This New Landmark Exhibition Rewrites Parisian Art History By Challenging Eurocentric Perspectives

Forbes

07-04-2025

Sanyu, Reclining Pink Nude with Raised Arms, 1930s/1940s, oil on canvas, 80.5 x 129.5 cm. Collection of Leo Shih
Photo courtesy of Leo Shih
'City of Others: Asian Artists in Paris, 1920s-1940s', currently on view at National Gallery Singapore until August 17, 2025, is a groundbreaking exhibition that re-examines Parisian art history through the lens of Asian artists who lived and worked there during this transformative era. Featuring over 200 artworks – including paintings, sculptures, lacquerware and decorative arts – alongside rare archival materials, it showcases the contributions of prominent figures such as Foujita Tsuguharu, Georgette Chen, Lê Phổ, Liu Kang, Xu Beihong and Sanyu. By highlighting the dynamic exchanges of esthetics and ideas between these artists and their European counterparts, the exhibition examines conventional Eurocentric narratives and offers a nuanced perspective on the cultural interactions that shaped modern art in Paris. I sit down with Phoebe Scott, Senior Curator and Curator of Research Publications at National Gallery Singapore, for insights into the exhibition.
'City of Others' is described as a re-examination of Parisian art history from Asian perspectives. How does the exhibition challenge the traditional Eurocentric narrative of Paris as the center of modern art by providing Asian perspectives researched by National Gallery Singapore, an Asian art institution?
What is new about the exhibition is that it is structured based on the parts of the Paris art world where artists from Asia concentrated their activity: where they exhibited, worked or lived. So, in that way, the exhibition remaps Paris from their point of view. Coming to the exhibition, visitors won't see the same art movements that they would see if they opened a standard textbook on modern art because we are highlighting what was significant, stylistically and practically, to the populations of Asian artists in Paris at the time. It offers a story of the exchanges that took place in the workshops of the decorative arts and in the development of the Art Deco style; of the nexus between modern art and the promotion of colonialism in Paris; of the ongoing significance of Salons and nationally-themed exhibitions; and of art that was informed by the texture of social and daily life as a migrant in Paris. We also acknowledge in the exhibition that these artists often encountered Paris while moving in and out of equally dynamic and cosmopolitan modernities elsewhere. They were often making new modern work directed to a dual audience, both in Paris and in their countries of origin.
Liu Kang, View of Sacré-Cœur, 1931, gouache on paper, 25 × 16.5 cm. Collection of Liu Kang Family
Photo courtesy of Liu Kang Family
What does the exhibition title 'City of Others' represent?
Paris in the post-WWI period was experiencing a surge of migrants from around the world. Artists arriving from Asia in Paris not only experienced the 'othering' effects of making their way in a new city and culture, but also encountered other migrant populations who were equally unfamiliar with France and with one other. In this environment, difference was accentuated. The exhibition title is also our way of prominently acknowledging the significance of migrant artists in general, not only from Asia, in the art world of Paris in this time period.
As the first major comparative exhibition on this topic, what are some of the most significant new insights or revelations that the exhibition brings to light that viewers will discover for the very first time?
The comparative scale of this exhibition is new, which allows us to see artists from Asia in this period in a broader, as well as a more nuanced, way. It is a major exhibition of 230 artworks, including painting, sculpture, lacquerware, decorative arts, and a further 200 archives or archival images to show the presence of Asian artists in Paris. We have around 50 different lenders to the exhibition, private collections and museums, from France as well as across Asia. This scale and diversity of materials allows us to generate new insights.
For instance, there has already been significant country-based research on Asian artists in Paris, especially on Japanese and Chinese artists in Paris. But by working within a comparative framework, it is really interesting to see patterns where the experiences of artists from different parts of Asia converge or diverge. One of the key insights that we notice overall is that for most artists, their period in Paris did not make their work more visibly 'French'. Actually, many began to reconsider their cultures of origin from the perspective of distance and mobilize this sense of 'Asian-ness' in a new way. This was both because of the expectations of the audience in Paris, but also artists' desire to create new modern styles that had a meaningful relationship to their cultures of origin. From this point of view, the idea of artists coming to Paris to receive 'French influence' seems like a very limited and outdated way of understanding this experience.
Itakulla Kanae, Woman in Red Dress, 1929, oil on canvas, 116 × 80.3 cm. Collection of Matsudo City Board of Education
Photo courtesy of Matsudo City Board of Education
How is this exhibition a continuation of National Gallery Singapore's in-depth research into Asian art history?
Since the Gallery's inception 10 years ago, our research and curatorial experience have focused on examining art history and Southeast Asia's connections to this narrative. We have taken this further with 'City of Others' by bringing fresh insights into this period of artistic exchange throughout our research and exhibition-making. Singapore's historical position as a cultural crossroads and its multicultural heritage make National Gallery Singapore uniquely equipped to understand and interpret the complex cultural negotiations and exchanges that the Asian artist community engaged in within the cosmopolitan city of Paris.
'City of Others' builds on the work done in previous exhibitions like 'Reframing Modernism: Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond' (2016) and 'Minimalism: Space. Light. Object' (2019), which also recontextualized the region's artistic contributions within global narratives, allowing for a more nuanced examination of how Asian artists navigated between their cultural traditions and influences from the West.