Cartier in China – Why Culture Remains the Primary Commercial Asset

From Europe to China and back: A Cartier Exhibition in Shanghai Sparks a Flow Between Technology and Magic, Geography and Diplomacy – from the Duchess of Windsor to a VPN for Google

Air China and Google – the Flight Path over Moscow: “Cartier, The Power of Magic”, the exhibition at the Shanghai Museum

The Air China flight path traces over Moscow – with China not joining the sanctions against Russia, the national airline can cross Russian airspace. Arriving in Shanghai, Google doesn’t work here. Magic and Technology: it evokes the childhood feeling of travel, when TV wasn’t everywhere, and everyday routines vanished. The journey becomes a true escape to another dimension – not merely living elsewhere for a few days but being elsewhere.

A world apart. We land in Shanghai to celebrate sixty years of diplomatic relations between China and France. A testament to this relationship is a Cartier exhibition at the Shanghai Museum, the most relevant site for ancient Chinese art. It is titled Cartier, The Power of Magic. The political and economic ties between China and France find a fitting tribute in the story of a jewelry house founded in Paris in 1847. This jewelry house today stands as a power brand, a symbol of globalization. Cartier’s commercial strength perhaps embodies a broader definition of power in today’s context – the European power.

Our corporate emails run on Google. After a few attempts in the hotel room, nothing really works. With Meta, you might expect this, but not having Google reshapes your day – no easy answers, no immediate access to anything that comes to mind. Alternative search engines operate at a fraction of Google’s efficiency. Trump’s warnings of escalating American taxes and duties hinted at the possibility of a life devoid of American services. Upon arriving in China, it’s already a reality.

From Paris to China, From the Proust Society

In the Renaissance, European princes created curiosity cabinets with pieces from the Far East. By the late 1800s, Paris became gripped by a fever for all things Eastern – China, Japan, Indonesia. Connoisseurs discerned the details: Chinese-inspired art were porcelain vases, inlaid wood boxes, moonstone panels.

The elite world of Paris – duchesses, wealthy bourgeois, snobs and parvenus – was immortalized by Proust, a writer whose work became the foundation of worldly sophistication for those wishing to be seen as masters of taste. When any well-to-do salon lady mentions Proust, she may not realize what she’s broaching. The dilettante, who knows Proust from hearsay, might refer to the madeleine or Odette’s orchid. The reader who has delved into Proust will recall the entrance of the Queen of Naples, Charlus’ gay love affairs, the rise of a social climber who becomes a duchess in the final volume – and certainly won’t overlook the enduring prominence of Asian-inspired décor: fans, fabrics, gold backdrops, screens, teapots. These Eastern collections, scattered through Proust’s narrative, are like rhythmic bass notes underscoring the story.

Cartier’s The Power of Magic at the Shanghai Museum: Cai Guo-Qiang’s Installation Created with AI

Magic and Technology. The Shanghai Museum’s exhibition presents a selection from Cartier’s historic archives in a visual dialogue with Chinese decorative arts. Gold, diamonds, emeralds, and platinum from France meet jade, alabaster, enamel, and lacquered wood from China. A hall approximately 50 by 100 meters houses the exhibition, accessed from the main atrium. The Shanghai Museum itself is vast, its towering architecture inducing a kind of reverse vertigo as you look upward.

Inside the exhibition hall, dim blue lighting creates an immersive atmosphere; water sounds emanate from the center, and pillar display cases rhythmically balance the perimeter displays. The exhibition design, crafted by Cai Guo-Qiang, incorporates an AI program developed in his architectural studio and registered as a trademark. This AI system responds to creative input with a computational logic redefined by Cai’s intervention, yielding architectural responses that defy common frameworks or traditions. Curiosity opens the mind to new realms.

Chinese Language, Mao’s simplification

In Chinese, a single syllable can be pronounced in four distinct tones: flat without emphasis, rising with emphasis, curving with a dip and rise, or descending abruptly. Take, for example, one of the most fundamental syllables: MA. Each tone of MA conveys a unique meaning, respectively: mother, hemp, horse, insult. Mao Zedong initiated the simplification of Chinese characters, which today leaves traditional Chinese primarily spoken in Taiwan and Hong Kong, while simplified Chinese is used in mainland China. By comparing characters in their traditional and simplified forms, one can observe the evolution.

Mao hoped to continue this reform to make Chinese writing more accessible to both less educated and foreigners, but it was not fully realized. To read a newspaper, a Chinese reader needs to recognize 6,000 characters by memory. Numbers use the same digits as in the West, introduced through Arabic numerals. Punctuation, including question marks, appears throughout their sentences. Western letters are also used to teach pronunciation. Google, Cartier, Air China—East and West come closer than ever on a Shanghai newspaper page.

Dragons, Cocteau, and the Cartier Collection: The Language of Color

Chinese dragons are the mythical creatures that uphold cosmic order. Stones and minerals formed millions of years ago under immense pressure and temperatures, a natural process we attempt to replicate in laboratories today, achieving precision but not the allure of nature’s imperfections. Cocteau wrote of Cartier as though it were not just a manufacturer but a person—a magician, weaving moon fragments and sun threads. Cartier’s historic archive is known as the Cartier Collection, a repository that began in the 1970s when the brand sought out and acquired pieces from the late 1800s and early 1900s. At auctions and private collections, Cartier approached former clients to negotiate trades, restorations, and loans. Today, the Cartier Collection contains over 3,500 items, from jewelry to goldsmithing artifacts. Its first public exhibition was held in 1989 at Paris’s Petit Palais, and since then, Cartier has used it as a forum for new interpretations of its legacy.

Certain color combinations trace back to Chinese visual culture: red and black, where red might appear as purple in enamel or rubies, or orange in coral. Also, red and green, with green in the deep hue of emeralds or the milky, aquatic shades of jade. Mythical animals—fu dogs, phoenixes, elephants, carp, turtles—and legendary creatures like the two-headed lioness chimera with a snake tail, appear throughout.

The collection includes juxtapositions akin to a travel diary: an ancient coral dragon beside the Duchess of Windsor’s 152-carat Kashmir sapphire with a seated Panther atop. Two Cartier desk clocks, one from 1926 and another from 1927, crafted from onyx, white jade, coral, and enamel, with an 18th-century green jade table centerpiece. Cocteau’s sword for his French Academy induction. A crystal Buddha and an ivory one. The two crocodiles circling each other, and Maria Felix’s diamond and enamel serpent, which she would spin over her head like a sling.

Cartier, The Power of Magic, Google, VPNs in China, and Shanghai – Culture Meets Marketing

Upon arriving at the airport, ads for this exhibition were everywhere; now, back in the hotel where VPN access allows me to check emails, I notice jewelry ads in magazines—from all the major European houses, Cartier’s competitors. Some luxury brands have relied heavily on Chinese clientele without balancing this focus across other markets, especially Europe. Some brands are overexposed in a country where government and economic policies don’t always align with liberal, rights-based frameworks. The misstep has been to sell in China what is already familiar there, rather than offering the dreams it longs for. China wants a Europe that can stand apart from America’s dominance, with more respect. A Europe that keeps its tradition of sophistication, complexity, and innovation alive.

In this landscape, Cartier’s ability to use culture as a marketing tool stands out. For its entry into the Chinese market in 2004, Cartier hosted a monographic exhibition. Now, two decades later, The Power of Magic aspires to a more deliberate narrative. Some may argue that the value of cultural marketing is well-worn, but amid the tug-of-war between China, Europe, and America, one must remember the vast sums European brands waste in marketing fees to Meta.

The best form of marketing and advertising will always be culture. Chasing social media influencers for a selfie only leads to short-lived hype. Cartier exhibitions in world museums—last year at Mexico City’s Museo Jumex, next spring at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and next autumn at Palazzo Altemps in Rome—nurture an intellectual community of curators, artists, and institutions that give Cartier an institutional authority to represent France itself, if not politically, then certainly diplomatically.

Carlo Mazzoni