Japonisme

"Japonesque" redirects here. For the Koda Kumi album, see Japonesque (album).

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec lithograph poster of 1892

Japonism, or Japonisme, the original French term, was first used in 1872 by Jules Claretie in his book L'Art Francais en 1872 and by Philippe Burty (1830–1890) in Japanisme III. La Renaissance Literaire et Artistique in the same year. Japonism might be considered a general term for the influence of the arts of Japan on those of the West, whereas in France Japonisme 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.

From the 1860s, ukiyo-e, Japanese wood-block prints, became a source of inspiration for many European impressionist painters in France and elsewhere, and eventually for Art Nouveau and Cubism. Artists were especially affected by the lack of perspective and shadow, the flat areas of strong color, the compositional freedom in placing the subject off-centre, with mostly a low diagonal axis to the background. Unlike other varieties of Orientalism, Japonism mostly involved Western artists using elements of Eastern styles in works showing their own culture; if only because of the difficulty of travel, there were relatively few artists attempting Eastern scenes in a Western style.

History

17th century precedents

Further information: Orientalism in early modern France

Since the later 17th century, Japanese ceramics exported from Arita had already been quite influential in Europe, and to a lesser extent, Japanese lacquer. Japanese blue and white porcelain was exported and reproduced in Europe, as well as some very characteristic Japanese porcelain styles such as the Kakiemon style, which was widely reproduced throughout Europe, notably at the Meissen manufactory in Germany, or the Chantilly manufactory in France. In the 18th century a handful of Japanese plants were in Dutch and English gardens, but Japanese garden style remained as unknown in Europe as Japanese textiles or woodblock prints.

19th century re-opening

Appert Frères - Carp Vase
(Walters Art Museum)

During the Kaei era (1848–1854), after more than 200 years of seclusion, foreign merchant ships of various nationalities again began to visit Japan. Following the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan ended a long period of national isolation and became open to imports from the West, including photography and printing techniques. In turn, many Japanese ukiyo-e prints and ceramics, followed in time by Japanese textiles, bronzes and cloisonné enamels and other arts came to Europe and America and soon gained popularity.

Japonism started with the frenzy to collect Japanese art, particularly print art called ukiyo-e of which some of the first samples were to be seen in Paris. About 1856, the French artist Félix Bracquemond first came across a copy of the sketch book Hokusai Manga at the workshop of his printer; they had been used as packaging for a consignment of porcelain. In 1860 and 1861, reproductions (in black and white) of ukiyo-e were published in books about Japan. Baudelaire wrote in a letter in 1861: "Quite a while ago I received a packet of japonneries. I've split them up among my friends.." and the following year La Porte Chinoise, a shop selling various Japanese goods including prints, opened in the rue de Rivoli, the most fashionable shopping street in Paris. In 1871 Camille Saint-Saëns wrote a one-act opera, La princesse jaune to a libretto by Louis Gallet, in which a Dutch girl is jealous of her artist friend's fixation on an ukiyo-e woodblock print.

Despite Braquemond's initial contact with one of the classic masterpieces of ukiyo-e, most of the prints reaching the West were by contemporary Japanese artists of the 1860s and 1870s.

At the same time, many 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. those of Zen masters Sesshū and Shūbun).

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 Edo era prints in Europe, especially in France. Among them, the liberal economist Henri Cernuschi and the critic Theodore Duret (both in 1871 – 1872). Earlier, in England, the official Japanese section at the 1862 International Exhibition in London, was prepared by Sir Rutherford Alcock (British Minister in Edo from 1859) and included his own collection. This is considered one of the most important events in the history of Japanese art in the West.(W.Halen.p. 34) The English botanist, designer and theorist Christopher Dresser(1834–1904) bought items from this display and was one of the few designers who visited Japan (in 1876 as a guest of the Japanese nation) and who consistently promoted Japanese art throughout his long career. Several Japanese art dealers subsequently resided in Paris, such as Tadamasa Hayashi and Iijima Hanjuro. The Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878 presented many pieces of Japanese art.

Artists and movements

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

Japanese artists who had a great influence included Utamaro and Hokusai. While Japanese art was becoming popular in Europe, the bunmeikaika (文明開化, "Westernization") led to a loss in prestige for the prints in Japan.

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.

Although works in all media were influenced, printmaking was not affected, although lithography, not woodcut, was the most popular medium. The prints and posters of Toulouse-Lautrec can hardly be imagined without the Japanese influence. Not until Félix Vallotton and Paul Gauguin was woodcut itself much used for japonesque works, and then mostly in black and white.

Whistler has been considered important in introducing England to Japanese art in the same way as Paris has been considered the center of all things Japanese (Whistler acquired a good collection during his years there before coming to England in 1859). This may be the case in the context of Fine Art, but in England the study and purchase of Japanese art had begun as early as 1852. An essential element of Japanese art, the use of conventional or flat decoration (and lack of perspective, see above) was in fact one of the propositions in Owen Jones The Grammar of Ornament 1856. Decorative Art, if not Fine Art, in England when influenced by the principles derived from arts of Japan and is referred to as Anglo-Japanese in style, and distinct from the Japonisme of France.

Several of Van Gogh's paintings imitate ukiyo-e in style and in motif. For example, 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 Courtesan in 1887 after finding an ukiyo-e by Kesai Eisen on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustré in 1886. At this time, in Antwerp, he was already collecting Japanese prints.

Japonism also had an effect on music. In 1885, Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado possibly inspired by the Japanese Native Village exhibition in Knightsbridge, London, although as the exhibition did not open until after the opera was already in rehearsal. This could have been confused with the earlier Japanese village which had been proposed in 1873 following the International Exhibition in Vienna that year, and built at Alexandra Palace in North London, by 1875. Sullivan used a version of the song, "Ton-yare Bushi" by Ômura Masujiro in The Mikado. Giacomo Puccini also made use of the same tune in his opera Madama Butterfly in 1904.

There were many characteristics of Japanese art that influenced these artists. In the Japonisme stage, they were more interested in the asymmetry and irregularity of Japanese art. Japanese art consisted of off centered arrangements with no perspective, light with no shadows and vibrant colors on plane surfaces. These elements were in direct contrast to Roman-Greco art and were embraced by 19th century artists, who believed they freed the Western artistic mentality from academic conventions.

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. These forms and flat blocks of color were the precursors to abstract art in modernism.

Japonism also involved the adoption of Japanese elements or style across all the applied arts, from furniture, textiles, jewellery to graphic design.

Recent scholarship has shown that the influence of Japanese visual art on early Modernist experiments in Western literature was also highly significant. Ezra Pound began his long engagement with East Asian culture in 1909 via viewings of Ukiyo-e prints in the company of the curator Laurence Binyon at London's British Museum, giving rise to the pronounced Imagist tendency to offer poetic visions of Japan via ekphrastic descriptions of such artworks. This tendency is most obvious in the work of poets of the Imagist movement such as Richard Aldington, John Gould Fletcher, and Amy Lowell.

Gallery

Chantilly soft-paste porcelain bottle in the Japanese Kakiemon style, France, 1730-1735.

• 
  James McNeill Whistler, The Princess from the Land of Porcelain, 1863-1865
• 
  James Tissot, Young Women Looking at Japanese Screens, c. 1869-70
• 
  Claude Monet, Madame Monet in a Japanese Costume, 1875
• 
  Vincent Van Gogh - Portrait of Père Tanguy, 1887, example of Ukiyo-e influence in Western art
• 
  Vincent Van Gogh, The Blooming Plum Tree (after Hiroshige), 1887
• 
  George Hendrik Breitner - Girl in a White Kimono, oil on canvas, 1894

See also

• Anglo-Japanese style
• Arabist – "Arab" style
• Chinoiserie – the collecting of art objects from China
• Occidentalism – for Eastern Views of the West
• Orientalism – Western pictures in "oriental" style
• Woodblock printing in Japan
• Woodcut

References

Notes

• Halen Widar Christopher Dresser 1990 Phaidon.
• thesis: Edo print art and its Western interpretations (pdf)

External links

• "Japonisme" from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History
• Influence on Vincent van Gogh under header "An overview"
• "Orientalism, Absence, and Quick~Firing Guns:The Emergence of Japan as a Western Text"
• "Japonisme: Exploration and Celebration"
• "Japonism" from the Museu Picasso Barcelona
• "Exhibition: Secret Images. Picasso and japanese erotic prints" from the Museu Picasso Barcelona's blog
• Marc Maison's Gallery specialized in Japonism