Fascination of Western Artists and Designer with Japan and Japanese Arts. By Joshua Bryan

Centre for Cultural and Visual Studies, 3rd Year BA.
Joshua Bryan for Dr. Matthew Rampsley
December 2000.

How would you explain the fascination of western artists and designers with Japan?

Illustrations (Not currenly included in the online version of the essay.)

Figure 1 Jane Avril 1893, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)

Figure 2 Gare St. Lazare 1873, Edouard Manet (1832-1883).

Figure 3 The Bird Festival in the Fields near Asakusa 1857, Hiroshige (1797- 1858).

Figure 4 Rain 1889, Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890).

Figure 5 Evening Rain at Atake on the Great Bridge 1857, Hiroshige.

Figure 6 The Peacock Room 1864, James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903).

"When relations with Japan were normalised during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Western nations and their artists entered into an intense relationship with the Land of the Rising Sun. Stimulated by cultural and commercial treaties, by an exchange of official envoys and students, interest in Japanese art and culture spread throughout the Western nations, affecting a number of countries simultaneously."1

After Japan's self-imposed isolation ended, towards the end of the Edo period, in 1854 the new trade treaties guaranteed access to a fascinating source of inspiration for artists and designers in Europe. Originally Japanese art in the West took the form of woodblock prints. They were convenient and cheap packaging for exports of porcelain, however they soon gained notable collectors including the painters Edouard Manet (1832-1883) and James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). In 1867, 1878 and 1889 a comprehensive display of Japanese art and culture was part of the Universal Exposition in Paris, which could be said to have triggered the Japanese craze.

The study and absorption of Japanese aesthetics and culture by artists and writers became known as "Japonisme". The term was first coined in 1872 when the French critic Philippe Burty discerned that the craze was influencing all of the visual arts in a variety of different ways, initially among artists in Paris, but later Britain, the rest of Europe and the United States.

By the 1860's there were many shops in Paris, which sold everything entrancing and exotic, to emerge from this newly discovered world in the east, which catered for the artistic communities' love for Japan. Most excitingly "...artists took from the prints whatever they were seeking, so that it becomes impossible to speak of their influence as if it were a single definable quality."2 Despite an initial "tendency to lump all of Japanese art together in on rough-hewn mass ... apparent even from the beginnings of Japonisme"3 the Parisian artists first exposed to the prints of the Japanese masters Hiroshige (1797- 1858) and Hokusai (1760-1849), were influenced on a number of different levels.

It is believed that Manga by Hokusai was the first Japanese art to enter the west. This, was a series of prints in 15 volumes. These prints were primarily drawings with calligraphic lines, thus initially the influence of the Japanese line was the dominant characteristic of Japonisme. This particular linear attribute can be seen in the work of the American painter Mary Stevenson Cassatt (1844-1926), whose intimate pictures of women bathing and dressing draw on the fine and simple lines of Japanese prints while parallels in content are also apparent within the prints of the Japanese artist Utamaro, who was famed for his images of beautiful women.

Similarly the theatre posters of the French painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) with their uncompromising outlines and bold colours illustrate the Japanese influence experienced by a variety of artists. One good example of Lautrec's theatre posters is Jane Avril 1893 (Figure 1) which could be compared to the depiction's of the Kabuki actors in the prints of Sharaku.

The Ukiyo-e prints, meaning "pictures of the floating world", remain the dominant type of Japanese art imported to the west, and were very popular in artistic circles in Paris in the mid to late 19th century. Sharaku, Utamaro, Hokusai and Hiroshige were the leading figures in this style of woodblock prints depicting actors, courtesans, theatres and a life of pleasure which struck a cord among forward looking artists of Paris, who were keen to paint the activities of the modern city. Impressionist painting was rooted in modernity , focusing on the growth of life within the cities. Japan's "floating world" provided an equally luxurious range of images.

Within Japan at the time of the Edo period (1615-1868) "most artists lived in urban centres, clustered together in districts where potential clients, equipped with the guides to the city, could readily find them."4

"The bustling capital of Edo could be compared with the crowded streets of Paris; Sharaku's Kabuki actors found soul-mates in Lautrec's posters of Jane Avril; the tea shops and brothels of Yoshiwara were venues for middle class pleasures on a par with the caf�s and nightclubs of the Left Bank of Paris..... The intense preoccupation with nature and the changing of the seasons further reinforced the parallel."5

Although the "leading four" Japanese print artists dominated western perceptions of Japanese art, many other poor quality prints by lesser known artists also found there way to the west. To some degree the reaction within the west to these prints controlled the work that has been produced within Japan since. "The original belief that all the prints were works of high art meant to be seen in the cool, refined setting of the tea ceremony had given way to a realisation that most were nothing more than a cheap popular art form meant for mass consumption by the unrefined.... It was only when Western appreciation of the prints filtered back to Japan that they began to achieve any status in their home territory"6. It could be concluded from these observations that one of the reasons Western artists and designers continue to be fascinated with Japanese art is because their opinions have partly shaped the work being produced .

The advent of Modernism in the West resulted in the drive among many artists to break away from classical and traditional methods of visual expression. Paradoxically the art which became influential was steeped in the strict traditions of the Japanese artistic schools, however to the Europeans they represented a break from the classical styles of composition and form.

"Japanese art provided a new impetus and a new direction, an alternative to the conventions of European art at a time when old standards were being questioned"7 European artists found Japanese prints not only compatible in content, but that they provided new visual solutions to old problems of representing form.

European artists "saw that a "slice of life" effect could be achieved by placing their subjects off-centre and sometimes even by chopping part of the subject off with the picture's borders."8 With the simultaneous rise in the prominence of photography and Japonisme, new arrangements of space, perspective, and composition attracted interest and influenced painters to consider new aesthetic principles. These principles were adapted and incorporated into paintings by many artists working at the time, and especially in the paintings by Edgar Degas of the ballet and those by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) of street scenes, where the artists achieved a desirable momentary quality.

"In photography such effects were regarded as incidental.... By transposing those signs to painting, however Degas has done the unexpected; they demand the attention precisely because they signify the new naturalistic vision"9. This style of cut-off image in painting and prints may largely owe its origins to Japanese art.

"Degas appreciated the strange and unconventional viewpoints used by Japanese artists, their repudiation of post-Renaissance western perspective and their practice (which he had already imitated) of allowing figures to be cut off by the picture frame."10

Artists coming from the opposite direction to those in favour of the development of an urban society also found aspects to respect within Japanese art. The disenchantment felt by some towards "progress" and the materialistic culture led some artists to an appreciation of Japanese culture, partly as a consequence of the general Romanticisation of the east, as had been the case with Orientalism. The Japanese were often perceived as a na�ve and innocent people, a pre-industrial society.

The "omission of detail in the interests of the picture as a whole"11, the "elimination of the insignificant"12 was a characteristic of Japanese prints which influenced the French painter Claude Monet (1840-1926). Monet's painting of contemporary life La Grenouillere 1860-1926 has clear formal and compositional similarities with Hokusai's Gohyakurakandera 1831-1834. Monet was also drawn to the way of life depicted in the Japanese prints. A "calm meditative world of the tea ceremony, where a correct gesture or a single perfect flower could be contemplated in ethereal silence."13. He was fascinated not only by the aesthetics of the art but also the exotic and romantic impression he received of the culture, which drew him to include many Japanese fans, blinds, and other decorative objects, into his paintings. In one painting from 1876 called La Japonaise he painted his wife dressed in a kimono surrounded by fans. This is one example of the more superficial way in which some artists responded to Japanese art: a trend known as "Japonaiserie". In the essay Japonisme: Reflections in Western Art Marie Conte-Helm describes the difference between "Japonisme" and "Japonaiserie":

"Japonaiserie implies a superficial response to Japan and Japanese art; the inclusion of fans and other exotic elements into western paintings which otherwise bear no association with Japan. Japonisme, however, suggests a deeper understanding and penetration into the ethos of Japanese art and it is often in works of art which include no overt references to Japan that the lessons of Japanese art are most truly reflected."14

In western minds a simplified notion of Japan and a composite image of the landscape emerged in literature, prints and painting: Japan was the Sacred Mount, Fuji, cloudless skies and cherry blossoms. Many of these stereotypical images which pervade some western paintings could have been inspired by patronising travel accounts from westerners who had visited Japan like the novelist Pierre Loti.

In some respects Monet's paintings of his famous Japanese style water garden in Giverny, and his wife dressed in Japanese costume do represent Japonaiserie. Monet saw Japanese compositional "devices appropriate for conveying impressions and sensations..." because the Japanese were misconceived as " 'primitive', and the Japanese prints as masterpieces of the na�ve vision"15 in a similar way to the manner in which Gauguin admired native Tahitian art. However it is also important to note that Monet's fixation with quiet scenes of nature and the way he arranged the composition of paintings also illustrate a more significant aesthetic influence, perhaps from the meditative landscapes of Hiroshige.

In the case of western artists influenced by Japan today, a less simplistic view of Japanese society is sometimes observed. There has been an acceptance of the undeniable technological advances made, although some artists such as the Scottish painter Elizabeth Blackadder still emphasise and thus perpetuate the idyllic perceptions of Japan. These perceptions of a simple and noble society governed by rigid traditions and social customs have their origins in the 19th century. Due to the general hybridity of popular culture in the "developed" world, contemporary Japanese art has been arguably as much influenced by artists from the United States and Europe as vice versa.

The painters Manet, Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and many more incorporated the traditional Japanese principles of perspective into their paintings. If we compare Manet's Gare St. Lazare 1873 (Figure 2) and The Bird Festival in the Fields near Asakusa 1857 by Hiroshige (Figure 3) we can see the similarities on various levels. Both pictures are "cropped", in Manet's case a "declaration of modernity"16, and both have the dominant foreground separated by vertical lines from the landscapes in the background.

Van Gogh's discovery of Japanese art is accounted a "stunning revelation"17 by one biographer. By the time he was found Japonisme many of the Impressionists, like Monet, had already adopted the "strange high angles of the Japanese street scenes"18 and were using the bold colours and simple lines. However, Van Gogh continuously studied and consulted as guides his own collection of Japanese prints, going beyond basic emulation but "assimilating artistic concepts: effects of heightened colour, flattened shapes, and amplified planes..."19. Despite drawing inspiration from the patronising written accounts of the culture constructing an image of Japan, he developed a considered understanding of the aesthetic principles of Japanese art, and a mature respect for the culture. He considered the wisdom of simplicity and purity in contrast to the busy world of Europe.
"If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass.....
Come now, isn't it almost an actual religion which these Japanese teach us, who live in nature as though they themselves were flowers."20

As with the previous example, Van Gogh's Rain 1889 (Figure 4) can to compared with Hiroshige's Evening Rain at Atake on the Great Bridge from 1857 (Figure 5) revealing the appropriation of Japanese principles. The diagonal composition, the large simple blocks of colour, and the slanted-vertical lines spread roughly evenly over the surface can be observed in both pictures. Van Gogh had sought to unite all the younger artists working ways that led on from Impressionism, the neo-Impressionists, with the intention of using Japanese techniques in a bolder than had previously been attempted.

Within traditional Japanese art the distinction between decorative and "high" art was not so clear as in the West. Many of the well known artists like Hokusai and Hiroshige designed prints for 6 panel screens and fans. Japonisme and Orientalism were both movements within western art that affected artists and designers in the decorative arts as well as the fields of painting and sculpture. The Japanese images of stalks and other birds in Hiroshige's landscape woodcut prints are reflected in the Peacock Room (Figure 6) by James McNeill Whistler. Similarly the successful ceramists Bernard and Janet Leach worked in Japan and Europe incorporating numerous decorative Japanese designs into their pottery to make fashionable eastern references. For Bernard Leach, a Bah�'�, his relationship to Japan since childhood and the Japanese motifs within his work attempted to reflect his understanding of the essential unity and equality of humanity, as did many of his writings including East Meets West.

The influence of Japanese art upon artists and designers in the West is extensive and difficult to clearly define. The fascination which first captured the imaginations of European and North American artists in the mid 19th century is still a powerful force, although the understandings of Japanese culture are significantly more complex and reflect reality to a more accurate extent.

Despite this trend towards rational and correct awareness of culture in Japan, some artists, in both Japan and the West, wish to continue and dwell upon the traditional way of life recorded in the work of the Ukiyo master's prints. Even if this kind of life can no longer be hoped to exist with the same degree of purity and detachment from material progress. Hybridity and the dominance of American culture in contemporary Japan make it all the more difficult to define the clearly Japanese aesthetics. In the 19th century, the "new" principles of compositional balance, linear qualities, and blocks of colour, which originally influenced the Impressionists, proved to be only the beginnings of appropriation and adaptation of outside influences in the relentless search for the fresh and unique. We can see in the block colour gloss paintings of Gary Hume and the dominant lines in art from the decorative posters by painter and designer Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) to the simple sketches of Tracy Emin, the repercussions of Japonisme are still spreading today.

Footnotes
1 Weisburg, Gabriel P., Japonisme in Paris, from Arts Magazine (USA) January 1989, page 36-39.
2 Sweetman, David, The Love of Many Things: A Life of Vincent van Gogh (Hodder and Stroughton, London, 1990).
3 Conte-Helm, Marie, Japonisme: Japanese Reflections in Western Art (Ceolfrith Press No.75, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland 1986).
4 Guth, Christine, Japanese Art of the Edo Period (George Weidenfield and Nicolson, London 1996).
5 Conte-Helm, Marie, Japonisme: Japanese Reflections in Western Art (Ceolfrith Press No.75, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland 1986).
6 Sweetman, David, The Love of Many Things: A Life of Vincent van Gogh (Hodder and Stroughton, London, 1990).
7 Conte-Helm, Marie, Japonisme: Japanese Reflections in Western Art (Ceolfrith Press No.75, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland 1986).
8 Internet source: http://www.smcm.edu/academics/aldiv/art/webcourses/arth100/smallworld/japonisme/imp.htm
9Rubin, James H., Impressionism (Phaidon, London 1999).
10 Pool, Phoebe, Impressionism (Thames and Hudson, London, 1967).
11 Pool, Phoebe, Impressionism (Thames and Hudson, London, 1967).
12 Conte-Helm, Marie, Japonisme: Japanese Reflections in Western Art (Ceolfrith Press No.75, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland 1986).
13 Conte-Helm, Marie, Japonisme: Japanese Reflections in Western Art (Ceolfrith Press No.75, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland 1986).
14 Conte-Helm, Marie, Japonisme: Japanese Reflections in Western Art (Ceolfrith Press No.75, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland 1986).
15 Smith, Paul, Impressionism (George Weidenfirld & Nicholson Ltd., London, 1995).
16 Rubin, James H., Impressionism (Phaidon, London 1999).
17 Sweetman, David, The Love of Many Things: A Life of Vincent van Gogh (Hodder and Stroughton, London, 1990).
18 Sweetman, David, The Love of Many Things: A Life of Vincent van Gogh (Hodder and Stroughton, London, 1990).
19 Weisburg, Gabriel P., Japonisme in Paris, from Arts Magazine (USA) January 1989, page 36-39.
20 M. Roskill, ed., The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (New York, 1967).

Bibliography

Internet source:

http://www.smcm.edu/academics/aldiv/art/webcourses/arth100/smallworld/japonis

me/imp.htm

Book Sources:
Guth, Christine, Japanese Art of the Edo Period (George Weidenfield and Nicolson,

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Pool, Phoebe, Impressionism (Thames and Hudson, London, 1967).

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No.75, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland 1986).

Smith, Paul, Impressionism (George Weidenfirld & Nicholson Ltd., London, 1995).

Rubin, James H., Impressionism (Phaidon, London 1999).

Sweetman, David, The Love of Many Things: A Life of Vincent van Gogh (Hodder and

Stroughton, London, 1990).

Weisburg, Gabriel P., Japonisme in Paris, from Arts Magazine (USA) January 1989,

page 36-39.

M. Roskill, ed., The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh (New York, 1967).

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