The Other Laocoön: How Artworks Become Canonical or Fail to Do So?

The classical Laocoön and His Son (ca. 50 CE), rediscovered in 1506 in Rome, is arguably the most illustrious artwork anchoring the entire canon of art history. Less is known about the eighth-century Chinese Laocoön that predates the Italian rediscovery of the classical prototype by seven centuries. The tale of the two Laocoöns is a story of canon formation: the Italian work becomes one of the best-known artworks in the world; the Chinese one is hardly known. Why should that be the case? How do artworks become canonical? How does art acquire its canon? Does canon necessarily mean a collection of exemplary artworks? Or is canonization largely a process of ranking artists and corralling object-centered narratives? Is the Western concept of canon universally applicable or are there other ways of canonization that lead to a canon without particular objects? For these questions, the long history of Chinese art provides answers.