Japonisme
Japonisme[a] is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858.[1][2] Japonisme was first described by French art critic and collector Philippe Burty in 1872.[3]
While the effects of the trend were likely most pronounced in the visual arts, they extended to architecture, landscaping and gardening, and clothing.[4] Even the performing arts were affected; Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado is perhaps the best example.
From the 1860s,
Japanese
History
Seclusion (1639–1858)
During most of the
Early exports
The primary Japanese exports were initially silver, which was prohibited after 1668, and gold, mostly in the form of oval coins, which was prohibited after 1763, and later copper in the form of copper bars. Japanese exports eventually decreased and shifted to craftwork such as ceramics, hand fans, paper, furniture, swords, armors, mother-of-pearl objects, folding screens, and lacquerware, which were already being exported.[19]
During the era of seclusion, Japanese goods remained a luxury sought after by European elites.
Re-opening (19th century)
During the
During this time, European artists were seeking alternatives to the strict European academic methodologies.[27] Around 1856, the French artist Félix Bracquemond encountered a copy of the sketch book Hokusai Manga at the workshop of his printer, Auguste Delâtre.[28] In the years following this discovery, there was an increase of interest in Japanese prints. They were sold in curiosity shops, tea warehouses, and larger shops.[28] Shops such as La Porte Chinoise specialized in the sale of Japanese and Chinese imports.[28] La Porte Chinoise, in particular, attracted artists James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Édouard Manet, and Edgar Degas who drew inspiration from the prints.[29] It and other shops organized gatherings which facilitated the spread of information regarding Japanese art and techniques.[27]
Artists and Japonisme
Ukiyo-e prints were one of the main Japanese influences on Western art. Western artists were inspired by different uses of compositional space, flattening of planes, and abstract approaches to color. An emphasis on diagonals, asymmetry, and negative space can be seen in the works of Western artists who were influenced by this style.[30]
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh's interest in Japanese prints began when he discovered illustrations by Félix Régamey featured in The Illustrated London News and Le Monde Illustré.[31] Régamey created woodblock prints, followed Japanese techniques, and often depicted scenes of Japanese life.[31] Van Gogh used Régamey as a reliable source for the artistic practices and everyday scenes of Japanese life. Beginning in 1885, Van Gogh switched from collecting magazine illustrations, such as Régamey, to collecting ukiyo-e prints which could be bought in small Parisian shops.[31] He shared these prints with his contemporaries and organized a Japanese print exhibition in Paris in 1887.[31]
Van Gogh's Portrait of Père Tanguy (1887) is a portrait of his color merchant, Julien Tanguy. Van Gogh created two versions of this portrait. Both versions feature backdrops of Japanese prints[32] by identifiable artists like Hiroshige and Kunisada. Inspired by Japanese woodblock prints and their colorful palettes, Van Gogh incorporated a similar vibrancy into his own works.[33] He filled the portrait of Tanguy with vibrant colors as he believed that buyers were no longer interested in grey-toned Dutch paintings and that paintings with many colors would be considered modern and desirable.[33]
Alfred Stevens
The Belgian painter Alfred Stevens was one of the earliest collectors and enthusiasts of Japanese art in Paris.
From the mid-1860's, Japonisme became a fundamental element in many of Stevens' paintings. One of his most famous Japonisme-influenced works is La parisienne japonaise (1872). He realized several portraits of young women dressed in kimono, and Japanese elements feature in many other paintings of his, such as the early La Dame en Rose (1866), which combines a view of a fashionably dressed woman in an interior with a detailed examination of Japanese objects, and The Psyché (1871), wherein on a chair there sit Japanese prints, indicating his artistic passion.[37]
Edgar Degas
In the 1860s, Edgar Degas began to collect Japanese prints from La Porte Chinoise and other small print shops in Paris.[38] His contemporaries had begun to collect prints as well, which gave him a wide array of sources for inspiration.[38] Among prints shown to Degas was a copy of Hokusai's Manga, which Bracquemond had purchased after seeing it in Delâtre's workshop.[27] The estimated date of Degas' adoption of japonismes into his prints is 1875, and it can be seen in his choice to divide individual scenes by placing barriers vertically, diagonally, and horizontally.[38]
Similar to many Japanese artists, Degas' prints focus on women and their daily routines.[39] The atypical positioning of his female figures and the dedication to reality in his prints aligned him with Japanese printmakers such as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Sukenobu.[39] In Degas' print Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery (1879–80), the artist uses of two figures, one seated and one standing, which is a common composition in Japanese prints.[40] Degas also continued to use lines to create depth and separate space within the scene.[40] His most clear appropriation is of the woman leaning on a closed umbrella, which is borrowed directly from Hokusai's Manga.[41]
James McNeill Whistler
Japanese art was exhibited in Britain beginning in the early 1850s.[42] These exhibitions featured various Japanese objects, including maps, letters, textiles, and objects from everyday life.[43] These exhibitions served as a source of national pride for Britain and served to create a separate Japanese identity apart from the generalized "Orient" cultural identity.[44]
Artists influenced by Japanese art and culture
Theater
The first popular stagings of Asia were depictions of Japan from England. The comic opera Kosiki (originally titled The Mikado but renamed after protest from Japan) was written in 1876. In 1885, Gilbert and Sullivan, apparently less concerned about Japanese perceptions, premiered their Mikado. This comic opera enjoyed immense popularity throughout Europe where seventeen companies performed it 9,000 times within two years of its premiere. Translated into German in 1887, The Mikado remained the most popular drama in Germany throughout the 1890s. In the wake of this popularity, comedies set in Asia and featuring comic Asian figures appeared in rapid succession, both in comic opera and drama.
The successor to The Mikado as Europe's most popular Japan drama, Sidney Jones' opera The Geisha (1896) added the title character to the stock characters representing Japan, the figure of the geisha belongs to the "objects" which in and of themselves meant Japan in Germany and throughout the West. The period from 1904 to 1918 saw a European boom in geisha dramas. The most famous of these was, Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly. In 1900, Puccini saw a staging of David Belasco's play of the same name and reportedly found it so moving that he wept. The popularity of the opera brought on a slew of Madame Something or Others, including Madames Cherry, Espirit, Flott, Flirt, Wig-Wag, Leichtsinn, and Tip Top, all of whom appeared around 1904 and disappeared relatively quickly. They were not without lasting effect, however, and the geisha had established herself among the scrolls, jade, and images of Mount Fuji that signified Japan to the West. Much as this human figure of the geisha was reduced to the level of other objects signifying Japan in the drama, Japanese performers in Germany served German play wrights in their quest to renew the German drama. Just as ukiyo-e had proven useful in France, severed from any understanding of Japan, the troupes of Japanese actors and dancers that toured Europe provided materials for "a new way of dramatizing" on stage. Ironically, the popularity and influence of these Japanese dramas had a great deal to do with the westernization of the Japanese theater in general and of the pieces performed in Europe in particular.
Invented for the Kabuki theatre in Japan in the 18th century, the
Japanese gardens
The aesthetic of Japanese gardens was introduced to the English-speaking world by Josiah Conder's Landscape Gardening in Japan (Kelly & Walsh, 1893), which sparked the first Japanese gardens in the West. A second edition was published in 1912.[48] Conder's principles have sometimes proved hard to follow:[citation needed]
Robbed of its local garb and mannerisms, the Japanese method reveals aesthetic principles applicable to the gardens of any country, teaching, as it does, how to convert into a poem or picture a composition, which, with all its variety of detail, otherwise lacks unity and intent.[49]
Tassa (Saburo) Eida created several influential gardens, two for the Japan–British Exhibition in London in 1910 and one built over four years for William Walker, 1st Baron Wavertree.[50] The latter can still be visited at the Irish National Stud.[51]
Samuel Newsom's Japanese Garden Construction (1939) offered Japanese aesthetics as a corrective in the construction of
The impressionist painter Claude Monet modelled parts of his garden in Giverny after Japanese elements, such as the bridge over the lily pond, which he painted numerous times. In this series, by detailing just on a few select points such as the bridge or the lilies, he was influenced by traditional Japanese visual methods found in ukiyo-e prints, of which he had a large collection.[52][53][54] He also planted a large number of native Japanese species to give it a more exotic feeling.
Museums
In the United States, the fascination with Japanese art extended to collectors and museums creating significant collections which still exist and have influenced many generations of artists. The epicenter was in Boston, likely due to
Gallery
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James McNeill Whistler, The Peacock Room, 1876–1877
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James McNeill Whistler, The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, 1863–1865
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Édouard Manet, Portrait of Émile Zola, 1868
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Gustave Léonard de Jonghe, The Japanese Fan, c. 1865
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Alfred Stevens, Girl Wearing a Kimono, 1872
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Large spill vase, c. 1872
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James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Blue and Gold: Old Battersea Bridge, 1872–1875
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Christofle & Cie and Émile Reiber, chandelier vase, 1874
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Émile Reiber, Grohé Brothers, Eugène Capy, Antoine Tard, and Christofle & Cie, corner cabinet, 1874–1878
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Léon Dromard, cabinet, c. 1874–1889
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Claude Monet, Madame Monet en costume Japonais, 1875
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Alfred Stevens, Yamatori, c. 1878
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Christofle & Cie and Émile Reiber, «Elephant» Vase, 1878
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Gabriel Viardot, Paris, pair of armchairs, c. 1880
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Gabriel Viardot, mirror with frame, c. 1880
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Édouard Lièvre and Maison Ferdinand Barbedienne, jardinière, c. 1880
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Vincent van Gogh, La courtisane (after Keisai Eisen), 1887
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Vincent van Gogh, The Blooming Plum Tree (after Hiroshige's Plum Park in Kameido), 1887
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Mary Cassatt, Woman Bathing (La Toilette), 1890–91, Drypoint and aquatint print
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lithographposter of 1892
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One of the 36 Views of the Eiffel Tower by Henri Rivière, 1902
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Odilon Redon, The Buddha, 1906
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Gustav Klimt, Lady with fan, 1917/18
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Sideboard by Edward William Godwin (c. 1867–70)
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Carp vase; by Eugène Rousseau ; 1878–1884
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Japanese salon at Villa Hügel, Vienna
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Japanese pagoda and garden of the Museums of the Far East, Brussels
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Cover of the Madame Butterfly (short story) 1903 edition
See also
- Anglo-Japanese style
- Anime-influenced animation
- Arabist – "Arab" style
- Chinoiserie – similar Chinese influence on Western art and design
- David B. Gamble House
- Japanophilia
- Occidentalism – for Eastern views of the West
- Orientalism – Western romanticized depictions of Asian (more often Near Eastern) subject matter
- Turquerie
- Weeb
- Woodblock printing in Japan
- Woodcut
- Yamashiro Historic District
Explanatory notes
- ^ From the French Japonisme, French pronunciation: [ʒa.pɔ.nism]
References
Citations
- ^ "Japonism". The Free Dictionary. Retrieved 7 June 2013.
- ^ "Commodore Perry and Japan (1853–1854) | Asia for Educators | Columbia University". afe.easia.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2020-02-02.
- ^ Ono 2003, p. 1
- ^ Davis, Aaron, "Japanese Influence On Western Architecture Part 2: The Early Craftsmen Movement" Nakamoto Forestry, May 28, 2019; accessed 2020.09.16.
- ^ JSTOR 42597774.
- ^ Ono 2003, p. 45
- ^ a b c d Irvine 2013, p. 11.
- ^ Earle 1999, p. 330.
- ^ Earle 1999, p. 66.
- ^ Irvine 2013, p. 177.
- ^ Earle 1999, p. 252.
- ^ Irvine 2013, pp. 26–38.
- ^ Earle 1999, p. 10.
- ^ Irvine 2013, p. 36.
- ^ Irvine 2013, p. 38.
- ^ a b Lambourne 2005, p. 13
- ^ Gianfreda, Sandra. "Introduction." In Monet, Gauguin, Van Gogh… Japanese Inspirations, edited by Museum Folkwang, Essen, 14. Gottingen: Folkwang/Steidl, 2014.
- ^ a b c d Lambourne 2005, p. 14
- OCLC 315522043.
- ^ a b c Lambourne 2005, p. 16
- JSTOR 43854721.
- ^ a b Chisaburo, Yamada. "Exchange of Influences in the Fine Arts between Japan and Europe." Japonisme in Art: An International Symposium (1980): 14.
- ^ "Marie Antoinette and Japanese lacquer". vogue.com. 20 January 2018. Retrieved 2021-04-24.
- ^ "A Study of the Methods and Operations of Japanning Practice". Automotive Industries (42): 669. 11 Mar 1920.
- ^ Cate et al. 1975, p. 1
- ^ Yvonne Thirion, "Le japonisme en France dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle à la faveur de la diffusion de l'estampe japonaise", 1961, Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études francaises, Volume 13, Numéro 13, pp. 117–130. DOI 10.3406/caief.1961.2193
- ^ a b c Breuer 2010, p. 68
- ^ a b c Cate et al. 1975, p. 3
- ^ Cate et al. 1975, p. 4
- ^ Breuer 2010, p. 41
- ^ a b c d Thomson 2014, p. 70
- ^ Thomson 2014, p. 71
- ^ a b Thomson 2014, p. 72
- ^ Stevens ging als geen ander mee met het toentertijd sterk in mode zijnde Japonisme.
- ^ Thomas, Bernadette. "Alfred (Emile-Léopold) Stevens" in Oxford Art Online. Retrieved 27 December 2013.
- ^ a b Marjan Sterckx. "Alfred Stevens". Association of Historians of Nineteenth-Century Art. Retrieved 10 September 2020.
- ^ "The Psyché (My Studio), ca. 1871". Princeton University Art Museum. Retrieved 20 August 2020.
- ^ a b c Cate et al. 1975, p. 12
- ^ a b Cate et al. 1975, p. 13
- ^ a b Breuer 2010, p. 75
- ^ Breuer 2010, p. 78
- ^ Ono 2003, p. 5
- ^ Ono 2003, p. 8
- ^ Ono 2003, p. 6
- ^ a b Ono 2003, p. 42
- OCLC 59359992.
- ^ "International Conference". www.jsme.or.jp. Retrieved 2020-12-28.
- ^ Slawson 1987, p. 15 and note2.
- ^ Conder quoted in Slawson 1987, p. 15.
- ^ Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits. Global Oriental. 2010. p. 503.
- ^ "Japanese Garden". Irish National Stud. 19 May 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2019.
- ^ "Giverny | Collection of japanese prints of Claude Monet". Giverny hébergement, hôtels, chambres d'hôtes, gîtes, restaurants, informations, artistes... 2013-11-30. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
- ISBN 978-2884531092
- ^ "The japanese prints". The Claude Monet Foundation. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
- OCLC 294884928.
- ^ "Art of Asia". Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 2010-10-15. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
- ^ "George Hendrik Breitner – Girl in White Kimono". Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Archived from the original on 9 September 2012. Retrieved 12 May 2012.
General and cited references
- Breuer, Karin (2010). Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism. New York: Prestel Publishing.
- Cate, Phillip Dennis; Eidelberg, Martin; Johnston, William R.; Needham, Gerald; Weisberg, Gabriel P. (1975). Japonisme: Japanese Influence on French Art 1854–1910. Kent State University Press.
- Earle, Joe (1999). Splendors of Meiji: treasures of imperial Japan: masterpieces from the Khalili Collection. St. Petersburg, Fla.: Broughton International. OCLC 42476594.
- Irvine, Gregory, ed. (2013). Japonisme and the Rise of the Modern Art Movement: The Arts of the Meiji Period: The Khalili Collection. New York: Thames & Hudson. OCLC 853452453.
- Lambourne, Lionel (2005). Japonisme: Cultural Crossings Between Japan and the West. New York: Phaidon.
- Ono, Ayako (2003). Japonisme in Britain: Whistler, Menpes, Henry, Hornel and nineteenth-century Japan. New York: Routledge Curzon.
- Slawson, David A. (1987). Secret Teachings in the Art of Japanese Gardens. New York/Tokyo: Kodansha.
- Thomson, Belinda (2014). "Japonisme in the Works of Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bernard and Anquetin". In Museum Folkwang (ed.). Monet, Gauguin, Van Gogh… Japanese Inspirations. Folkwang/Steidl.
Further reading
- Cluzel, Jean-Sébastien (editor), ISBN 978-2-87844-307-3.
- Nash, Elizabeth R. Edo Print Art and Its Western Interpretations (PDF). Thesis.
- Rümelin, Christian, and Ellis Tinios. The Japanese and French Print in the Era of Impressionism (2013)
- Scheyer, Ernst. "Far Eastern Art and French Impressionism". The Art Quarterly 6#2 (Spring 1943): 116–143.
- Weisberg, Gabriel P. "Reflecting on Japonisme: The State of the Discipline in the Visual Arts". Journal of Japonisme 1.1 (2016): 3–16.
- Weisberg, Gabriel P. and Yvonne M. L. Weisberg (1990). Japonisme, An Annotated Bibliography.
- Wichmann, Siegfried (1981). Japonisme: The Japanese Influence on Western Art in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Harmony Books.
- Widar, Halen (1990). Christopher Dresser.
External links
- "Japonisme" from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History
- "Orientalism, Absence, and Quick~Firing Guns: The Emergence of Japan as a Western Text"
- "Japonisme: Exploration and Celebration"
- Marc Maison's Gallery specialized in japonisme
- The Private Collection of Edgar Degas, fully digitized text from The Metropolitan Museum of Art libraries; contains essay "Degas, Japanese Prints, and Japonisme" (pp. 247–260)