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Looking East: Western Artists and the Allure of Japan
A craze for all things Japanese in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought a correspondingly radical shift in Western art, dubbed Japonisme. Leading artists, including Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet, were inspired by Japanese art and culture to create works of singular beauty. This lavishly illustrated publication explores an extraordinary moment of cross-cultural exchange by presenting a selection of major paintings, prints, drawings and decorative arts from the renowned collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Masterpieces by European and American artists are shown along with rare objects, paintings and prints from the Museum's Japanese collection, which is one of the finest in the world. Among the Western artists influenced by Japonisme, and included here, are Henry Roderick Newman, Frank Weston Benson, Alfred Stevens, John La Farge, Arthur Wesley Dow, Margaret Jordan Patterson, James McNeill Whistler, Edvard Munch, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, James Ensor, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, Henri Rivière and Frederick Elkington. Their works are juxtaposed with works by Japanese artists such as Utagawa Hiroshige, Katsushika Hokusai, Okumura Masanobu, Maruyama Okyo, Kubo Shunman, Isoda Koryusai and Kikugawa Eizan, among many others. With its two introductory essays, emphasizing first Western and then Eastern perspectives, and its four thematically organized chapters, "Looking East" imparts the sense of discovery and excitement that characterized the development of Japonisme in Europe and North America.
128 pages, Hardcover
First published February 28, 2014
25 people want to read
About the author
Helen Burnham
3 books1 followerHelen Burnham Pamela and Peter Voss Curator of Prints and Drawings Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 30, 2016
Interesting exhibit that deftly illustrates the famous influence of Japanese art on nineteenth century French painting, works which, of course, went on to reshape the course of western art.
I knew that Japanese landscape painting, with its evocation of continuity past the frame, had influenced Degas' innovations within Western paintings, ideas that were then digested by the younger impressionists. But I had never stopped to think how much Nineteenth century European perspective, the idea of looking down on a landscape, as if from the top of a tall building, or from a (literal) bird's eye view, was rooted in Japanese art.
Also, the French sense of the everyday, of the worker at rest, was in part inspired by the Japanese tradition of depicting actors (low-paid workers) and female domestic servants of some form or another at their everyday routines.
Japan was a very insulated society prior to the nineteenth century. It was experiencing its bourgeois evolution along with its industrialization, unlike Europe where the former somewhat precipitated the latter. The new Japanese bourgeoisie was created by the rise of the machines, whereas the European equivalent was merely broadened and transformed by industrialization. The antsy artists of Europe were waiting for something to tell them how to react to the new reality. Nineteenth century Japanese art, experiencing two evolutions at once, shined a light that allowed European art to move forward with an image of industrial urbanity.
I knew that Japanese landscape painting, with its evocation of continuity past the frame, had influenced Degas' innovations within Western paintings, ideas that were then digested by the younger impressionists. But I had never stopped to think how much Nineteenth century European perspective, the idea of looking down on a landscape, as if from the top of a tall building, or from a (literal) bird's eye view, was rooted in Japanese art.
Also, the French sense of the everyday, of the worker at rest, was in part inspired by the Japanese tradition of depicting actors (low-paid workers) and female domestic servants of some form or another at their everyday routines.
Japan was a very insulated society prior to the nineteenth century. It was experiencing its bourgeois evolution along with its industrialization, unlike Europe where the former somewhat precipitated the latter. The new Japanese bourgeoisie was created by the rise of the machines, whereas the European equivalent was merely broadened and transformed by industrialization. The antsy artists of Europe were waiting for something to tell them how to react to the new reality. Nineteenth century Japanese art, experiencing two evolutions at once, shined a light that allowed European art to move forward with an image of industrial urbanity.
July 15, 2016
This slim but attractive hardback is the catalogue for the Looking East exhibition, held earlier this year at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. Introductory essays by Helen Burnham and Sarah E. Thompson set the scene, characterizing the cultural exchange between Japan and the West as a two-way process.
Japanese motifs and styles were popular and widely disseminated by the late 19th century, but the Japanese influence was one among many, and a given artwork may reference Japanese sources with the lightest of touches, or in a way that blends borrowings from other cultures too.
This approach is (unsurprisingly) more nuanced than what you take from the exhibition marketing, so reading the book helped to answer some of the questions I had when I saw the exhibition originally. The catalogue covers four main themes: Women, City Life, Nature and Landscape. The last section is my favourite, and concludes with a print by Yoshida Hiroshi of El Capitan, from his series The United States, a choice that integrates beautifully the Japanese and American strands of the show.
Review first posted at http://asianartbrief.com
Japanese motifs and styles were popular and widely disseminated by the late 19th century, but the Japanese influence was one among many, and a given artwork may reference Japanese sources with the lightest of touches, or in a way that blends borrowings from other cultures too.
This approach is (unsurprisingly) more nuanced than what you take from the exhibition marketing, so reading the book helped to answer some of the questions I had when I saw the exhibition originally. The catalogue covers four main themes: Women, City Life, Nature and Landscape. The last section is my favourite, and concludes with a print by Yoshida Hiroshi of El Capitan, from his series The United States, a choice that integrates beautifully the Japanese and American strands of the show.
Review first posted at http://asianartbrief.com
January 26, 2016
This was a nice exhibit put on by the Asian Art Museum. I'm glad I was able to see it before it went away.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews