Page - 35 - in Die Repräsentation der Habsburg-Lothringischen Dynastie in Musik, visuellen Medien und Architektur - 1618–1918

Interdisciplinary Material Culture Studies and the Problem of Habsburg-Lorraine Representation 35 But lacquer does even more than this in the Vieux-Laque-Zimmer. It turns out that not all of the room’s panels are Chinese. Some of the smaller panels were ac- tually made by Austrian court artisans in Vienna. Maria Theresa loved lacquer and fostered the creation of an Austrian lacquer industry in Vienna. The room then is partially about how materials deceive: a blending of materialities that convey an im- perial authority far more wide-ranging even than it at first seems to do. A generalized China therefore replaces the Habsburg-Lorraine dominions, and in so doing, the room obfuscates some of the more uncomfortable realities of this particular Empire, replacing actual political organization with something less sensitive and semantically more open. And I would argue further that it does this successfully because it conveys those possibilities materially. The materiality of lacquer turns out to be of crucial im- portance to how this room works; replacing the lacquer with another material would have changed the room’s meanings, just as rearranging the portraits on the Prunkta- batière would change that object’s meanings. Lacquer is therefore rightly the material that gives the room its name. Demonstrating the validity of such material meanings is really the goal of ma- terial culture studies: to emphasize the symbolic significance of objects through their materiality, through the unspoken yet present concepts implied in their non-icono- graphical, non-pictorial elements. This correlates with a further insight: namely, that objects convey meanings on more than one level. There is an official acknowledged meaning to a work of art – a snuffbox is an expensive object, a palatial room com- memorates its ruling dynasty’s power – but there are also other meanings that are presented indirectly. I would add that these are often located in a work of art’s for- mal and structural components. These are the unstated, one might say unconscious motivations of a culture that determine the way works of art look. Perhaps academic scholarship is uncomfortable with such modes of interpretation. If there is a criti- cism to the material culture approach, it is that it might seem a highly subjective response to historical objects. But there must be some value to such impressions when developed through a contemporary scholarly consciousness. Material culture approaches offer at minimum an acknowledgment of what that value might be and where it might be found. And such perspectives are potentially of great value to the study of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty. So much art made for, by, and about them deals with desired relationships, ideal configurations of power, wishes for their ter- ritories’ future, hopeful expressions of influence, imaginary legacies, mythological origins, and other such concepts, ones that could in fact never be expressed pre- cisely with succinctness. Particularly in a multicultural Empire comprised of compet- ing internal communities, such unstated yet materially evoked concepts might be exceptionally valuable, since in reality, many of these desires were elusive, difficult