‘The Nuancing of the Eternal’:

Herman Visser and the Arts from Asia, 1918-1928

Abstract

The work of Herman Visser (1890-1965) and Taco Roorda (1874-1938) during the first ten years of the Vereeniging van Vrienden der Aziatische Kunst (VVAK, now the Royal Asian Art Society in the Netherlands, 1918-present) was instrumental to establishing a field of expertise in the Netherlands, to introduce the notion that important works of art were created in Asia. The selection of objects was primarily based on their own sense of aesthetic experience. It was a sense that arose from interacting with contemporary European art, above all focussed on the cosmic order, the spiritual foundations of reality – or rather, the nuancing of the eternal. During this process, objects were entirely isolated from their context and viewed more as contemporary works of autonomous art than as important products of an Asian culture. Yet the knowledge of Asian art grew and art history evolved in the direction of connoisseurship, an evolution in which Visser, contrary to Roorda, participated from the start. Visser’s involvement marked the onset of a methodological approach to Asian art history in the Netherlands.