Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie

Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie radically reimagines the story of European porcelain through a feminist lens. When porcelain arrived in early modern Europe from China, it led to the rise of chinoiserie, a decorative style that encompassed Europe’s fantasies of the East and fixations on the exotic, along with new ideas about women, sexuality, and race. This exhibition explores how this fragile material shaped both European women’s identities and racial and cultural stereotypes around Asian women. Shattering the illusion of chinoiserie as a neutral, harmless fantasy, Monstrous Beauty adopts a critical glance at the historical style and its afterlives, recasting negative terms through a lens of female empowerment.

Bringing together nearly 200 historical and contemporary works spanning from 16th-century Europe to contemporary installations by Asian and Asian American women artists, Monstrous Beauty illuminates chinoiserie through a conceptual framework that brings the past into active dialog with the present. In demand during the 1700s as the embodiment of Europe’s fantasy of the East, porcelain accumulated strong associations with female taste over its complex history. Fragile, delicate, and sharp when broken, it became a resonant metaphor for women, who became the protagonists of new narratives around cultural exchange, consumption, and desire.

The exhibition is made possible by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

Additional support is provided by Kohler Co., the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, Karen and Samuel Choi, The International Council of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Edward John & Patricia Rosenwald Foundation, and Mimi O. Kim.

The catalogue is made possible by the Diane W. and James E. Burke Fund.

Additional support is provided by Salle Yoo and Jeffrey Gray and the Doris Duke Fund for Publications.

Featured Content