Looted Artifacts

Improved Essays
Being said, I propose that neither an emphasis on its artistic merits nor its historic significance can be fully comprehended without a discussion of the looted objects that are still circulating in the global art scene and constantly triggering diplomatic tension and museological debates. The looted artifacts are physical proofs of Yuan Ming Yuan’s awe-inspiring achievement in the world’s art history, as well as the material manifestation of the power imbalance between China and the western world both in the past and the present. In this sense, the value of these looted artifacts is derived from its power to uncover the collision of political, economic, and cultural power between China and the western world in modern history. Under this value statement, a …show more content…
Peculiar enough, the western invaders demonstrated an ambivalent attitude towards evaluating the significance of Yuan Ming Yuan: on the one hand, on the other hand, the westerns attempted to portray Yuan Ming Yuan through a filter of Oriental discourse and colonialism. For example, the General de Montauban from France reported that “nothing in our Europe can give an idea of comparable luxury,” while simultaneously denounced the legitimacy of Yuan Ming Yuan: “What is sad amidst all these splendors of the past is the neglect and abdication of the current government and the two or three governments that preceded it.” The comparable height of artistic sophistication that two civilizations achieved is contrasted by an emphasis of the political incompetence of the Qing dynasty, and therefore gives rise to the superiority of European civilization over the Chinese one. This power imbalance soon manifested itself through the fate of Yuan Ming Yuan, as it ultimately led to a deliberate destruction of this architectural

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