Europerie und Macht. Akteure und Publika der transkulturellen Bilderbauten aus der Regierungszeit des Kaisers Qianlong

The present study deals with the formation and elaboration of transcultural spaces of power (in terms of Mary Louise Pratt’s »contact zone«) in the times of Emperor Qianlong as the interests of various protagonists and social groups entangled. On the basis of four case studies, ranging from the space of the palace linked to events, to the political space of negotiation, and to the Emperor’s personal spaces of representation, it becomes evident just how strongly the emergence of Qianlong’s spaces of power were connected with the Jesuit buildings adorned with images in Beijing. The illusionistic animal portrait, which became possible thanks to the use of perspective and its architectural linkage with the church interior, was transformed at court into a complex image system for the display of the Qings’ newly established tribute system. The emergence of a visual rhetoric of the other, that can be subsumed under the term »europerie«, became the mode of expression for Qianlong’s claim of cultural hegemony and served the construction of the Manchurian subject. Finally, the translatio loci of a monumental image pair turned into an effective means of hegemony for the promotion of a Pan-Asian, multicultural empire ruled by Qianlong.