Chinoiserie in de architecturale verbeelding: continuïteit, transformatie en globale percepties, 1840-1940

This dissertation investigates the complex dynamics of the visual and architectural manifestations of Chinoiserie and their evolution from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth century and up to the mid-twentieth century, questioning both the continuities and transformations that underlie Western representations of Chinese architecture. At its heart lies the overarching question: what makes an image Chinoiserie, and more specifically, what makes the Western mass-produced Chinese architectural imagery from the 1840s to the 1940s Chinoiserie? While sharing a conceptual foundation shaped by European perceptions, desires, and projections, these later visual regimes reveal significant shifts in thematic focus, representational strategies, and ideological underpinnings, thus demanding a nuanced reassessment of the historical trajectories of Chinoiserie. To address this complex historiographical and theoretical terrain, this research develops and applies an original analytical framework—the HIG approach—which synthesises three critical dimensions: Historicity, Iconicity, and Globality. This approach enables a systematic examination of what Chinoiserie represented (Iconicity) and of how and why such imagery emerged, evolved, and spread (Historicity and Globality). The thesis posits that the dynamic interaction among these axes highlights the underlying logic that governs both the persistence and mutation of Chinoiserie imagery over time, revealing how architectural and visual representations functioned as powerful instruments for constructing the Western knowledge/stereotype of China. Through an interdisciplinary methodology combining historiographical analysis, iconological interpretation, and media studies, the thesis examines a series of case studies that, taken together, outline the contours of this evolving visual discourse. Part I establishes the historiographical foundations of Chinoiserie, tracing its architectural expressions and intellectual reception in the eighteenth century and identifying the epistemological tensions between fascination and misapprehension. Part II explores the transformation of Chinese architectural imagery into simulacral forms in the Western print media of the nineteenth-century, focusing on how buildings such as the Great Wall were reconfigured as hyperreal signifiers of Oriental otherness, thus participating in colonial visual regimes. Part III focuses on exhibition imagery, analysing the Ten Thousand Chinese Things exhibition (1838 in Philadelphia and 1842 in London) and the Chinese Pavilion at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia as places where Chinoiserie aesthetics, modern visual attention, and imperial ideologies intersected. These chapters demonstrate how exhibitions functioned as archives of colonial knowledge, simultaneously romanticising and othering China while embedding the Western gaze within new technological and perceptual regimes. Part IV investigates photographic imagery, examining the pastness in photographic projects such as Charles Frederick Moore's documentation of the Xiyang Lou ruins in Beijing and Herbert Clarence White's Peking the Beautiful (1927). These cases reveal how photography operated both as an aesthetic practice and as a medium for constructing heritage, rearticulating Chinese architecture from an exotic spectacle into a global object of cultural value. Overall, this dissertation argues that the visual and architectural representation of China from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century cannot be reduced to mere extensions of eighteenth-century Chinoiserie. Rather, it reflects a complex and changing discourse shaped by shifting global power dynamics, technological innovations, and evolving semiotic codes. In doing so, the thesis offers a significant reassessment of Chinoiserie architectural imagery, positioning it within broader debates on modernity, cross-cultural exchange, and the role of visual media in the construction of architectural knowledge and cultural hierarchies.