Japanese Prints and Western Artists in the Nineteenth Century: A New Worldview

Kathleen Jacques

Art History 418 Dr. Joan Greer The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed an unprecedented era of contact and exchange between Japan and the West, and nowhere were the effects of this communication felt more strongly than in the visual arts. The term Japonisme, coined by the French art critic Phillipe Burty in 18721, has come to refer to the international trend in which Japanese artefacts of all kinds became phenomenally popular in Europe and North America, and Japanese artworks, prints in particular, became a dominant and pervasive influence on the direction that Western artists took in the production of their own art. The reasons behind the exceptionally powerful influence of Japanese prints in Western art in this time period can be seen as essentially threefold. The first, and most basic factor in the rise of the influence of Japanese art is directly tied to historical events, as there was a sudden surge in the availability of this material following the opening of Japan to foreign trade in the 1850s, after two centuries of isolation. The second major aspect in the popularity of Japanese art has to do with ideas of visual representation. Japanese visual techniques, developed in relative isolation, presented approaches to composition, line, form, color, decoration, and more that differed entirely from the ideas dominant in Western art for centuries. Japanese prints amounted to a new way of seeing and depicting the world. The idea of a new way of seeing was one that many nineteenth-century artists actively pursued, in the rejection of art in the traditional European Academic mode, and interest in alternate techniques and media. Roughly concurrent with the introduction of Japanese prints to
1

Burty, Phillipe. Japonisme I La Renaissance Litteraire et Artistique 1(May 1872): 25-6. This was the initial instalment of a six-part series ending with Japonisme VI in 1873. As quoted in Weisberg, Gabriel P. et al. Japonisme: Japanese Influence on French Art 1854-1910. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975. xi.

the West was the introduction of photography, serving a similar visual interest. The third notable factor in the widespread popularity and influence of Japanese art at this time is fundamentally an issue of the symbolic significance of Japan. Nineteenthcentury Europe in particular is marked historically by the prominence of colonialism as foreign policy, and an encompassing interest in ideas of the foreign and the exotic. Japanese art and objects were highly admired as the products of an attractively exotic otherworld. As well, a related trend in nineteenth-century thought was a theoretical rejection of contemporary Western urban life and industrialization in favor of a return to the morals and aesthetics of pre-industrial societies, societies thought to be purer, uncorrupted, and spiritually significant. Europes own medieval era was a society often admired for its pre-industrial aesthetic by artists and designers, one notable example being William Morris and the work of the influential, anti-industrial Arts and Crafts Movement in the late century.2 In addition to revering the lost Europe of the past, many pre-industrialist sympathizers saw their ideals represented in the contemporary nonindustrialized societies of the world thought to be uncorrupted and primitive compared to Europe and North America an ethnocentric concept which remains contentious in critical thought today. Japan was one such society thought to particularly possess a kind of pre-industrial, primitive purity. The historical, the formal, and the symbolic were closely interrelated factors in the rise of Japonisme. Enabled by new international relationships, the phenomenal attraction of nineteenth-century Westerners to Japanese art, both visually and symbolically, essentially has its basis in a desire to explore and identify with a worldview other than ones own.
2

An overview of the Arts and Crafts Movement in relation to pre-modernist thought, focusing on Morris and the poet Walt Whitman, can be found in Roche, John F. The culture of pre-modernism: Whitman, Morris, & the American arts and crafts movement. ATQ 9.2 (1995):103-19

Concerning the use of the term Japonisme itself, its originator Phillipe Burty intended for the word to designate a new field of study artistic, historic and ethnographic.3 Ethnography is a branch of anthropology devoted to the scientific analysis of specific human societies.4 The term was originally used in reference to the study of Japan, an invented word amounting to the French version of Japanology. Certainly, the term Japonisme can still be used to refer to the Western study of Japan and its culture and art in these terms; however, the word has also generally come to be understood as referring to the entire phenomenon of the nineteenth-century vogue for Japan in Western countries, and Japanese influence in Western art. As Japanese art became increasingly available to view in Europe and America in the 1850s and 1860s, curiosity turned to widespread popularity, which then turned to an outright mania for all things Japanese. It is important to note that this trend permeated the popular culture of the general population as much as it affected those at the artistic forefront. From this appreciation grew emulation, as a generation of Western artists, inspired by what they had seen, began to incorporate Japanese visual techniques, motifs, or both into their own work. More so than the scholarly study of Japan, the popular attraction to, and artistic emulation of Japanese art tend to be what the term Japonisme signifies in contemporary research. Historians of Japonisme are considerably more interested in studying the historical Western reaction to Japanese art than in studying historical Japanese art itself. As well, in regards to Western attraction to Japanese art based in the symbolic significance of Japan, the term Japonisme becomes inextricably linked with other
3 4

Burty, 25-6 For an example of a contemporary ethnographic study of Japanese culture, see Tokyo Universitys 1997 Aspects of Japanese Culture and Society at http://www.isei.or.jp/books/75/Front.html.

significant cultural phenomena of the nineteenth century. Especially relevant to Japonisme are the perceptions regarding foreign nations which the terms primitivism, orientalism, and exoticism describe. Many contemporary researchers have reexamined, and often problematized, these past perceptions of world cultures. The problematic nature of terms such as primitive and exotic lies in implicit ethnocentrism, and possible issues of exploitation and appropriation. Studies in these areas span many disciplines other than art history, such as history, anthropology, and cultural studies.5 Japans relationship with the West from the nineteenth century onward has also been a frequent subject in postcolonial discourse, a field specifically concerned with investigating the realm of the colonial and its aftermath6, and often the art and literature of nations historically impacted by nineteenth century Western colonialism and imperialism. Another minor, but nonetheless notable, phenomenon is that in which imported Western art, in turn, began to influence the direction taken by some later Japanese artists.7 It is significant to note that artistic influence in this period was, in fact, a twoway dialogue; however, this reciprocal influence was nowhere near the widespread cultural phenomeon that Japonisme was in the West, and will not be a major focus of this analysis.
5

A sampling of informative explorations of this subject: Eisenman, Stephen F. Triangulating Racism. Art Bulletin 78.4(1996): 603-10. Robbins, Bruce. Colonial Discourse: A Paradigm and its Discontents. Victorian Studies 35.2 (Winter 1992): 209-15. Lewis, Adrian. From art history to cultural studies and back again. Art History 18.2(1995) 290-6. 6 Barker, F. et al. Colonial discourse/postcolonial theory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994. As quoted in a contemporary essay on Japans historical relationship with the United States. Kelly, William. Postcolonial Perspective on Intercultural Relations: A Japan-U.S. Example. The Edge: The E-Journal of Intercultural Relations, 2.1(1999). 7 For more information on Western influence in Japanese art, see: Till, Barry. The arts of Meiji Japan, 1868-1912 : changing aesthetics. Victoria, B.C.: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1995. French, Calvin L. Through closed doors : Western influence on Japanese art 1639-1853 / Kobe, Japan: Kobe City Museum of Namban Art, 1978.

A brief overview of the history of Japan, especially concerning its relation to the Western world, is relevant to set the stage for discussion of the specific historical events of the mid-nineteenth century which enabled the mass exchange of Japanese imagery and the Japonisme phenomenon. Japanese history is divided into named periods, which usually pertain to a particular change in leadership or way of life.8 Central to the relationship between Japan and the Western world in the nineteenth century was the beginning of the Meiji period in 1868, which restored an Emperor as head of the Japanese state and ushered in a new era of receptiveness to communication with the West. It is in the sixteenth century that Japanese history becomes immediately relevant to a discussion of East meeting West, as the year 1542 marks the arrival of the first Portuguese missionaries to Japan. The years spanning roughly from the mid 1500s to the mid 1600s are sometimes referred to as Japans Christian century.9 The impressions the representatives of each culture formed of each other apparently ranged from enthusiasm and curiosity to complete distrust. If these early missionaries were at all exposed to Japanese visual art and craft in this era, there was no great appreciation comparable to that of the nineteenth century. The famous missionary St. Francis Xavier wrote, circa 1550, that they spend all their money on dress, weapons and servants, and do not possess any treasures10. Xavier does note the elaborate craftsmanship and decoration of the weaponry; however, this admiration serves as part of a commentary on the warlike and weapon-centric nature of Japanese society, rather than an interest in the particular decorative arts involved in the production of the object.
8

See Japans National Museum of Japanese History (located in Sakura City) for an official chronological timeline chart of Japanese historical periods: http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/e_ctable/index.html. 9 Lu, 171-202. 10 Lu, 198.

In the latter half of the sixteenth century, the formerly fragmented country was successfully united under one rule, and he unification process effectively spelled the end for the missionaries. 11 While the first unifying leader, Oda Nobunaga, had been receptive to the Christians, one of the first acts of his successor Toyotomi Hideyoshi was 1587s Limitation of the Propagation of Christianity edict, followed almost immediately by a decidedly harsher edict entitled Expulsion of Missionaries.12 The expulsion act still allowed foreigners to visit Japan freely, provided they did not attempt religious conversions. Ieyasu Tokugawa completed the unification and assumed the title of Shogun in 1603, and the ensuing Edo period saw increasingly intense suppression of Christianity and other forms of Western influence. This culminated in the closing of Japan to the world in 1635. Foreigners were forbidden from entering Japan, any Japanese citizen who traveled abroad was to receive the death penalty upon return.13 Europe did continue to have some knowledge of Japan in this period. This was largely through the Dutch, who were the only Western visitors allowed in Japan during the isolated era (though only on an offshore trading station). Still, the Dutch traders were granted a yearly visit to Edo (todays Tokyo), and they reported back to the rest of Europe bringing goods such as porcelain. Though many of these objects went to museum collections and inspired illustrated books at the time, there was little significant popular interest in Japan. Much of the population in the eighteenth century apparently viewed this material as generically Oriental, and knew little of Japan as a specific

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12

Lu, David J. Japan: A Documentary History. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. 3-20. Lu, 196-7. 13 Lu, 221-2.

nation.14 Through this self-imposed near-isolation, Japan effectively created an enclosed artistic milieu in which visual representation developed in almost complete detachment from contemporary movements and trends elsewhere in the world. The

two centuries of isolation are generally considered a cultural and intellectual high point in Japan, with a flourishing of the arts and the advent of a move towards urbanization and a commercial economy. However, by the early nineteenth century, Tokugawa rule was weakening as the country was burdened by economic trouble, and the upper power structure was suffering from corruption and internal disputes.15 The winds of change were already in the air by 1853, when the American Commodore Matthew Perry sailed into Kurihama Bay, and demanded that the Shogun allow Japan to be open to America for trade. Japanese printmakers recorded this meeting of cultures, which would have no doubt been an occurrence of great interest after two centuries of strict isolation policy. A print of unknown authorship dated circa the 1860s (Figure 1), juxtaposes the massive Black Ships of the Perry expedition with the Japanese watercraft setting out to meet them in the harbour representing definite changes in technology and culture that had occurred in the Western world during Japans isolation. The initial treaties with Perry opened the door to agreements with at least twenty other Western nations in the 1850s and 1860s (this being an age of colonialism, where any nation with aspirations of power competed for influence across the globe). In 1868, the Shogunate government, which had signed the original agreements with Commodore Perry, was overthrown, and the Emperor was restored to power. In the unification and isolation eras, while the tradition of the Emperor had not

14 15

Whitford, Frank. Japanese Prints and Western Painters. London: Studio Vista, 1977. 97. Lu, 203-303.

been done away with completely, the Imperial office had had little actual political power. The new Emperor of 1868, who had considered the Shogunate too slow in their adoption of Western ideas, was a strong proponent of Westernization, industrialization, and technological advancement. This shift in government was likely as significant a contributing factor as was the initial economic opening of Japan in the creation of an international climate that allowed mass international trade of Japanese artworks. The new period was christened the Meiji, meaning enlightened government, and the power shift of 1868 is referred to as the Meiji Restoration.16 This was also the period of the highest volume of artworks traded between Japan and the West, and the height of the Japonisme craze in Europe and America. As noted above, it was not that Japanese artwork was wholly unavailable in the West prior to the mid-nineteenth century; however, following the Perry expedition, the availability, as well as the popularity of this material skyrocketed. A critical part of defining the historical climate that allowed for the mass attraction to, and emulation of Japanese art in the West, in addition to looking at the historical background of Japan itself, is an exploration of when, and by what means Japanese art was disseminated in Western nations. There is no general consensus concerning where and when the first instances of what would later be termed Japonisme took place. Historian Henry Adams, for instance, argues to place the earliest Japonisme trends in America rather than France or Britain, where it is typically situated.17 As well, there long existed a popular myth asserting that the Japanese print was first discovered by a French merchant in 1856, the prints having been used as packing material an imported crate of porcelain,. Today,
16 17

Whitford, 13-19. Adams, Henry. John LaFarges Discovery of Japanese Art: A New Perspective on the Origins of Japonisme. The Art Bulletin 67 (1985): 449-485.

this idea is considered to be apocryphal (the date of the initial introduction of Japanese art to Europe, though contested, is usually estimated in contemporary research to be earlier), and the storys first appearance has been traced to a 1905 article in the journal Art et Decoration.18 Another frequently cited date for the introduction of Japanese prints to Europe is 1862, based on claims made in the well known nineteenth-century Japoniste Ernest Chesneaus 1878 journal article Le Japon a Paris.19 The general consensus among historians today is that there was no one moment of discovery; rather, there existed a developing trend which came to prominence in the second half of the century. The most extensive and reliable records that exist detailing when and where certain art was available come courtesy of museums, galleries, libraries and other public institutions in Europe. Phylis Floyds 1986 work Documentary Evidence for the Availability of Japanese Imagery in Europe in Nineteenth-Century Public Collections20, provides a comprehensive array of facts and figures on this subject. The articles information on names, dates, collections, and artworks is drawn primarily from the actual acquisition records of these institutions. Primary written sources from the era help establish the cultural milieu and put the art acquisitions into context. The collections covered in Floyds article include Frances Bibliotheque Nationale (an institution dating back to fourteenth-century royalty) and Musee des Arts Decoratifs

18

Benedite, Leonce. Felix Braquemond, lanimalier Art et Decoration 17(1905). As referenced in Johnson, Deborah. Confluence and Influence: Photography and the Japanese Print in 1850. Readings in Nineteenth-Century Art. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. 19 Chesneau, Ernest. Le Japon a Paris. Gazette des Beaux-Arts 28(1878):387. Referenced in Flescher, Sharon. Zacharie Astruc, critic, artist, and Japoniste (1833-1907) . New York : Garland Pub, 1978. 20 Floyd, Phylis. Documentary Evidence for the Availability of Japanese Imagery in Europe in Nineteenth-Century Public Collections. The Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 105-142.

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(established 1863).21 The former granted substantial access to artists, and the latter was progressive enough in its philosophy to be open to the general public, and the working class in particular. Floyd points to primary sources recording early visits of well-known artists like Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas to collections such as these in the mid 1850s.22 Information such as this is valuable to have in the exploration of the roots of well-known artists interest in and emulation of Japanese art. Floyd also delves into nineteenth-century controversies concerning European critics perceptions of the quality of imported prints. This casts important light on the extent to which both the West and Japan were acutely aware of the phenomena unfolding around them. The critic Frederic Le Blanc du Vernet wrote, in 1880, the Japanese government, awakened by the success the products of Old Japan had gained with us here, prohibited the exportation of antique art[in favor of]the more easily obtainable modern mediocrities.23 An examination of Meiji period policies was unable to locate such an edict; however, that does not immediately cast complete doubt on the existence of such a prohibition. Other historians note that in the 1860s, the Japanese themselves generally saw prints as a rather vulgar, commonplace art, and antique prints did not become prized until a few years later, when their worth and popularcultural appeal in the West became apparent.24 This idea makes for an interesting illustration of the two-way nature of the dialogue between Japan and the West. Another perspective relevant to this idea is the assertion made by art historian Henri Dorra that
21

Floyds article focuses mainly on the institutions of France. Although a venture is also made into Britain, with a look at the collections of the British Museum, and the Victoria and Albert Museum, no other countries are represented. 22 Floyd, 118. 23 Floyd, 114-5. 24 Berger, Klaus. Japonisme in Western Painting from Whistler to Matisse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. 88.

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post-Meiji Restoration Japan saw the rise of a new school of printmakers whose style differed from that of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth-century masters such as Hokusai and Hiroshige, the first to enjoy Western popularity.25 The work of these later artists is characterized by what Dorra sees as a good-natured optimism, with elements of caricature and the comical, in depictions of daily life amid a time of great societal change in Japan after the Meiji Restoration. Dorra contends that while work produced by this later school of artists did not become nearly as famous nor collected as that of the earlier masters, these prints were, in fact, widely available and as great an inspiration to artists as the earlier prints. In terms of art historical research, large highly organized institutions are one of the most likely sources of accurate factual information from the past, as they are likely to have kept detailed records of purchases, collections, and holdings. Keeping track of art held in public collections is relatively convenient. However, the art held publicly is not necessarily an accurate reflection of what is happening in the rest of the visual art world. The Japanese art held in public collections, while an important and relevant source of information, represents only one dimension of a phenomenon whose span of influence extended much further. Most significantly, these officially collected works give only a negligible idea of the immense popular appeal of Japanese artworks and the fashionability of all things Japanese in the second half of the nineteenth century. This was an inescapable phenomenon which seemingly spanned all levels of society, and will be discussed in greater detail shortly in terms of the symbolic significance of Japan in nineteenth-century Western eyes.

25

Dorra, Henri. Japanese Sources for Two Paintings by Seurat. Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 (1989): 9599.

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The historical opening of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century was certainly a major factor as to why a phenomenal Western attraction to Japanese art arose the political and economic events of the day paved the way for the high profile emergence of Japanese prints in European and North American culture. The next central basis to examine for the popularity of Japanese prints among artists is that of trends in visual representation. Major contributions to the promotion of Japonisme to artists and the study of Japanese prints specifically in terms of visual theory came by way of critics and dealers. Arguably the most important figure here is the critic, historian, publisher, and gallery owner Samuel Bing. A German residing in Paris, Bing traveled extensively in Asia, exhibited his personal collections of art objects at two different international expositions, and researched and wrote on Japanese art at length, all before beginning publication of Le Japon Artistique, a monthly journal dedicated to Japanese art, in 1888.26 The publication was widely circulated, and artists in particular took to drawing direct inspiration from the images reproduced and discussed therein. However, the most siginificant thing about Le Japon Artistique was in its conscious rejection of the popular branch of Japonisme consisting of the fashionable borrowing of Japanese motifs. Rather, Bing believed that the value of Japonisme lay not in the outward appearance of Japanese style, but in the fundamental principles of Japanese design. Bing, like many nineteenth-century artistic thinkers, for example Owen Jones27 and William Morris, felt that modern art and design were in need of reform, and had become
26 27

Berger, 90-6 La Japon Artistique was published until 1891. Jones outlined his design theories in the influential book The Grammar of Ornament, first published in 1856. The volume contains examples of ornamental patterns from a variety of cultures, past and present however, although there are chapters on Chinese Ornament and Persian Ornament, Japanese decorative arts are in fact not represented.

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burdened by centuries of Western visual tradition. The admiration of Japanese art in this manner is similar to nineteenth century admiration and emulation of medieval art (as practiced by such artists as Morris and his Arts and Crafts Movement, for example, and the Gothic revival in architecture). In both cases, there was a desire for a shift towards art forms that were felt to be truer due to their freedom from the principles dominant in Western art from the High Renaissance through to the industrial age. This Japanese/Gothic parallel was indeed noted by critics of the time the architect William Burges wrote, on the subject of Japan at the London Exhibition of 1862, these hitherto unknown barbarians appear not only to know all that the Middle Ages knew but in some respects are beyond them and us as well28. Bing was also instrumental in bringing the medium of the Japanese print in particular into the spotlight. Le Japon Artistique featured prints prominently, from a variety of Japanese artists, and in 1890 Bing organized the largest and highest profile exhibition of Japanese prints to date at Pariss Ecole des Beaux Arts.29 Central to Bings efforts to propagate knowledge of Japanese prints was the notion of the underlying artistic principles as the focus, rather than the exterior subject matter. Thanks in no small part to the work of Bing, and several of his contemporaries and collaborators, Japanese prints became significantly inspirational to many major artists of the late nineteenth century.30 As mentioned above, a considerable amount of the interest Japanese work generated in those Westerners involved in the arts was directly related to the
28

Gere, Charlotte and Michael Whiteway Nineteenth-Century Design: From Pugin to Mackintosh. New York: Harry N Abrams, 2000. 126. 29 Berger, 94. 30 Bergers book includes an informative look at Bings influence, in a chapter entitled Critics, connoisseurs and dealers as leaders of taste, 1870-1880. 88-107.

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dissimilarity of Japanese visual language to the prevailing European traditions in art. Japanese prints provided a new way of seeing when it came to representational art, and a new toolbox of visual principles, techniques and theories for artists to explore. The entire phenomenon can be viewed through the lens of modernism. The publication Modernism/modernity, the official journal of the Modernist Studies Association, locates modernism as a historical period extending roughly from 1860 through the midtwentieth century.31 In the arts, the term modernism usually denotes an ideology of progression from one style to the next, the historical tradition giving way to the pursuit of new and innovative forms of expression. The opening of Japan is historically close to the time period considered to be the birth of modernism. Japanese art began to make its mark on the West around the time when traditional European art establishments such as the Academies and Salons were in decline32, and an emerging avant-garde was looking to break new ground. Also fundamental to this equation is another groundbreaking nineteenth-century shift in the way artists approached visual representation the advent of photography. In her essay Confluence and Influence: Photography and the Japanese Print in 1850, Deborah Johnson argues convincingly that in the almost simultaneous emergence of these two art forms in nineteenth-century European consciousness, both modes of representation aided in the popularity and acceptance of the other, sharing a kind of

31

Modernism/modernity is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. http://www.press.jhu.edu/journals/modernism_modernity/. The Modernist Studies Association, whose membership includes scholars from many prominent universities, can be found at http://msa.press.jhu.edu/. 32 An informative overview of the nineteenth century decline of the traditional European model of the academic art system (focusing on England, but containing concepts also relevant to other nations) can be found in Landrow, George P. Victorian Art Criticism and the Rise of a Middle Class Audience. The Mind and Art of Victorian England. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1976. 124-45 Available online at: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/finearts/criticism1.html.

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symbiotic relationship.33 At the core of this relationship is a visual similarity. Both the early photograph and the Japanese print, states Johnson, deviated in many of the same ways from traditional Western aesthetic conventions, and thereby reinforced each others visual statements.34 The widespread appreciation of photographs and Japanese prints, and of this perceived deviation stemmed from a nineteenth-century desire to reconcile artistic expression with an objective view of physical reality. The stream of thought that held that Western traditions of visual depiction, such as those dating back to the Renaissance, were somehow untrue, and encumbering, can be seen as a somewhat corollary notion to this idea of artistic objectivity. Amid heated debates as to whether the new medium should be considered within the domain of the arts or of the sciences, in its early days photography was largely seen as a truly objective way of creating images or, if not completely free of the subjectivity of the artist, at least more so than traditional media such as painting or drawing. The Japanese print was also praised for its true, naturalistic qualities in spite of its being an art form which stressed decorative qualities rather than trompe loeil style realism, and allowed the subjective visual choices of the artist to be clearly apparent. Westerners responded to the prints ability to capture the essence of its subjects simply and gracefully. This economy of line and form was thought by many to be a truer kind of representation than a highly detailed academic painting in the European mode, art which by comparison seemed artificial and belaboured.35 Similar ideas concerning the new approach to representation that Japanese art provided are iterated in the work of nearly every scholar of Japonisme; however, Johnsons essay is seemingly the only work devoted exclusively to the parallel
33

Johnson, Deborah. Confluence and Influence: Photography and the Japanese Print in 1850. Readings in Nineteenth-Century Art. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. 84. 34 Johnson, 84. 35 Berger, 2-4.

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introduction Japanese prints and the photographic medium. In some ways, photography and the Japanese print do indeed seem to occupy a similar place in the nineteenth century climate. However, Johnson also argues that other specific visual parallels that have been drawn by historical and contemporary critics between early photography and the Japanese print, including a tendency to flatten forms, a non-central or asymmetrical composition, or specific attention paid to the way the edges of the picture plane frame the image, have little basis.36 Instead, she stresses that the percieved truthful representation of reality is the link between the realistic photograph and the stylized print, and that the introduction of both media in tandem served as similar yet diverse inspiration for other artists working in traditional media such as drawing and painting. With the issues of representation and ways of seeing raised by the parallel with photography in mind, one can approach one of the most artistically significant dimensions of Japonisme in the West, and that advocated by Bing the trend in which Western artists of the nineteenth-century increasingly came to apply Japanese formal techniques in their own artwork. The new visual ideas introduced through Japanese art contrasted sharply with centuries of entrenched artistic tradition in Europe, particularly tradition from the Renaissance era onwards. The Japanese artworks used here in image comparisons will primarily be woodblock prints, since these were predominantly the form of Japanese art of interest to Western artists, and illustrate visual concepts as well as, and perhaps more clearly than, comparable paintings and decorative arts that might have been available to Westerners at the time.

36

Johnson, 103.

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An important term in regards to Japanese prints of the Edo and Meiji periods is uki-yo, literally the floating world.37 The idea originates from a Buddhist philosophy which holds that the world we experience through our senses is illusory. Ukiyo-e38, or floating world painting, focused on depicting this sensory reality often in scenes of nature or daily life. The idea of Ukiyo-e relates directly to the concepts such as naturalism and artistic objectivity discussed above in relation to photography. But in contrast to photography, and to most of traditional Western representational art, Ukiyo-e creates its form of naturalism through stylization. The specific visual concepts that will be discussed here have been organized into three major categories representing the main areas of divergence between the traditions of Japanese and of Western art: the use of contour, the creation of pictorial space, and the use of compositional techniques. All of these artistic approaches, combined with the frequent use of extensive patterning and decorative elements, serve to reinforce the flatness of the picture plane, and the essential nature of the print as an autonomous object rather than a window into a pictoral world. One of the key visual differences between Japanese work and work in the Western mode at this time lay in the artists approaches to creating volume. Japanese pictures displayed an almost complete lack of chiaroscuro, the use of light and shadow to create volume and a sense of three-dimensionality in forms. Instead, Japanese drawings and prints created form primarily through contour the use of line to define
37

Hardie, Peter Introduction to The Japanese Eye, as reprinted in Hardie, Peter, and Marie ConteHelm. Japonisme: Japanese Reflections in Western Art. Sunderland: Northern Center for Contemporary Art, 1986. 38 or e is the word or suffix meaning a picture or drawing, so Ukiyo-e is literally a floating world picture. For an extensive online resource on Ukio-e, see UKIYO-E: The Pictures of the Floating World http://www.bahnhof.se/~secutor/ukiyo-e/.

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the outer edges of a object. The lack of shading and the use of contour were apparently qualities in the sketchbooks of Katsuhika Hokusai on display at the Exhibition of 1867 that made a particular impression on Parisians.39 A representative page from Hokusais Manga (a collection of several volumes of sketches, dated around 1815) is a series of figure studies of wrestlers, and is a clear example of the contour-based approach to form (Figure 2). The focus on linearity gives the figures a calligraphic quality. The only tonal variations serve to distinguish clothing, hair, skin, and ground and these are all essentially flat, unmodulated shades of grey and black. Color prints employ a similar technique areas are usually filled with flat color, with minimal or very subtle tonal variation. Another tendency in nineteenth-century Japanese prints was the use of local color40 that is, the color thought to be that of an objects natural state, without regard for lighting or atmospheric effects, or the subjectivity of the artist.41 All these techniques contribute to a clean, flat, stylized look. Here in Hokusais Manga, the contour-line approach to depicting the bare human body is particularly striking. This page is a sketch rather than a finished work; however, its approach still contrasts significantly with sketches in the historical European tradition. For example, a latefifteenth century preliminary sketch by the Italian Renaissance master Leonardo Da Vinci, Studies for the Nativity (Figure 3), is heavily based in chiaroscuro. The volume and mass of the figures is conveyed through the interplay of light and shadow. Renaissance standards of modeling forms through chiaroscuro remained the artistic standard in Europe, and later in North America as well, for several hundred years
39

Berger, 67-8.

40 41

Johnson, 102. ArtLex Art Dictionary (http://www.artlex.com) concludes its useful definition of local color with Thus the characteristic local color of a lemon is yellow.

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especially in the Academic tradition of painting. Leonardos and Hokusais sketches can be read side by side as constituting two fundamentally opposite approaches to the construction of form in a figure study. However, despite radically different techniques, both the fifteenth-century Renaissance and the nineteenth-century Japanese approaches to the figure have similar goals of capturing the physical form in a manner that is an accurate representation of nature. A use of contour similar to the Manga studies is visible as well in Hokusais finished prints, for example the 1804 work Shirasuka, no. 34. (Figure 4). The contoured treatment of the foreground figures bare back is notable here in its similarity to the wrestler figure studies. One of the earliest well known instances of a Japanese style contour technique being applied in Western art is that of Edouard Manets 1863 painting Olympia (Figure 5). Manets position as one of the frontrunners of French Japonisme is well documented42, and his contemporary Whistler described him as the head and front of Japonerie.43 Also documented is a genuine interest in Japanese visual principles, as opposed to superficial ornamentation and it has been suggested that Manet employed these ideas subtly, in conjunction with his own personal style, to produce works that would not have appeared Japanese to the casual viewer.44 Though Olympia retains elements of light, shadow and shade, there is a definite flatness to the modelling of the figure, and a focus on the contour, which made it a definite departure from the chiaroscuroed painting that had been the tradition up to that point and for which

42

For instance, Phylis Floyds Documentary Evidence for the Availability of Japanese Imagery in Europe in Nineteenth-Century Public Collections places Manet as one of the earliest artists to have taken advantage of Frances public collections of Japanese art in the 1840s. 43 Whitford, 121. 44 Whitford, 121-31.

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Manet endured harsh criticism.45 Olympia both makes reference to, and turns against its historical precedents, as the painting as a whole makes direct visual reference to a famous Italian Renaissance work, Titians Venus dUrbino. It could be argued that Manet, in the modernist mode, made use of newly discovered Japanese artistic ideas as part of his efforts to break with tradition. Four years later, Manet directly referenced his Japanese influences in his portrait of Emile Zola an important critical supporter of Manet, as well as an avid Japoniste himself. In addition to surrounding Zola with a variety of Japanese decorative objects, Manet included a Japanese print on the wall, next to a reproduction of Olympia.46 Moving a considerable stylistic distance from Manet, a more immediately apparent example of the Japanese conventions of contour drawing employed by a European artist can be found several decades later, in the work of the English artist Aubrey Beardsley. The smooth, elegant line drawings Beardsley produced in the last decade of the nineteenth century draw an immediate visual parallel with Japanese prints. The artist himself had admired Japanese art from an early age, and he collected woodblock prints throughout his career almost exclusively the explicitly erotic prints known as shunga, which had no small part in informing Beardsleys own erotic art.47 The attraction to exoticism was very much intertwined with eroticism in the art collections of this period.48 The 1894 illustration Toilette of Salome (Figure 6), one
45

For further elaboration on Manet and Olympia, see Flescher, Sharon. More on a Name: Manet's 'Olympia' and the Defiant Heroine in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France. Art Journal 45.1(1985): 27-36. 46 The Japanese influences in Olympia and Zola are discussed in Bergers section on Manet (20-32), in which Manet is classified as a pioneer of Japonisme. 47 Zatlin, Linda Gertner. Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian Sexual Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. 143. 48 See Zatilns book on sexual politics. As well, for a collection of essays which explores both the historical erotic component of orientalist exoticism, and related contemporary sexual issues, see: Lenore Manderson and Margaret Jolly, eds. Sites of desire, economies of pleasure: sexualities in Asia and the Pacific. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

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scene in a series of illustrations for Oscar Wildes Salome, is representative of Beardsleys emulation of the line quality of the contoured figures in Japanese prints, as well as his use of exotic and erotic imagery. As well, this work also mirrors somewhat the tendency in Japanese prints to include elements of decoration and patterning. Other Beardsley works display this influence extensively in costuming. Toilette of Salome also includes a variety of objects on shelves around the room, some of which may be intended to appear Asian, if not specifically Japanese. Shirasuka, no. 34., Olympia, and Toilette of Salome together lend themselves to an opportune stylistic comparison, as they all present similar subject matter. In all three cases the viewer is given a glimpse into a private interior setting, inhabited by a grouping of figures in which one body is bared, with the suggestion of servitude, or possibly a sexual relationship. A second major difference between Japanese and Western visual traditions of the nineteenth century is the approach to the construction of pictoral space. Western art in the 1800s still largely followed the system of linear perspective invented in the Renaissance. Raphaels 1504 painting Marriage of the Virgin (Figure 7) provides a useful illustration of the Renaissance perspectival system in which the pictoral space is governed by imaginary lines converging at a certain point on the horizon line (in this case, the lines are quite visible on the ground). This particular painting is an example of one-point perspective, wherein all diagonal lines converge at the same point on the horizon (located here at the center of the temple-like structure). Two-point perspective, another Renaissance creation, allows for a somewhat less rigid construction of space by utilizing two vanishing points. Images employing these systems of spatial creation were usually intended to be viewed as though they were a window looking in on another

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world. In mid nineteenth-century Japan, however, there existed no such set of rules. Space generally tended to be constructed though a layering of forms, rather than an analytical linear geometry. Hiroshiges 1856 print Kojimachi and the Benkei Canal at Soto Sakurada (Figure 8) provides an interesting counterpoint to Renaissance perspective. A sense of relative space is conveyed through the overlapping of elements, and the recession of forms as they get farther away. However, though the forms do appear to recede into the distance, they do not share a common vanishing point. Also notable in many prints such as Kojimachi, is the fact that the viewer looks at the scene from a slightly angled, aerial point of view. Claude Monets Waterlilies series (Figure 9) is one well known set of Western paintings considered to have been directly influenced by Japanese concepts of perspectival space in the rejection of linear perspective, and even of the horizon line itself, in favour of a basic focus on placing forms in open space. However, it has been correctly pointed out that the Waterlilies only correspond to the principles behind Japanese prints to a certain point, as the prints are decorative and highly stylized where Impressionism in theory is purely optical and descriptive.49 The convention of an angled view, as if the picture plane is tipping toward the viewer, was even more pronounced in many Japanese interior scenes. Here, instead of the organic forms of nature, hard-edged walls and floors form the composition, geometric forms not bound by linear perspective. An early nineteenth-century print entitled Geishas (Figure 10), attributed to Hiroshige (perhaps the best known and most prolific nineteenth-century Japanese printmaker after Hokusai), exhibits most of the conventions typical to depiction of interior space in Edo period prints, with its floor
49

Whitford, 168.

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tilting at a considerable angle, no horizon line in sight, and no convergence of the diagonals. The Hokusai print Shirasuka, no. 34. which was discussed previously regarding its use of contour line is another example of this type of space construction in an interior scene, although its angles are less dramatic than those in Geishas. The influence of these particular conventions is highly evident in the work of the French painter Edgar Degas. Like Manet, Degas shied away from the popular craze for Japanese motifs (discussed in more detail shortly), but he frequently incorporated Japanese visual ideas into his work.50 The angled perspective of Japanese print interiors appears in most of Degas extensive series of works depicting ballet dancers. An 1877 graphite drawing in preparation for a finished work entitled Ballet Dancers Rehearsing (Figure 11) recalls Geishas in its angled floor and the arrangement of its figures. In addition, there were other major compositional devices introduced to Western artists through Japanese prints in this time period. At the time, European and North American artists saw these as dynamic, highly unconventional new approaches that countered nearly every traditionally accepted rule of how a picture plane should be constructed. One such device was the cropping of elements in ways that would have been highly unusual by Western standards, for example cropping that bisects a figure. The most extreme use of this convention is seen in prints such as Hiroshiges 1858 Haneda no watashi benten no yashiro (Figure 16), in which all that is seen of a human figure are arms and legs in the extreme foreground. The two uppermost female figures in Geishas also evoke the use of cropping as a compositional device, but to a lesser degree. It is not always the edge of the picture plane that cuts off a figure many prints
50

Floyd also specifically cites Degas as an artist who visited public collections of Japanese art early on.

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exist where figures are cropped, in a manner likely unnatural to Western eyes, by an element within the image, such as a window or door frame. In Degas Ballet Dancers, it is apparent from the composition of the sketch that the rightmost ballerina will be intentionally cropped at the waist by the edge of the image. As well as being common in the finished work of Degas, cropping which defies the compositional traditions of Western painting is also characteristic of photography. Another technique that Western artists came to borrow from Japanese prints was the division of the picture plane through bold foreground compositional elements, usually asymmetrical. In landscape or nature scenes, this often took the form of a branch or foliage of some sort. Hiroshiges 1857 1858 print The Moon Pine at Ueno (Figure 12) is a textbook example of this compositional device. The form that the figures hands rest on, and even the arms and legs themselves in the same artists Haneda no watashi constitute another application of the same idea. Examples abound of Western artists incorporating this dividing branch wholesale into their own work. The branch appears in Vincent van Goghs The Sower (Figure 13) and in Paul Gauguins Vision After the Sermon (Figure 14), both dated 1888. Japanese prints

also made influential use of divisive compositional techniques other than the diagonal branch or branchlike form, such as the not-uncommon use of a series of strong parallel vertical elements. One particular image that brings together nearly every borrowed Japanese visual technique discussed here is the 1893 theatre poster Le Divan Japonais, by the Parisian designer Henri de Tolouse Lautrec (Figure 15). The name of the cabaret advertised (literally The Japanese Sofa) speaks to the popular mania for Japan. The figures are

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made up of smooth contour lines, without a hint of chiaroscuro, and the areas of color are solid with no tonal variation. The scene is presented from an aerial, tilted viewpoint, and space is constructed through overlapping forms rather than through linear perspective. As well, the woman on the stage is cropped at the neck something not just unheard of in terms of traditional ideas of composition dating back to the Renaissance, but unheard of in virtually any prior era of Western art history. And finally, the silhouetted body of the red-haired woman in the foreground acts as the same sort of compositional element as the traditional tree branch, dividing the image asymmetrically. Lautrec, as a graphic artist working within print culture, would have produced work closer to the original Japanese prints that inspired him, in both technique and in probable modes of distribution, than did most of the Japanese-inspired artists working in paint. A third factor in nineteenth-century Western artists phenomenal attraction to and emulation of Japanese prints was a phenomenon closely related to both the historical climate and to appreciation of Japanese art on formal grounds: Western symbolic constructs of Japan itself. Imagined conceptions of Japan as a nation, informed by a backdrop of primitivist and exoticist thought, played a major part in the lure of Japan and its art for Western artists and the general populace alike. Nineteenth-century Europe (and to a large degree America as well) is associated with an almost insatiable appetite for the idea of the exotic objects, artworks, narratives, and even human beings originating from parts of the world considered to be strange, exciting, and shrouded in a certain amount of mystery. Often, as touched on briefly in the discussion of Beardsley, the concept of exoticism is closely linked with

26

the erotic. A well known example in nineteenth century art is Paul Gauguins sexualized images of exotic young women painted during his voyages to Tahiti.51 It was in this era as well that travel literature became enormously popular, particularly stories detailing voyages to exciting locations.52 Though attractive exoticism was to be found in many parts of the world, there was a particular enthralment with the cultures of the East, often termed orientalism.53 Japan was likely the nation most often admired for its exotic appeal in this era. This becomes evident when Japonisme as a popular phenomenon in the West is considered. The attraction to Japan was as prevalent in popular culture as in critical and artistic circles, and the two spheres are quite interrelated. The popular mania for Japan has its roots in the same history as the interest in Japanese art by artists, critics, and scholars does the opening of Japan to the Western world, and the unprecedented influx of all manners of Japanese articles. The great international expositions of the second half of the nineteenth century played a large role in fueling the explosion in the popularity of Japan.54 These exhibitions, which began with the London Exhibition in 1851, were founded in the spirit of both national pride and international competition, and showcased everything from industry to art and design. The exhibitions increasingly grew to include a component of pavilions representing different nations of the world, as
51

This subject matter is taken up extensively in Edmond, Rod. Representing the South Pacific : colonial discourse from Cook to Gauguin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 52 See Lee, J. Traveling, through nineteenth-century eyes. U.S. News & World Report 104.13 (1988) and Noakes, Susan. The Rhetoric of Travel Ethnohistory 33.2(1986): 139-49. 53 Sand, Jordan. Was Meiji Taste in Interiors Orientalist? positions: east asia cultures critique 8.3 (2000): 637-673. offers an informative exploration of the term in the nineteenth-century colonial context, and a case study of trends in Japanese decorative art produced in reaction to the political and social climate art which the author argues is orientalist in its own right. 54 There exists a plethora of writings concerning the Exhibitions of the nineteenth century. Two relevant volumes include: Burris, John P. Exhibiting religion : colonialism and spectacle at international expositions, 1851-1893. Charlottesville: Virginia University Press, 2001. Purbrick, Louise ed. The Great Exhibition of 1851 : new interdisciplinary essays. New York : Manchester University Press: 2001.

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exoticism proved popular with the European audience.55 A Japanese pavilion first appeared at the Exhibition of 1862 in London, and was so popular that Paris made sure, five years later, to invite the Japanese to exhibit again at its Exhibition of 1867. A centerpiece of this Japanese pavilion was, as mentioned in the discussion of Japanese visual techniques, a display of sketches by Hokusai, who came to be arguably the bestknown and most collected Japanese artist in the eyes of Westerners. Roughly a decade later, another Japanese pavilion at the Universal Exhibition of 1878 caused a veritable sensation.56 According to the German art historian Klaus Berger, this was the exhibition that truly pushed the popularity of all things Japanese over the edge in the public consciousness in Paris, as Japanese paraphernalia became accessible to nearly all consumers, and omnipresent even in day to day shopping:
No one can have any idea of the extent of all these solemn fripperies who has not come across the catalogues issued by the new Paris stores between 1867 and 1888. The market was flooded with kimonos, with porcelain and other ceramics, and with chests, boxes, canisters and flasks in wood, metal, and other materials. In the Belle Epoque, bourgeois households and fashion-conscious ladies could indulge in japonaiserie to the exact degree that their purses permitted, ranging from the real thingto mass produced goods.57

There was arguably a bi-directional relationship at work in the nineteenth century between popular and intellectual interest in Japan. Interest by artists, critics, and connoisseurs in studying Japanese visual production predated the widespread popular interest for at least a decade, and it seems unlikely that the trendy mania could have emerged without this original basis. Conversely, the fashionable omnipresence of Japanese styles in the late nineteenth century likely introduced and exposed Japan to

55

An example of an in-depth analysis of Asian culture and people being on display at nineteenth century exhibitions is in Haddad, John The Non-Identical Chinese Twins: Traditional China and Chinese Yankees at the Centennial Exposition of 1876. American Nineteenth Century History 1.3(2000) 51-101. 56 Berger, 67. 57 Berger, 67-8.

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many artists, scholars, and others, who then went on to explore these ideas further outside of the popular culture framework. The scholarly and the popular Japonismes do overlap somewhat, as both initially drew from similar interest in the new and exotic. However, while the writings of intellectual Japonistes like Samuel Bing stressed the visual theory behind Japanese art rather than the outward motifs, the general populations faddish attraction to anything and everything Japanese in the latter half of the century was almost exclusively superficial in nature, and for the most part lacking in any desire for a deeper understanding of Japanese art and culture except as fashion accoutrements. This trend, in its popular-cultural form, was ultimately fueled by the larger societys attraction to exoticism. Nineteenth-century painting, as well, yields examples of work done in the mindset of this particular branch of Japonisme Japanese imagery as representing the exotic. It should be noted that some historians have designated a distinction between the terms Japonisme and Japonaiserie the latter referring to both the Japanese-styled paraphernalia produced to cater to the fashion trends of the popular culture, and to artwork that superficially emulates Japanese subject matter and style, but little or nothing of the underlying principles. Claude Monets 1876 painting Le Japonaise (Figure 17) can be considered an illustrative example of what is considered Japonaiserie. This work, which depicts Monets wife, is a highly unusual departure for an artist best known for his Impressionist landscapes, and rarely for figurative paintings. Mme. Monet is depicted dressed in a highly ornate Japanese costume, and surrounded by over a dozen decorative fans. Two Japanese visual techniques are echoed slightly in the construction of this piece the intricately detailed patterning of the figures

29

costume, and the angled view of the floor. Apart from that, the painting represents a depiction of Japanese art and objects using an essentially Western manner of painting. Berger brings up the idea of whether this work might actually have been a sly joke on the part of Monet, a comment on the proliferation of Japanese paraphernalia.58 He cites the fact that there is nothing else like this in Monets body of work, and that although Monet often demonstrated subtle use of Japanese formal techniques in other, nonJapanese themed paintings (such as his later Waterlilies), Le Japonaise is highly exaggerated and about as un-Japanese as it could possibly be, including the womans blonde hair.59 Whether the work was done in jest, in seriousness, or merely for profit, it was apparently received well and sold for a considerable sum. Closely tied to the nineteenth-century concept of exoticism is the concept of primitivism. Primitivism has its roots in Enlightenment era theories which saw certain human beings as being in a primitive or uncivilized state, and possessing a kind of uncorrupted honourable nature. The best known philosophy of this type is likely JeanJacques Rousseaus eighteenth-century concept of The Noble Savage60. Primitivism in the arts held that cultures perceived as uncivilized possess a certain creative quality that civilized society, formal education, and the historical art tradition invariably destroy. There was considerable interest in attempting to emulate the art and lifestyle of these so-called primitives. These ideas were again closely related to the sentiments of individuals such as those in the Arts and Crafts Movement, who saw their moral and aesthetic ideals in pre-industrialized societies.

58 59

Berger, 67-8. Berger, 67-8. 60 See Ellingson, Terry Jay. The myth of the noble savage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

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While the ideas of primitivism and exoticism guided many Western studies of other nations in the nineteenth century, these concepts have been highly contentious in research in the ensuing years. The problematic nature of both primitivism and exoticism lies in the inherent ethnocentrism on the part of the Western nations, and a devaluation of and condescension towards the cultures considered to be primitive or exotic. Exoticism and primitivism are largely considered as phenomena of a specific historical past in research today, and have fallen out of favor as a framework in which to do studies. There is almost certainly no such thing as a contemporary study of world cultures done in a primitivist mode. However, there continues to be considerable scholarly writing that analyzes modes of thought such as primitivism and exoticism in their historical contexts. Stephen F. Eisenman drew a direct parallel between these

concepts and racism in a 1996 article.61 And Bruce Robbins has explored the problematic nature of nineteenth-century modes of thought such as these in relation to colonial discourse.62 Though primitivism and exoticism are problematic notions, historically these ideas are central to the construction of a symbolic, iconic impression of Japan in public consciousness in the nineteenth-century West, which played a large part in the attraction of Western artists to Japanese prints. As well as incorporating Japanese visual techniques extensively, the painting of Vincent van Gogh reflects a strong personal symbolic construction of Japan, arguably more so than the work of any other painter of the era.63 Van Gogh, the significance of whose overall career is too extensive to cover adequately in this brief analysis, is likely the best known example of an artist whose work was in many ways guided by a strong
61 62

Eisenman, Stephen F. Triangulating Racism. Art Bulletin 78.4(1996): 603-10. Robbins, Bruce. Colonial Discourse: A Paradigm and its Discontents. Victorian Studies 35.2 (1992): 209-15. 63 Whitford, 171-97

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idea of Japan as a personal utopia. An enthusiastic collector of ukiyo-e prints and a frequent visitor at the Paris gallery of Samuel Bing in the mid 1880s, Van Goghs personal writings, primarily to his art dealer brother Theo, ranged from admiration of Japanese visual technique (the more you see things with a Japanese eye, the more subtly you perceive color) to commentary on the increasingly spiritual significance that Japanese art possessed for him (Do you see, what these simple Japanese teach us almost amounts to a religion).64 Van Goghs concept of Japan as not only the source of rich visual material, but as a place with spiritual significance all its own, is cast into sharp relief with the artists move from Paris to the countryside Arles in 1888. As he wrote to Theo stating here I feel myself to be in Japan65, his intention in founding a rural artist colony was apparently to emulate the lifestyle of a Japanese monastery a life of peace and simplicity surrounded by nature.66 In the 1990 article Van Goghs Utopian Japonisme, Kodera Tsukasa explores Van Goghs melding of Utopian Socialist ideas67 with a highly idealized idea of Japan, colored by the days theories of primitivism, and emphasis on the return to nature.68 Van Goghs painting from Arles frequently echoed these ideas. 1888s The Sower represents both an idyllic rural setting, and a clear application of Japanese visual techniques. Nothing is more telling of Van Goghs love for his own utopian construct of Japan than the artists own personal correspondence. The weather here remains fine, he wrote to Theo from Arles in 1888 and if it was always like this, it would be better than a painters paradise, it would be
64

Quotes are from Phillipart, Georges ed. Lettres de Vincent Van Gogh a son frere Theo Paris, 1937 and from Letters 500 and 572 respectively. Referenced in Berger, 125-6 65 Lettres de Vincent Van Gogh, Letter 468 66 De Leeuw, Ronald. Preface to Catalogue of the Van Gogh Museums collection of Japanese Prints. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 1991. 7-8 67 Tsukasa, 24. 68 Tsukasa, 37.

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absolute Japan.69 In another letter to Theo, the South of France is characterized as the equivalent of Japan.70 To fellow painter Gauguin, Van Gogh wrote of his journey from Paris to Arles, and his impatient glances to see whether it was like Japan yet!71 Van Gogh can be seen as personifying the many dimensions of the nineteenth century Western reaction to Japanese art. His attraction to Japanese art, his careful study of Japanese visual techniques and the application of those ideas in his own work, and his personal construction of the Japanese utopia, were all largely based in the eras popular fascination with the primitive and the exotic, and desire for new approaches to representation. The nineteenth century, particularly in its latter half, saw the phenomenal rise in popularity of Japanese art in the Western world, as well as the pervasive stylistic influence of these artworks on the work of Western artists. There are arguably three distinct, yet closely related dimensions to consider in the analysis of why Western artists were so attracted to, and influenced by, Japanese art at this particular time. First, the historical moment poised Japanese art for international recognition. After two centuries of isolation, the economic opening of Japan and the shift to a government much more receptive to foreigners served to create the climate for the unprecedented trade of merchandise, artworks, and ideas between Japan and Western nations. Secondly, Japanese prints were introduced to Western audiences at a time when there existed a widespread interest in new approaches to visual representation, and new ways of seeing images. A valuable parallel to the Japanese print is the advent of photography, as both art forms came to prominence at roughly the same time in Europe,
69 70

Lettres de Vincent Van Gogh, Letter 543 as quoted in Tsukasa, 11. Lettres de Vincent Van Gogh, Letter 500 as quoted in Tsukasa, 25. 71 Quoted in Tsukasa, 25.

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and both provided a means of representation which differed from the Western visual art tradition. In the second half of the century, diverse Western artists such as Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, and Aubrey Beardsley incorporated visual techniques borrowed from Japanese prints into their own work. Some notable Japanese visual ideas borrowed include the rejection of chiaroscuro in favor or contour, use of flat color, lack of linear perspective to denote space, and extreme bisecting or cropping of the image. The third major factor in Western artists attraction to, and adoption of the ideas in Japanese art was the major symbolic significance that Japan itself came to have in the nineteenth century. One dimension of this was the popular tendency to see Japan and the art it produced as a form of sensual exoticism. Another closely related part of the symbolic construction of Japan was through the notion of primitivism. This essentially ethnocentric stream of Western thought revered societies thought to be uncivilized, and romanticized a return to what was seen as a purer, more natural form of existence than the contemporary, industrial European or North American culture. Vincent Van Gogh is the nineteenth-century painter who best illustrates the idea of devotion to the personal symbolic construct of Japan as a natural utopia, as well as the Western adoption of Japanese visual language. Together, these three major factors in the attraction of Western artists to Japanese art in the nineteenth century paint a picture of a phenomenon whose basis, historically, visually, and symbolically, essentially amounts to a desire to break with past tradition in the interest of exploring what is perceived as a new and exciting worldview.

Bibliography

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Adams, Henry. John LaFarges Discovery of Japanese Art: A New Perspective on the Origins of Japonisme. The Art Bulletin. 67 (1985): 449-485. Berger, Klaus. Japonisme in Western Painting from Whistler to Matisse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Burris, John P. Exhibiting religion : colonialism and spectacle at international expositions, 1851-1893. Charlottesville: Virginia University Press, 2001. Burty, Phillipe. Japonisme I La Renaissance Litteraire et Artistique 1(May 1872): 256. Chisaburo, Yamada (ed.) Dialogue in art: Japan and the West. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1976. Chisaburo, Yamada (ed.) Japonisme in Art: An International Symposium. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1980. De Leeuw, Ronald. Preface to Catalogue of the Van Gogh Museums collection of Japanese Prints. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 1991. Dorra, Henri. Japanese Sources for Two Paintings by Seurat. Gazette des Beaux-Arts 6 (1989): 95-99. Edmond, Rod. Representing the South Pacific : colonial discourse from Cook to Gauguin. New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997. Eisenman, Stephen F. Triangulating Racism. Art Bulletin 78.4(1996): 603-10. Ellingson, Terry Jay. The myth of the noble savage. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Flescher, Sharon. Zacharie Astruc, critic, artist, and Japoniste (1833-1907) . New York : Garland Pub, 1978. Floyd, Phylis. Documentary Evidence for the Availability of Japanese Imagery in Europe in Nineteenth-Century Public Collections. The Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 105-142. French, Calvin L. Through closed doors : Western influence on Japanese art 16391853. Kobe, Japan : Kobe City Museum of Namban Art, 1978. Gere, Charlotte and Michael Whiteway Nineteenth-Century Design: From Pugin to Mackintosh. New York: Harry N Abrams, 2000.

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Haddad, John The Non-Identical Chinese Twins: Traditional China and Chinese Yankees at the Centennial Exposition of 1876. American Nineteenth Century History 1.3(2000): 51-101. Hardie, Peter Introduction to The Japanese Eye, as reprinted in Hardie, Peter, and Marie Conte-Helm. Japonisme: Japanese Reflections in Western Art. Sunderland: Northern Center for Contemporary Art, 1986. Hardie, Peter, and Marie Conte-Helm. Japonisme: Japanese Reflections in Western Art. Sunderland: Northern Center for Contemporary Art, 1986. Japanese Chronological Table. National Museum of Japanese History. http://www.rekihaku.ac.jp/e_ctable/index.html 1998. Accessed 03/04. Johnson, Deborah. Confluence and Influence: Photography and the Japanese Print in 1850. Readings in Nineteenth-Century Art. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996. Meech, Julia and Gabriel P. Weisberg. Japonisme Comes to America: The Japanese Impact on the Graphic Arts, 1876-1925. New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishers Inc, 1990. Meech-Pekarik, Julia. Early Collectors of Japanese Prints and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Metropolitan Museum Journal 17 (1982): 93-118. Landrow, George P. Victorian Art Criticism and the Rise of a Middle Class Audience. The Mind and Art of Victorian England. Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1976. Lee, J. Traveling, through nineteenth-century eyes. U.S. News & World Report 104.13 (1988): 63. Lewis, Adrian. From art history to cultural studies and back again. Art History 18.2(1995) 290-6. Lu, David J. Japan: A Documentary History. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1997. Purbrick, Louise ed. The Great Exhibition of 1851 : new interdisciplinary essays. New York : Manchester University Press: 2001. Robbins, Bruce. Colonial Discourse: A Paradigm and its Discontents. Victorian Studies 35.2 (Winter 1992): 209-15. Roche, John F. The culture of pre-modernism: Whitman, Morris, & the American arts and crafts movement. ATQ 9.2 (1995):103-19.

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Society for Japanese Art and Crafts. Meiji : Japanese art in transition. Gravenhage: Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1987. Tokyo University. Aspects of Japanese Culture and Society. 1997. http://www.isei.or.jp/books/75/Front.html Accessed 03/04 Tsukasa, Kodera. Van Goghs Utopian Japonisme. Catalogue of the Van Gogh Museums collection of Japanese Prints. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 1991. van Rappard-Boon, Charlotte, Willem van Gulik, and Keiko van Bremen-Ito, eds. Catalogue of the Van Gogh Museums Collection of Japanese Prints. Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum, 1991. Walton, Whitney. France at the Crystal Palace : bourgeois taste and artisan manufacture in the nineteenth century. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1992. Weisberg, Gabriel P. and Yvonne M.L. Weisberg. Japonisme: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1990. Weisberg, Gabriel P. et al. Japonisme: Japanese Influence on French Art 1854-1910. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975. Whitford, Frank. Japanese Prints and Western Painters. London: Studio Vista, 1977. Zatlin, Linda Gertner. Aubrey Beardsley and Victorian Sexual Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

Appendix A: Figures

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Figure 1: Anonymous, Perrys Ship. c1860s. Print now in collection of the British Museum, London.

Figure 2: Katsuhika Hokusai, Wrestlers (page from Manga) c1815. Figure 3: Leonardo Da Vinci, Studies for the Nativity. Pen and ink, 19.3 x 16.2 cm.The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA c1482-92

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Figure 4: Katsuhika Hokusai, Shirasuka, no. 34. 1804. Woodblock print, 11.7 x 16.5 cm. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

Figure 6: Aubrey Beardsley, Toilette of Salome. Book illustration for Oscar Wildes Salome, 1894. Figure 5: Edouard Manet, Olympia. 1865. Oil on canvas,1.3 x 1.9 m. Musee du Louvre, Paris.

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Figure 7: Raphael, Marriage of the Virgin. 1504. Panel painting, 1.7x.12 m. Brera Gallery, Milan.

Figure 8: Hiroshige, Kojimachi and the Benkei Canal at Soto Sakurada, no. 66 from the series One Hundred Views of Famous Places in Edo. 1856. Woodblock print, 33.5 x 21.8 cm. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA Figure 9: Claude Monet, Waterlilies. 1905. Oil on canvas, 89.5 x 100.3 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

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Figure 10: Attributed to Hiroshige, Geishas. Early nineteenth century. Woodblock print, 15.87cm x 10.8cm. Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA

Figure 11: Edgar Degas, Ballet Dancers Rehearsing. c1877. Graphite drawing, 24.8 x 33 cm. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California, USA

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Figure 12: Hiroshige , The Moon Pine at Ueno. 1857 1858. Woodblock print, 33.9cm x 22.5 cm.Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

Figure 15: Henri de Tolouse Lautrec, Le Divan Japonais. 1893. Lithograph print, 80.3 cm x 61.5 cm. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan

Figure 13: Vincent van Gogh, The Sower. 1888. Oil on Canvas, 50.8cm x 61cm. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Figure 14: Paul Gauguin, Vision after the Sermon. 1888. Oil on Canvas, 73x92 cm. National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.

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Figure 16: Hiroshige, Haneda no watashi benten no yashiro. 1858. Woodblock print, 33.9 x 22.7 cm. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA

Figure 17: Claude Monet, Le Japonaise.1876. Oil on canvas, 231.6 x 142.3 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

43