Lecture 10: Japonisme: The reception of Japanese culture in Europe in the late 19th century

Key Ideas

To Europeans (3)

To Japanese (2)

Japonisme (1860s-1890s) in the West as a dense brew of appropriation, commerce, & respect (The New York Times), involving reciprocal artistic influences between Japan and the West.

To Europeans:

1. Increasingly industrialised, European art world was seeking new direction

2. Fascinated by exotic appeal & artistic novelty of Japan

   • Projection of a mythical image of an innocent, idyllic, pre-modern society

3. YET web of preconceptions & prejudices forming the Western perception of Japanese art

   • Undercurrent of superiority towards Japan as an exotic other

   • Projection of European artistic hierarchies: Japanese art as purely decorative

   • European utilisation of Japanese artistic sources = progressive, Japanese use of European styles = copying

To Japanese:

1. Wanted to catch up w/ the Western nations & achieve parity w/ them

   • Looked to the West as a model for its own industrialisation

   • Fuelled its industrialisation through:

     (1) Foreign export

     (2) Participation in international fairs

2. Often assumed to have played a passive role, BUT carefully controlled the image of Japan

Japonisme

Historical context

Historical context

• 1860s-90s

  • During European Modernism

• 1st coined by French art critic Philippe Burty

  • ‘The study of the art & genius of Japan’

• Art historian Klaus Berger: ‘the recognition, admiration, adoption, & reinterpretation of the Eastern way of seeing’

• Tremendous fascination for things Japanese that swept Europe & America

• Influenced Western art & design

Timeline

1500s-1920s

1500s

• A few European merchants & missionaries had already made their way to Japan

1630s-1853

• Japan’s fears of foreign influence

  • Rulers expelled all resident Europeans

  • Contact w/ the outside world was severely restricted

• Only direct link w/ Europe was through a small no. of Dutch traders working for the Dutch East India Company

  • Trickle of Japanese artefacts into Europe

  • Made for export

  • BUT still made quite a disproportionate impact in Europe

    • Became highly prized status symbols in European aristocratic circles

• Little distinction in Europe between Japanese & Chinese products

1853

• Western powers forced Japan to open up to international trade

• Trade treaties signed between Japan & the USA, Russia, Britain, France, & the Netherlands (5)

• Surge in trade of Japanese art

  • Esp. England & France

  • Travellers to Japan increasingly brought back souvenirs of their own

  • Much greater volume of Japanese objects in circulation

    = fascination w/ Japan surged, ‘discovery’ of Japanese art

2nd half of the 1800s

• Great international exhibitions began to be organised

  • Highly successful, enormous audience figures

  • Further increased awareness of Japanese art in the West

  • In response to this enthusiasm:

    • Specialist dealers selling Japanese artefacts sprang up throughout Europe & America

    • Japanese export industry flourished

      • Eagerly pursued a policy of industrialization

      • Mass producing exotic goods for export to the West

1862: ‘Japanese Court’ - International Exhibition

• 1st time that Japanese art was seen by a wide audience in Europe (>6 million visitors)

• Hugely successful

• Majority of objects was curated & exhibited by Rutherford Alcock

  • 1st British diplomatic representative to live in Japan

  • Enthusiastic collector of Japanese art

• BUT a group of Japanese envoys who toured the exhibition considered the selection completely unrepresentative of Japan

1867: Paris International Exhibition

• 1st time the Japanese government showed their own objects

• Enormous audience figures (~7 million visitors)

• After this in 1868, Japan entered Meiji period

  • A revolution in Japan resulting in the overthrow of the Shogun (military ruler) and restoration of power of the emperor Meiji

  • Japan attempted to catch up w/ the Western nations & achieve parity w/ them

    • New Meiji gov. immediately initiated a major campaign for the modernisation of Japan along Western lines

    • Opened up opportunities for novel forms of artistry

      • E.g. wearing of swords & samurai were banned, metalworkers adapted their skills for the export market (e.g. decorative metalwork)

    • Realised that world fairs offered an ideal opportunity to establish Japan on the international stage

      (1) To demonstrate the quality & uniqueness of Japanese products abroad

      • ALTHOUGH Japanese industrial products were still no match for post-industrial revolution Western counterparts

      (2) To learn about the latest Western technology

      (3) To promote exports → acquire foreign currency needed to implement modernisation program

      • Economic interests

        = involvement in these exhibitions became official Japanese policy, participated in many ⭐

1876: Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition

• 1st time that Japanese art went to America

• The official English language report accompanying the Japanese catalogue (created by the Japanese government) expressly underlined the similarities between:

  (A) The medieval European artisan

  (B) His Japanese counterpart

  • In being both artist & artisan

Late 1800s

• Gap between fantasy & reality widened

• Japan did slowly catch up with the West

  • Developed both industrially & militarily

  • Western nations began to get quite uneasy

    • Dismissive of Japan’s achievements: merely hollow imitations of the accomplishments its betters

    • Fear that the charm of Japanese art would be lost once the country came too much in contact w/ the West

    • Would have to receive ‘barbaric copies of our own works’

By the 1920s

• Japonisme craze faded away

• No longer novelty

Preconceptions & Prejudices of Japanese art (3)

1. Even at the peak of Japonisme, there was always an undercurrent of superiority towards Japan as an exotic other

   • Anna Jackson: ‘Ultimately, the enthusiasm for Japan and the admiration for the lives of the supposedly simple, innocent Japanese people was entirely dependent on the unshakeable belief of the ultimate superiority of Western civilisation’

   • Patronising tone in Western commentaries: ‘quaint’, ‘curious’

     • E.g. Christopher Dresser (British designer in the Anglo-Japanese style): ‘Japanese shapes certainly often display quaintness rather than grace’

     • The Japanese’s celebrated love of nature as ‘childlike’, primitive

2. Projection of European artistic hierarchies on to Japanese art

   • Japanese art as purely decorative, not able to appeal to deep intellectual/political feeling

   • A purely Western construct: vs. in Japan, the terms ‘art’, ‘fine art’, and decorative art’ didnt even exist

     • Until Japan needed to learn & adopt these terms for participation in world fairs ⭐ (e.g. writing of catalogues)

   • E.g. comparison of Japan to the European Middle Ages

     • Artists = artisans

     • Because Japan’s achievements were most visible in the ‘decorative arts’ rather than ‘fine arts’

     • Implies that Japan was still only on the 1st stage of artistic progress, lagging behind Western civilisation

     • ALTHOUGH the Japanese government did reinforce this image of Japan

3. Chinoiserie

   • Oliver Impey: ‘The European idea of what the products of the distant lands that came to be known as the Orient/Far East were like, or should be like’

   • Lumping of all Eastern objects as equivalent

Influences of Japanese Art on Western art

Woodblock prints

• ‘Pictures of the floating world’ (ukiyo-e)

  • Depicted scenes from the transient, floating world of the Japanese pleasure quarters

    • Courtesans, teahouse girls, Kabuki actors

• Available cheaply & in large quantities in Europe from the early 1860s

  • Mostly printed albums & single sheet prints

  • A time when artists were eager to find a novel form of inspiration

    • End of Impressionism

• Were not considered especially good art in Japan

  • Mass produced

  • Highly disposable

  • BUT were still a revelation to Europeans

• Provided novel ways of visualising images

  • Basic conventions of Japanese art were quite different from Western art

    • E.g. use of unusual viewpoints

      • Mount Fuji through a hole in a tree

    • Bold outlines

    • Asymmetrical compositions

    • Strong diagonals

    • Lack of necessity to place main subject in the foreground

    • Building up of a picture using strong flat areas of colour

    • Lack of light & contrast

    • Delight in animal/plant patterning

    • Lack of geometric perspective

      • Use of vertical perspective instead

      • No fixed vanishing point

        = new freedom from imitative/ photographic representation

Influences of Japanese Art on Western art

Development over time

Stage 1: Wholesale inclusion of Japanese props/attire in paintings

• One of the earliest stages of Japonisme

• Frequent issues: orientalism/cultural appropriation, institutional racism, racialised iconography

• E.g. Camille Monet in Japanese Costume (La Japonaise) by Claude Monet (1876)

• E.g. Vincent van Gogh

  • Was the most open about his debt to Japanese art

    • ‘In a way, all my art is founded on Japanese art’

  • He and his brother Theo collected enormous amounts of Japanese prints

  • Copied (in oil paint) woodblock prints from his own collection

    • To investigate the artistic devices of Japanese landscapes

Stage 2: Poses & pictorial conventions from Japanese prints

• By the 1880s, knowledge about Japanese art was becoming deeper & more discriminating

• Wider variety of Japanese art was becoming accessible + growing numbers of in-depth studies of the subject

• Moved many artists towards Japanese pictorial schemes

  • Flatter compositions; large areas of flat colour

  • An emphasis on outline

  • Unusual compositional perspectives

  • Asymmetry

  • Cropping

  • Unexpected figural poses

  • Bright colours

    • E.g. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril at the Jardin de Paris (1893)

  • E.g. in Japanese art, human figures were depicted w/ an intimacy that was unknown to Europeans

    • Natural & spontaneous gestures

    • Simpler, day-to-day settings > traditionally formal studies

      = in the West, developed a new attitude towards the sitter

      • E.g. The Tub, Edgar Degas (1886)

Stage 3: Adaptation of Japanese artistic conventions to Western artists’ own purposes

• Extracting the essence of Japanese art and using it as a springboard for their own creativities

• Much more subtle, harder to identify

• At this point, the Japanese influence is often second-hand

  • Encountered through other works of Japan-influenced contemporaries

• E.g. The Vision after the Sermon, Paul Gaugin (1905)

Influences of Japanese Applied Arts on Western art

Historical context

Early 19th century

• After the Industrial Revolution (ended 1830)

• New materials & industrial processes offered exciting possibilities for production

By the mid-19th century

• European artists & designers were struggling to cope w/ negative effects of industrialization & demands of mass production

  • E.g. Brought about the Arts & Crafts movement

    • To recreate the bygone age of the artist craftsmen

    • For the improvement of the quality of life & art

    • Stressed importance of:

      • Simplicity

      • Sincerity

      • A close study of nature

    • Sought inspiration in the idealised past of the Middle Ages & exotic kingdoms of the Orient

      • Saw it as a ‘fresh well of art’ uncorrupted by industrialisation

      • Morally superior to European art ⭐

Influences of Japanese Applied Arts on Western art

Development over time (3 stages + limitations)

Stage 1: Simple incorporation of Japanese motifs

• Derived from Japanese prints & decorative arts

  • Adaptation of designs/motifs

    • E.g. from the Hokusai Manga

  • In jewellery, fabric, & wallpaper

    • E.g. cloisonné jewellery

      • Linear forms of woodblock prints lend themselves well to the technique of cloisonné enamel (metal wirework containing flat areas of enamel colours)

Stage 2: Usage of Japanese items in daily life

• Sometimes changed how objects were used

• E.g. Japanese netsuke - carved toggles used to hang things from your belt

• E.g. Ornamental textiles

  • Extremely popular in European homes in late 19th century

  • Designed for the export market, to be displayed on walls

  • E.g. Fukusa

    • Traditionally used to drape over Japanese gifts/as wrapping cloths

    • Used by Westerners to hang/frame on walls

Stage 3: Reverse Influences

• Flow of ideas, visual references & techniques from the West → Japan

  • 2-way influence ⭐

  • E.g. French cloisonné which had been influenced by Japanese art then had enormous impacts on Japanese cloisonné

• Japanese makers were very much aware of the European interest in Japanese art

  • Deliberately catered to this interest ⭐

  • Japan DIDN’T play a passive role in Japonisme

    • E.g. development of artistic textiles

      • Deliberately mimicked a fine art format (like a framed picture/European tapestry)

Limitations

• European manufacturers WEREN’T always able to replicate original Japanese techniques

• E.g. lacquer

  • Traditional Japanese wire cloisonné techniques vs. Western electrode deposition; made cavities in the metal body for enamel to sit in

La Japonaise, Claude Monet (1876)

Historical context

• Monet was very interested in Japanese art (esp. prints)

• 2015: Kimono Wednesdays controversy at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

  • The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston owned the painting

    • Lent the painting to an exhibition in Japan

  • A no. of replica kimonos were created by the Japanese sponsors

    • Japanese visitors were encouraged to try them on as part of the viewing experience

  • When the painting returned to Boston, these sessions continued

    • Intended to encourage close engagement w/ the painting

    • BUT many visitors regarded the event as an offensive stereotyping & exoticising of Asian-Americans

    • Sparked huge amounts of protests

Analysis

• Monet’s wife, Camille

• Clothing: a dashing red kimono

  • Detailed Samurai embroidery positioned near the center of the canvas

    • Dark hair, stern facial expression, strong grip on sword

    • Contrasts Camille’s blonde hair, holding a fan delicately & smiling

      = emphasises difference between ‘Japanese’ setting & the European woman within it

• Holding a fan

  • In the colours of the French flag

• Pose: turned in profile, showing her face turned towards the viewer

  • Likely inspired by gestures found in traditional Japanese dance

• Wearing a blonde wig to emphasise her Western identity (hair is normally dark)

• Background: printed Japanese fans hanging on wall, seemingly at random

  • In particular: red fan to the right of Camille’s raised right hand

    • Shows a Japanese woman with dark hair, wearing a kimono & traditional hairstyle

    • Separated from the others w/ a contrasting red background

    • Face tilted in the opposite direction to Camille’s, with an almost astonished facial expression looking at her European counterpart

• Floor: Japanese-style tatami mat

Interpretation

• Shows the initial stages of Japonisme: the performance & appropriation of Japanese culture rather than an authentic Japanese environment

  • Copying & conspicuous use of Japanese props in paintings

  • In reality, there is very little Japanese about it

• Debates over whether the painting was depicting orientalism/cultural appropriation, institutional racism, racialised iconography, representation of minority groups

Vincent van Gogh’s copy of The Flowering Plum Tree in the Kamedo Garden, Hiroshige

Historical context

• Van Gogh copied Hiroshige’s print in oil paint

  • From his own collection of Japanese woodblock prints

  • To investigate the artistic devices of Japanese landscapes

Analysis

• Van Gogh has clearly reinterpreted the image

  • Altered the relationship between height & width slightly

    • Closer to the golden ratio

    • More familiar to Western art

  • Bright orange framing strips

  • Contains random, unrelated Japanese characters he copied from another print

    • In reality: advertise a brothel

  • Everything is a bit more dramatic & exaggerated vs. Japanese original

The Tub, Edgar Degas (1886)

Historical context

• Degas had a copy of the Japanese print on the right in his bedroom

Analysis

• Right: women in a day-to-day setting

  • 8 different poses

  • E.g. coming their hair, playing w/ their children

• Left: woman hunkered down in a tub

  • Body modelled in Western style

    • Strong shading & contrast

    • Sense of 3-dimensionality

  • Aerial perspective in Japanese style

    • Steep, downward angle past the dressing table

  • Naturalistic pose in Japanese style

    • Woman does not look at/acknowledge the viewer

    • Voyeuristic, as if caught unawares of us as she proceeds about her daily activities

Interpretation

• Human figures were depicted w/ an intimacy that was unknown to Europeans

  • Wide range of natural & spontaneous gestures

    = in the West, developed a new attitude towards the sitter

The Vision after the Sermon, Paul Gaugin (1905)

Historical context

• Gaugin owned Japanese woodblock prints

• Narrative:

  • Biblical Jacob wrestling with an angel

  • ‘the landscape and the fight only exist in the imagination of the people praying after the sermon’

Analysis

• Flat areas of bold colour

• Strong outlines

• Cropping

• Placing of subject to the back

• Composition divided into 2 distinct halves by a tree

  • Separation between reality & the vision

• Use of vertical perspective (not geometric perspective)

  • Subjects further away from us are positioned higher up in the painting

  • As crowd of women get further away, slopes upward

    = sense of dynamism, warped perspective that denotes the vision’s otherworldliness

• Juxtaposition of different components to give a flat, patterned effect

Interpretation

Represents the final stage of Japonisme: the understanding of Japanese artistic conventions and adaptation to Western painters’ own creativities