takashi Murakami touches on issues of an ever-changing global community.
• Murakami witnessed Japan grappling with rebuilding its society after World War II.
• The Japanese embraced American popular culture, especially cartoons.
• Otaku developed an obsession with anime, manga, video games, and collectible figurines.
• Murakami asserts that otaku culture reflects Japan’s postwar impotence.
• Otaku imagery translates the painful truths about Japan’s World War II experience into cartoon fantasy.
• Murakami's sculpture Miss ko2 simultaneously celebrates and criticizes otaku culture.
• Miss ko2 is a six-foot-tall fiberglass figure based on a video game character.
• The character wore a waitress uniform from the Anna Miller’s restaurant chain.
• Her pose and erotic features echo those common to otaku figurines.
• A Chicago-based collector bought Miss ko2 for over $500,000 at a Christie’s auction.
• Murakami’s work has resonated with a very wide audience, making him an international superstar through a hybrid style caused by cultural confluence.
• Visual art has been created through a wide range of innovative forms and repurposed signs and symbols brought into new cultural contexts.
• We frequently assume we are the primary site of cultural convergence.
• The historical prevalence of trade, exploration, war, and colonialism caused a clash and synthesis of cultures.
• In the 21st century, technological improvements have brought a new level of cultural accessibility and interaction.
• It would be very difficult to produce a cultural object without influence from a culture outside of what one would consider one’s own.
• Cultural convergence remains a product of economic, political, and technological forces.
• Art objects produced by such convergences are ever-shifting reactions, collaborations, and interchanges.