Who owns beauty ? World art and culture in our museums (6)

Two bronze heads, a rabbit and a rat, made the news in 2009 when they were sold at public auction in Paris during the sale of the Saint Laurent collection. A Chinese caricature gave these heads a feeling, making them cry and utter the following plea: "We want to go home". This lecture traces the history of the zodiac heads, from their creation in Beijing in the 18th^century to their appearance on the art market in the 21st^century . They arrived in Europe after the capture of the Summer Palace. France had allied itself with the United Kingdom against China during the Second Opium War: in December 1857, the Franco-English expedition captured Canton and, two years later, the troops entered Peking. On October 18, 1860, they sacked the Yuanmingyuan or Summer Palace, residence and administrative center of the Chinese emperors since the reign of Qianlong, between 1735 and 1796. The loot arrived in Europe in January 1861. Today, objects that are more or less certain to have come from this looting are appearing on the art market. This lecture examines the discourse surrounding these works, and the origins of the voices making the claims. While the Chinese authorities are calling for the return of these objects from the looting of the Summer Palace, as is the majority of public opinion, other discourses are also being voiced. Such is the case of artist Ai Weiwei and his team, who created replicas of these twelve heads of the zodiac and exhibited them worldwide in 2006-2009. In his blog, Ai Weiwei accuses the Chinese authorities of instrumentalizing the issue of restitutions, to distract the Chinese population from China's real problems, and explains that art, on the contrary, is made to circulate. Following the Saint Laurent sale, he put giant reproductions of these heads up for sale, which also fetched record prices. This example shows just how closely the market is linked to the question of translocation.