Written by: Xinhua News Agency
Posted on: August 16, 2018 | 
| 中文
Chinese ancient incense
Museum Cernuschi for Asian Fine Arts stands at a quiet corner of Park Monceau in Paris. The collection of Chinese art works here ranks only second to that at Museum Guimet, best known for its bronzes and Chinese modern and contemporary art paintings.
The exhibition on “Perfumes of China: The Culture of Incense in Imperial Times,” jointly curated by Museum Cernuschi and the Shanghai Museum, kicked off in March. Visitors will have the chance to gain a better understanding of Chinese incense culture, incensory, paintings and calligraphy works in this 5-month exhibition.
Speaking perfect mandarin Chinese, Eric Lefebvre, curator of Museum Cernuschi, who himself is an expert on art history of China, named himself as Yikai in Chinese.
“We outlined the development of Chinese incense culture from the Han Dynasty to the late Qing Dynasty, by displaying utensils, paintings and calligraphy works. To awaken the visitors’ sense of smell, a French perfumer was also invited to show the skills required for making a Chinese ancient incense, following the old formula,” said Eric.
“Knowing China through Perfumes” is actually a new plan started by Eric, who adopted the museum tradition of bringing Chinese Incense Culture to France. Since 1911, hundreds of curations have been carried out in Cernuschi, almost half of which were related to the Chinese culture.
As the number seven curator of Museum Cernuschi, who has had the job since 2015, Eric always kept his research interest in the Chinese arts. In the 1990s, he started his study of Asian Art History in Louvre Museum, and learned Chinese in France National College of Oriental Language and Culture. “I have gradually transitioned my research focus towards Chinese art ever since then.”
During his stay in China, Eric spent an academic year in China Academy of Art in Hangzhou. “It was an exciting year! Compared to my study experience in Louvre where I was only able to have access to ancient art works but got no chance to face those great artists in person, look at people around me now! They are either professor artists, or students who will be future stars!”
Eric was also a professor at Louvre and the University of Sorbonne in Paris, teaching a course of Chinese art history, and did in-depth research on the inheritance of Chinese cultural heritage. In pursuit of his doctoral degree at Beijing University in 2002, Eric took 8 years to complete his treatise titled, “Ruan Yuan’s Collection: A Case Study of the Inheritance of Chinese Cultural Heritage,” under joint efforts and assistance of both his Chinese and French supervisors.
The study into the collective experience of Ruan Yuan, an important minister of the Qing Dynasty, inspired him a lot for his later research. In the year of 2004, he became a researcher of Museum Cernuschi specializing in Chinese collections, and kicked off his new study area—Chinese artists living in France and their works.
While curating the exhibition “Chinese Artists in France,” Eric’s efforts yielded great fruit. The curation themed “From Fengmian Lin to Wuji Zhao,” was a first-of-its-kind systematic illustration of the artworks of Chinese artists in France, which turned out to be a blockbuster.
From 2013 to 2014, right after taking over the department of painting and calligraphy of Museum Guimet, Eric hosted the exhibition “Chinese Wind: Cultural Relic Exhibition of the Han Dynasty of China,” which was a great success, attracting almost 85,000 visitors.
In Cernuschi’s history, successive curators were mostly experts on Asian Culture, attaching great importance to Chinese relic collections. Some of them have developed a close relationship with Chinese artists. Back in 1946, grand exhibitions were hosted by Museum Cernuschi on Chinese Modern Painters’ works including Baishi Qi, Beihong Xu, Daqian Zhang, Fengmian Lin, and Wuji Zhao, who was only in his late 20s.
Capitalizing on this opportunity, more Chinese modern painting curations were unveiled. Since China’s opening up policy, with increasingly closer inter-cultural exchanges, many artists have chosen Museum Cernuschi as their most favored art platform.
In the recent years, Museum Cernuschi has actively started collaborating with museums of China, including curations such as “The Shanghai School Paintings” jointly hosted by Shanghai Museum and a museum of Zhejiang Province. Eric believes their success would not have been possible without the participation of museums from China.
Eric’s biggest hope is to expand curation area in a faster pace, so that more visitors would have the chance to embrace Chinese culture of perfume through a panoramic display of the development outline of ancient relics and modern painting arts.
Translated by Yang Jing
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