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WD_231/ 2005
(  Satoshi Kinoshita )
| Series: | Works on paper: Drawings 3 | | Medium: | oilstick on paper | | Size (inches): | 25 x 19.9 | | Size (mm): | 640 x 510 | | Catalog #: | WD_0231 | | Description: | Signed, date and copyright in pencil on the reverse.
"I envy the Japanese artists for the incredible neat clarity which all their works have. It is never boring and you never get the impression that they work in a hurry. It is as simple as breathing; they draw a figure with a couple of strokes with such unfailing easiness as if it were as easy as buttoning one's waist coat."- Vincent Van Gogh.
Japanese Influences Upon Vincent Van Gogh:
In much the same way the media influences people today, the Japanese Pavilion at the 1867 World Exposition in Paris, France, provoked cosmopolitan society to adopt new ideas about fashion and the decorative arts. Fascinated by the contrast in western and eastern cultures, European women began to emulate Japanese customs by carrying fans and wearing silk kimonos. Furniture, ceramic pottery from the Orient, and Japanese gardens became commonplace in many bourgeois homes.
Because Japan was not open to the West until the 1850s, Japanese culture remained a mystery to most Europeans and consequently, authentic Japanese goods were difficult to acquire in Europe prior to 1860. After the World Exposition sparked interest, however, several of the larger Parisian stores introduced Japanese departments within their businesses. In turn, these specialty departments provided Japanese goods for a broader range of clientele. A wide variety of art prints were made available to the public, some expensive originals, others cheap copies. Nonetheless, by the close of the 1860s, Japanese prints were admired and collected by many Europeans.
Quite a few western artists succumbed to the allure of the Japanese aesthetic. One such artist was Vincent van Gogh who wrote from Antwerp to his brother, Theo, that "My studio is not so bad, especially as I have pinned a lot of little Japanese prints on the wall, which amuse me very much." Van Gogh, intrigued with the color and decorative flatness of Japanese art, is known to have made three copies of Japanese woodcut prints as late as 1887. Two of these prints, Japonaiserie: Plum Tree in Bloom and Japonaiserie: Bridge in the Rain, were based upon works by the Japanese master artist, Hiroshige. Van Gogh's prints did not attain the smooth colors and textures of the Hiroshige originals; however, they did indicate the artist's attempt to Europeanize Japanese art while incorporating its concepts into van Gogh's distinctive style.
Besides duplicating Japanese woodcuts, van Gogh painted several portraits that include references to some of the approximately 400 Japanese prints he owned. Two similar portraits of Pere Tanguy, an art materials supplier who promoted artists, show the sitter placed before a wall of decorative, colorful woodcuts of Japanese dancers. The genre figures in the Japanese prints create a complicated, visually busy background that seem to push against a simplified figure of Tanguy. Both portraits are characterized by a flat picture plane that lacks any attempt to create an illusion of realism.
Van Gogh's fascination with Japanese art extended beyond collecting prints and duplicating Japanese images. The artist also owned Japanese boxes. One red lacquered box was used to store woolens. Lids of several other "rough" boxes were used by van Gogh to paint images of renewal such as scenes of sprouting bulbs. Artist tools from Japan captured van Gogh's imagination, and he used reed pens to imitate woodcuts or calligraphy within his paintings. Additionally, Vincent once requested that Theo use the Japanese method of paper folding to construct a foldout album of the artist's drawings. In demonstrating his undeniable admiration for Japonisme, van Gogh painted a self-portrait as a Buddhist priest.
Other Impressionist artists were influenced by Japanese art as well. Matisse, Monet, Pissaro, and other artists of the Impressionist school created works of art infused with Japonism: a sense of dramatic color, large areas of open space, and lines that define shapes, volume, and texture.
Vocabulary:
Japonaiserie: the art of copying Japanese woodcut prints.
Japonism and Japanisme: the influences of Japanese culture upon Western art.
References:
Hellwege, P. (1993, September). "Visiting near Arles." SchoolArts, p. 31-2.
Walther, I.F. (1990). Vincent van Gogh: 1853 - 1890, vision and reality. Köln, Germany: Benedikt Taschen Verlag & Co.
compiled by Pam Stephens
-www.art.unt.edu/ntieva/artcurr/asian/vangogh.htm
Japonism:
Japonism (also in French Japonisme and Japonaiserie) is the influence of Japanese art on Western, primarily French, artists. The art that originated from this influence is called japonesque.
While American intellectuals maintained that Edo prints were a vulgar art form, unique to the period and distinct from the refined, religious, national heritage of Japan known as Yamato-e (pictures from the Yamato period, e.g. Zen masters Sesshu and Shubun), ukiyo-e, Japanese wood-block prints, became a source of inspiration for Art Nouveau, cubism and many European impressionist painters in France.
History:
During the Kaei era (1848 – 1854), many foreign merchant ships came to Japan. Following the Meiji restoration in 1868, Japan ended a long period of national isolation and became open to imports from the West, including photography and printing techniques and in turn, many Japanese ukiyo-e prints and other artworks came to Europe and America and soon gained popularity.
Japonism started with the frenzy to collect Japanese art, particularly print art (ukiyoe), in the 1850s and 1860s. French collectors, writers, and art critics undertook many voyages to Japan in the 1870s and 1880s leading to the publication of articles about Japanese aesthetics and the increased distribution of prints in Europe, especially in France. Among them, the liberal economist Henri Cernuschi the critic Theodore Duret (both in 1871 – 1872), and the British collector William Anderson, who lived for some years in Edo and taught medicine. (Anderson's collection has been acquired by the British Museum.) Several Japanese art dealers subsequently resided in Paris, such as Tadamasa Hayashi and Jijima Hanjuro. The Paris world fair of 1878 presented many pieces of Japanese art.
Artists and movements:
Japanese artists who had a great influence included Utamaro and Hokusai. Curiously, while Japanese art was becoming popular in Europe, at the same time, the bunmeikaika (Westernization) led to a loss in prestige for the prints in Japan.
Artists who were influenced by Japanese art were van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Pissarro, Klimt, and many others. Several of van Goghs's paintings imitate ukiyo-e in style and in motif. For example, Le Père Tanguy, the portrait of the proprietor of an art supply shop, shows six different ukiyo-e in the background scene. He painted The Courtisan in 1887 after finding an ukiyo-e by Kesai Eisen on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustré in 1886. At this time, in Antwerp, he was already collecting Japanese stamps.
Ukiyo-e, with their curved lines, patterned surfaces and contrasting voids, and flatness of their picture-plane, also inspired Art Nouveau. Some line and curve patterns became graphic clichés that were later found in works of artists from all parts of the world.
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japonism
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