Monstrous Beauty: 
A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The past decade has seen a renewed interest in art mediums once labeled as “decorative” and “feminine.” A generation of women artists working in these mediums on a monumental scale—Ruth Asawa, Lin Tianmiao, Toshiko Takaezu, and Cecelia Vicuña—have been the focus of major institutional retrospectives, overturning a gendered hierarchy that privileged painting and sculpture.

 It is therefore momentous for The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to present “Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie,” organized by curator Iris Moon, which examines the European orientalist imagination in porcelain from the 16th to 18th century. Juxtaposing historical objects with video and sculptural works by Asian and Asian American contemporary artists, the exhibition challenged conventional associations of ceramics: the notion of femininity and the exotification, sexualization, and demonization of East Asian identity. Several pieces referenced the silver screen siren Anna May Wong, the first Chinese American film star. She rose to international fame in 1920s Hollywood and her typecast as the femme fatale recalled the Hollywood “dragon lady” stereotype and underscored the “monstrous” premise. Opposite Wong’s gold dragon-embroidered gown, worn by the actress in her 1934 film Limehouse Blues, are album leaves chronicling the artistic, scholarly, and military achievements of historical Chinese heroines from mythological times through the 18th century, including the Eastern Han historian Ban Zhao (班昭, c. 49–120 CE) who contributed to the Book of Han; the teacher to the great calligrapher Wang Xizhi (王羲之, 303–361 CE), Wei Shuo (衛鑠, 272–349 CE); and Hongfu (紅拂), the legendary courtesan who helped future Tang emperor Li Shimin (李世民, 598–649 CE) overthrow the Sui dynasty (581–619 CE) alongside her husband General Li Jing (李靖, 571–649 CE). While Hollywood blasts America with its superheroes from 1940s comics, here is a league of extraordinary women that Wong certainly lived up to.