British Modernism and Chinoiserie

Explores Chinese artistic and stylistic influences on Modernist practice in early-twentieth century Britain.

This volume examines the ways in which an intellectual vogue for a mythic China was a constituent element of British Modernism. Traditionally defined as a decorative style that conjured a fanciful and idealised notion of China, chinoiserie was revived among London's avant-garde circles, the Bloomsbury group, the Vorticists and others, who like their eighteenth-century forebears, turned to China as a cultural and aesthetic utopia.

As part of Modernism's challenge to the 'universality' of so-called Western values and aesthetics, the turn to China would contribute much more than has been acknowledged to Modernist thinking. As these 10 new chapters demonstrate, China as an intellectual and aesthetic utopia dazzled intellectuals and aesthetes. At the same time the consumption of Chinese exoticism became commercialised. The essays show that from cutting-edge Modernist chic to mass culture and consumer products, the vogue for chinoiserie style and motifs permeated the art and design of the period.