The glittering fruits of diplomacy
It is a visual pun that would have been inconceivable a couple of decades ago: on Tuesday night the stately grounds of London's Burlington House, home of the Royal Academy of Arts, will be bathed in red floodlights to commemorate the opening of its latest blockbuster exhibition, on the artistic treasures of China's Qing Dynasty. It is not alone: nearby Somerset House and the London Eye are also turning shades of scarlet for the evening.
"Turning some of the capital's iconic buildings red is a fantastic way to mark the opening of the [Royal Academy] exhibition," enthused Ken Livingstone, London's mayor, in a statement that might have had him charged with treason at the height of the cold war.
But China today is transformed, keen to open itself to the west and celebrate its benign relations with Britain in a playful son et lumière show that heralds a new era of cultural co-operation between the two countries. The exhibition China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795 will be officially opened on Wednesday by Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, who will be welcomed by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. The Royal Academy had originally scheduled the show for January, but urgently moved it forward to take advantage of the coincidence of the president's visit.
Norman Rosenthal, exhibitions secretary at the RA, said the academy had been keen to exploit a political situation - China wanting to forge links with the west - to help put on the show. The RA's previous two blockbuster shows, on the Aztecs and the Turks, were heavily supported, by the Mexican and Turkish governments respectively, to the extent that the exhibition catalogue for Turks featured prefaces by the British and Turkish prime ministers. "It is natural that governments should want to make an impression in London, it is still one of the great cities," Rosenthal said at yesterday's briefing.
But he added that the link between politics and culture was nothing new. "The last big Chinese show we had here, in 1973, was much more of a political gesture, with China emerging from the Cultural Revolution and wanting to play ping-pong politics. This time, there is the lead-up to the Olympic Games [in Beijing in 2008], and our job is to use that political background to bring all these beautiful things here."
Rosenthal said Chinese enthusiasm for the exhibition had not been mirrored by the British government. "I cannot say that it has really used [the exhibition] in a way that might have been to its advantage, if it had thought a little bit more about it. But on the other hand, there is no political pressure on us and that is a good thing." The show is being sponsored by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, "which has its own agenda in China", said Rosenthal. The company has been active in China for more than a decade.
Diplomatic and commercial considerations aside, there can be little doubting the quality of the exhibition, which features 400 works, mostly loaned from the Palace Museum in Beijing. Many of these are rarely seen in the Chinese capital itself, let alone the west: only two rooms in the Beijing museum have the necessary temperature and humidity for displaying such fragile artefacts.
The works date from the reigns of the three most powerful emperors of China's last dynasty: the Kangxi Emperor (1662-1722), the Yongzheng Emperor (1723-35) and the Qianlong Emperor (1736-95). Highlights include painted scrolls recording the hunting expeditions and birthday celebrations of the emperors; religious artefacts, including a two-metre-high pagoda, fine armour, decorative arts and the more intimate, monochrome paintings of the "literati" tradition that dominated outside the royal court.
Fittingly, an entire gallery is devoted to China's previous interactions with the west. Clocks made in Britain were particularly fascinating to the emperors, who admired western technical expertise, and paintings by Jesuit missionaries such as Giuseppe Castiglione were also prized and imitated. A series of portraits of the Yongzheng Emperor in assorted costumes includes one of him fighting a tiger while dressed in flamboyant European wig and costume.
Another striking series of paintings, of 12 mysterious "Beauties at Leisure", painted for Prince Yinzhen, the future Yongzheng emperor, has never been displayed as a set before, even in China. "We don't know who they are, nor what they are for," said Dame Jessica Rawson, warden of Merton College, Oxford, and the exhibition's chief curator.
She said the Palace Museum had been "extremely generous" in lending important works. "We were nothing less than ambitious - but we got almost everything we asked for, and those works we didn't get were for reasons of conservation." She said a London audience would never be able to see such a collection of works housed under the same roof again, adding that the exhibition had required a lot of negotiation. "We [the team of curators] have worked on China for all our careers, and if we hadn't we wouldn't have understood how to go about bringing these works here. It is an expression of trust between two groups of people. We persuaded [the Palace Museum] that this was a fantastic opportunity, and they trusted us. This is a story of two very far-apart institutions, which have gradually got to know each other over a period of many years."
Alfreda Murck, another of the show's curators, said some of the strict rules in China over the lending of works had been "bent but not broken - it is the bamboo principle". She said the show would mean a lot to the Chinese. "The contemporary art scene is charging towards the west, but this [exhibition] is their mental image of themselves: the China that is admired for its education, its language, its scholarship."
'China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795', Royal Academy of Arts, London W1, November 12 - April 17. Tel 0870 906 3860. Sponsored by Goldman Sachs 盛世华章”红伦敦
周二晚上，英国皇家美术学院 (RAA) 所在地――庄严的伦敦伯林顿馆 (Burlington House) 的地面，沐浴在红色的泛光灯中，以此庆祝其最新的盛大展览开幕，展出内容是中国清代的艺术珍品。不仅这座建筑，邻近的萨默塞特中心 Somerset House) 和伦敦眼 (London Eye) ，也在夜色中变成了鲜红色。这种具有双重意味的场景，在几十年前是无法想象的。
“将首都的部分标志性建筑变成红色，是庆祝 ( 皇家美术学院 ) 展览开幕的绝妙方式，”伦敦市长肯?利文斯通 (Ken Livingstone) 在一篇讲话中热情洋溢地说。如果他在冷战高峰时期说这番话，可能会被控叛国罪。
但今日的中国变了，中国渴望对西方开放，用一场精彩的声光表演，庆祝它与英国的良好关系，并预示两国文化合作新时代的到来。周三，中国国家主席胡锦涛受到了英国女王与爱丁堡公爵的欢迎，并为“盛世华章” (China: The Three Emperors, 1662-1795) 展览正式揭幕。皇家美术学院原本计划明年 1 月举办这次展览，但为了抓住中国主席访问的时机，紧急提前了展览。
巧借政治东风
皇家美术学院负责展览的秘书诺曼?罗森塔尔 (Norman Rosenthal) 表示，由于中国想巩固与西方的关系，所以学院一直渴望借政治形势东风为展览造势。皇家美术学院之前有关阿兹特克与土耳其的两次展览大为轰动，它们分别得到了墨西哥与土耳其政府的大力支持，英国和土耳其两国的首相，甚至还为土耳其展的展览目录题写了序言。“各国政府自然希望给伦敦留下深刻印象，伦敦仍然是一个伟大的城市，”罗森塔尔在昨天的吹风会上表示。
但他补充说，政治与文化的联系并不新鲜。“我们上次举办的大型中国展是在 1973 年，那在很大程度上是个政治姿态，当时中国正处在文化大革命中，希望展开乒乓外交。这一次，后面还有北京 2008 年奥运会，我们的任务是利用这一政治背景，将所有美好的事物在这里呈现出来。”
罗森塔尔表示，中国对展览的热情，此前没有得到英国政府的响应。“我不能说英国政府真正利用了 ( 展览 ) ，如果它考虑得长远一点的话，其实展览本可以对它有利。但另一方面，没有政治压力对我们是件好事。”这次展览得到了投资银行高盛 (Goldman Sachs) 的赞助，“高盛在中国有自己的日程表”，罗森塔尔说。该公司已在中国活跃了十多年。
珍品奏“盛世华章”
尽管此次展览有外交与商业上的考虑，但它的展出质量是勿庸置疑的。此次展览共有 400 件展品，多数是从北京故宫博物院借来的。许多展品在北京都难得一见，更不要说西方了：故宫博物院只有两个展厅具备必需的温度与湿度，来展示如此娇贵的艺术品。
这些展品来自中国最后一个朝代三位最强大帝王的统治时期：康熙皇帝 (1662-1722) 、雍正皇帝 (1723-1735) 和乾隆皇帝 (1736-1795) 。抢眼的展品包括：记录皇帝狩猎出游与生日大典的画卷，宗教艺术品，包括一座两米高的宝塔、精美的盔甲、装饰艺术品，以及更加含蓄的、具有“文人”传统的水墨画（文人画），这种画主要出现在宫廷之外。
为配合展览，还有一整套美术作品展示中国过去与西方的交流。英国制造的时钟特别吸引这些皇帝，他们都钦佩西方的专业技术知识。此外，郎世宁 (Giuseppe Castiglione) 等耶稣会传教士的绘画作品，也曾受到称赞并被模仿。在雍正皇帝穿着各色服饰的一组肖像画中，有一幅是他穿戴着夸张的欧式假发与服饰打虎。
还有另一组引人注目的绘画作品，即为四阿哥胤
