Japonism

Japonism (also in French Japonisme and Japonaiserie) is called the influence of Japanese art on Western, primarily French, artists. The art that originated from this influence is called japonesque.

While American intellectuals maintained that Edo prints were a vulgar art form, unique to the period and distinct from the refined, religious, national heritage of Japan known as Yamato-e (大和絵, pictures from the Yamato period, e.g. Zen masters Sesshu and Shubun), ukiyo-e, Japanese wood-block prints, became a source of inspiration for Art Nouveau, cubism and many European impressionist painters in France.

History

During the Kaei era (1848 – 1854), many foreign merchant ships came to Japan. Following the Meiji restoration in 1868, Japan ended her long period of national isolation and became open to imports from the West, including photography and printing techniques and in turn, many Japanese ukiyo-e prints and other artworks came to Europe and America and soon gained popularity.

Japonism started with the frenzy to collect Japanese art, particularly print art (ukiyoe), in the 1850s and 1860s. French collectors, writers, and art critics undertook many voyages to Japan in the 1870s and 1880s leading to the publication of articles about Japanese aesthetics and the increased distribution of prints in Europe, especially in France. Among them, the liberal economist Henri Cernuschi the critic Theodore Duret (both in 1871 – 1872), and the British collector William Anderson, who lived for some years in Edo, teaching medicine. Anderson's collection has been acquired by the British Museum. Several Japanese art dealers subsequently resided in Paris, such as Tadamasa Hayashi and Jijima Hanjuro. The Paris world fair of 1878 presented many pieces of Japanese art.

Artists and Movements

Japanese artists that had a great influence included Utamaro and Hokusai. Curiously, while Japanese art was becoming popular in Europe, at the same time, the bunmeikaika (文明開化, Westernization) led to a loss in prestige for the prints in Japan.

Artists that were influenced by Japanese art were van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Degas, Auguste Renoir, Pissarro, Klimt, and many others. Several of van Goghs's paintings imitate ukiyo-e in style and in motif. E.g. Le Père Tanguy, the portrait of the proprietor of an art supply shop, shows six different ukiyo-e in the background scene. He painted "The courtisan" in 1887 after finding an ukiyo-e by Kesai Eisen on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustré in 1886. At this time, in Anvers, he was already collecting Japanese stamps.

Ukiyo-e, with their curved lines, patterned surfaces and contrasting voids, and flatness of their picture-plane, also inspired Art Nouveau. Some line and curve patterns became graphic clichés that were later found in works of artists from all parts of the world.

References

• thesis: Edo print art and its Western interpretations (pdf)

See also

• Chinoiserie - the collecting of art objects from China.

External links

• Quiz on Japonism
• Perception du Japon (in French)
• Japonisme (in French)
• Van Gogh - lessons from Japan
• small Japonism-gallery
• Comments on some van Gogh paintings after ukiyo-e (in French)

See also: Japonism, 1848, 1850s, 1854, 1860s, 1868, 1870s, 1871, 1872, 1880s