Japonism

Japonism, or « Japonisme » the French term, refers to the influence of Japanese arts on the West in the second half of the 19th century.

 

The word was first coined in a series of articles published by Philippe Burty in the magazine la Renaissance littéraire et artistique from 1872 to 1873 and in a book by Jules Claretie L’Art Français en 1872.

The relationships between European countries and Japan were never fully severed even after the Tokugawa government forbade the Christian religion and closed the frontiers of the country in 1639. Only the Dutch were admitted there and they ensured all the commercial ties with the rest of the world in the small artificial Island of Deshima near Nagasaki. The commerce of products and of ideas was very intense and filled with great curiosity on both sides of the border.

 

The situation radically changed when Japan reopened its frontiers in 1854. Commerce, travel, World’s Fairs produced a massive arrival of Japanese objects, prints and books that launched the real era of Japonism. Parisians saw their first formal exhibition of Japanese arts and crafts when Japan took a pavilion at the World's Fair of 1867. But already, shiploads of oriental bric-a-brac—including fans, kimonos, lacquers, bronzes, and silks—had begun pouring into England and France.

 

In painting, Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Degas, Van Gogh, Gauguin were among those who were deeply inspired by Japanese art, affected by the lack of perspective and shadow, the flat areas of strong colour, the compositional freedom in placing the subject off-centre, with mostly low diagonal axes to the background. The Japanese iris, peonies, bamboos, kimonos, calligraphy, fish, butterflies and other insects, blackbirds, cranes and wading birds, cats, tigers and dragons were endless sources of inspiration, appropriation and reinterpretation for European artists.

 

Interior design was equally influenced by oriental art, architects showed a keen interest in Japanese houses and furniture. The Oriental salon was greatly popular at home with the pluralism of styles of the later part of the century. Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Josef Hoffmann and Gustav Klimt were early propagators of Japonism.

 

The World’s Fairs of 1851 and 1862 in London, those of 1867, 1878, 1889 and 1900 in Paris, of 1873 in Vienna and of 1904 in Saint Louis presented a number of “Japanese-Chinese” installations with earthenware, bronzes, screens and paintings and attracted the largest amounts of visitors. These were reinterpretations combining elements from Japan and China, mixing them to a degree one could not differentiate between them.

 

Japanese was a means to escape from stagnant artistic styles opening the culture to brand new views on art. This was not only an attraction for the picturesque or the exotic. The avant-guard used this artistic impulse to create new forms of art with Manet and the Impressionists.

  

Art nouveau in France, Arts and Craft in England, Free Aesthetics in Brussels were all movements that were influenced by the Japanese ideal of unity in art. In the late 19th century, art dealer Siegfried Bing, being perfectly aware of the importance of the fusion of art and life in Japan, launched the Japon Artistique concept in 1888 - art as in dissociable with life. 

• photo 1: World’s Fair of 1878, Paris, the Blot & Drouard Company presented these two Japanese style vases and planter.
• photo 2: World’s Fair of 1878, the Royal Porcelain Works of Worcester directed by R.W. Binns offered Japanese style porcelain.
• photo 3: Enamelled plate by ceramist and glass artist Eugene Rousseau (model designed by Felix Bracquemond). Rousseau was one of the first to realize the wealth Japanese art offered to the French ceramic industry. In 1867, he had the famous engraver Bracquemond draw the Monthereau earthenware Japanese diner set, made of two hundred pieces each with a different decor. Bracquemond borrowed from the Japanese masters their way of depicting animals in lifelike attitudes. The set was a huge success.
• photo 4: Decorative panel, by Louise Abbéma (1853-1927).