In the reading Introduction: Global Art History and the Netherlands, I was surprised to find out how the Netherlands plays a role in communicating between Europe and Asia in forms of art. Sometimes, the artwork is exported to other countries through trading with an initial desire to earn money. However, the trade actually helped the art industry to be able to take in and out resources that are under the influence of different societies and cultures. When the artwork goes into a market, the buyers could be from various places so that the message conveyed by the artist can be sent to a larger population, resulting in an exchange of cultural information as well as exposure to different interpretations of the same artwork. This reminds me of how people are exposed to current information. With the development of technology, everyone can easily find pictures or information from different sources on the Internet. These materials generally contain some potential information for people to provide different interpretations. When people can quickly obtain this information and exchange their ideas with each other, specific information (such as an image) can quickly gain popularity and become popular. During the Baroque period, the Netherlands used a similar method to infiltrate the essence of Baroque into Asian art culture, so that different cultures in Asia can also use the Baroque style to create to achieve the purpose of international exchange.
However, when Dutch prints were often traded and collected by wealthy patrons and when the popularity of certain prints would spread through these networks, it often took a much longer time period than nowadays for the information to spread. Here I am very impressed by how viral the engravings were when I thought about the lack of social media, which means they can only communicate through physical copies (with people carrying the artwork here and there and people talking to each other).