Art Lovers discussion

How did Japanese art influence the world?

Japonism might be considered a general term for the influence of the arts of Japan on those of the West, whereas in France Japonism is applied to such influence and is in addition the name of a specific French style. In England objects influenced by Japonism have been termed Anglo-Japanese, from as early as 1851, according to Widar Halen in Christopher Dresser, 1990, p. 33.

Artists who were influenced by Japanese art include: Arthur Wesley Dow, Pierre Bonnard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Renoir, James McNeill Whistler (Rose and silver: La princesse du pays de porcelaine, 1863–64), Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Bertha Lum, Will Bradley, Aubrey Beardsley, Alphonse Mucha, Gustav Klimt, the sisters Frances and Margaret Macdonald, as well as architects Edward W.Godwin, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Stanford White, and ceramicists Edmond Lachenal and Taxile Doat. Some artists, such as Georges Ferdinand Bigot, moved to Japan because of their fascination with Japanese art.


Van Gogh - La courtisane (after Eisen), 1887.


Fashionable young women inspect a Japanese screen, in a painting by James Tissot, ca 1869-70

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonism

It is said that James Whistler discovered Japanese prints in a Chinese tearoom near London Bridge and that Claude Monet first came upon them used as wrapping paper in a spice shop in Holland. James Tissot and his friend Edgar Degas were among the earliest collectors of Japanese art in France, but their own art was affected by exotic things in very different ways. Unlike Tissot, and others who came under the spell of Japan, Degas avoided staging japoneries that featured models dressed in kimonos and the conspicuous display of oriental props. Instead, he absorbed qualities of the Japanese aesthetic that he found most sympathetic elongated pictorial formats, asymmetrical compositions, aerial perspective, spaces emptied of all but abstract elements of color and line, and a focus on singularly decorative motifs. In the process, he redoubled his originality.

Degas' American friend Mary Cassatt who declared that she "hated conventional art," found in Japanese woodcuts like those of Utamaro a fresh approach to the depiction of common events in women's lives. After visiting a large exhibition of ukiyo-e prints at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris during the spring of 1890, she produced a set of ten color etchings in open admiration of their subjects, compositions, and technical innovations.

Experimentation with a wide range of pictorial modes, and with printmaking techniques as well, coincided with the growing popularity of Japanese woodcuts during the 1890s. Toulouse-Lautrec adopted the exaggerated colors, contours, and facial expressions found in Kabuki theater prints (JP2822) in order to create his eye-catching posters. Meanwhile, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard, who called themselves "Nabis" or "prophets" of a new style of art, relied upon the piquant, unusual viewpoints of ukiyo-e printmakers for inspiration. Only Paul Gauguin who was attracted to the native arts of many cultures, sidestepped the then-current practice of lithography and adapted Japanese woodcut techniques to the abstract expression of his forward-looking art.


Maternal Caress, 1891
Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926)
Drypoint and soft-ground etching, third state, printed in color

In her clear-headed treatment of mothers and infants, Cassatt was, for her time, entirely alone. "The bunch of English and French daubers have put them in such stupid and pretentious poses!" complained the critic J.-K. Huysmans, contrasting them with Cassatt's "irreproachable pearls of Oriental sweetness."


At the Moulin Rouge: La Goulue and Her Sister, 1892
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864–1901)
Lithograph printed in six colors

Lautrec studied the late-night faces of dancehall regulars, then described them as the Japanese portraitist Toshusai Sharaku did, with the lurid grimaces and theatrical make-up of kabuki actors.


Street Corner, ca. 1897
Pierre Bonnard (French, 1867–1947)
From the series Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris, 1899
Lithograph in four colors


Interior with a Hanging Lamp, 1899
Édouard Vuillard (French, 1868–1940)
Color lithograph


Nave Nave Fenua (Delightful Land): From Noa Noa (Fragrance), 1893–94
Paul Gauguin (French, 1848–1903)
Woodcut printed in color on wove paper, lined in silk

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jpon...

I love Japanese art from the woodblock prints to the shibori technique. I was into fibers for a while, and played around with using the shibori technique to create patterns on my fabric. The Japanese aesthetics were strongly influenced by Buddhism, which was brought in via China. This is an aesthetic of balance, simplicity, harmony and decorative abstraction.

Your comment above, Aloha, make me think of the yin and yang.

There is a perception (especially in the West) that yin and yang correspond to evil and good. However, Taoist philosophy generally discounts good/bad distinctions and other dichotomous moral judgments, in preference to the idea of balance. Confucianism (most notably the philosophy of Dong Zhongshu, c. the 2nd century BCE) did attach a moral dimension to the idea of yin and yang, but the modern sense of the term largely stems from Buddhist adaptations of Taoist philosophy.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_and_...

Thank you for posting that, Heather. That is how I have always thought of the yin/yang, as a balance. One needs the other to form a harmonious whole.

There is a wonderful exhibit about Japonism /Japonisme going on right now at the Frist Museum in Nashville called " Looking East: Western Artists and the Allure of Japan". (http://fristcenter.org/calendar-exhib...)
I went to see it when I was vacationing in Nashville recently and highly recommend it!
Highlights of the exhibit are the Van Gogh, Monet and many woodblock prints by Hiroshige and Hokusai. Looking East: Western Artists and the Allure of Japan