Between Japan and France
Encounter, Transformation
And the Making of Modern Art
Pre-Modern Encounters
Between Japan and the West
Kano Naizen (attributed), 1570-1616, Departure of the Southern
Barbarians (detail), Japan, early 17th century folding screen, ink, color,
and gold on gilded paper. Produced for wealthy Japanese patrons.
Portuguese commerce with Japan centered on the annual
voyage of the Black Ship from Goa, the trading vessel that took
merchandise from India and, especially, China to Nagasaki where the
goods were exchanged for Japanese silver.
(left) Tiered food box, Japan, early Edo period, 17th century, gold and silver
sprinkled designs and gold foil on black lacquer, 11 x 8 x 8 in
(right) Powder flask, Japan, Momoyama period, late 16th century, gold and
silver sprinkled designs (takamaki-e) on nashiji ground on black lacquer. Museu
Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon, Portugal.
Such culturally syncretic objects found their way to private European collections.
Besides Portuguese hats and pantaloons, the exaggerated size of the nose
signifies Namban (Southern Barbarians).
Anonymous, Namban Screen (detail): Portuguese traders with chair. 16-17 c
Momoyama Period, Japan; San Francisco, Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
(right) Anonymous, Writing Box (Suzuri bako), Japan, Momoyama Period,
1573-1615 Wood, lacquer. This piece is in the current Smithsonian
exhibition, Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and
17th Centuries
Occidentalism, Japanese fascination with the foreigner,
is a mirror image of Western Orientalism.
Japanese Christian, Japan, 1620,
painting on wood; 15 x 7 in, Museu
do Caramulo, Lisbon.
Edict of 1614 expelled Christian
missionaries. All Portuguese were
expelled in 1639, which ended
foreign trade with Japan and
severely curtailed Japanese contact
with the outside world.
Throughout the closure of
Japan, 1641 to 1853,
European monarchs continued
to vie with each other in
forming collections of
Japanese lacquer ware and
porcelain.
(left) Deshima Trading Post, 1810. The tiny
man-made island in Nagasaki bay for
foreign traders.
(below) Nagasaki School, The Dutch
Factory on the Island of Deshima, detail
from a scroll painting, Edo period, 18th
century. Paint on paper, 10.5 in high,
British Museum, London. A small
population of Calvinist Dutch traders was
allowed to remain on the island. For 200
years of sakoku (isolation policy) Deshima
was the only window to the West.
(left) 17th Century Blue and White Porcelain plate, Japanese, Imari; 19”
diameter. Such porcelains were imported to France by Dutch traders
(right) Jar, ca. 1740, French; Chantilly, soft-paste porcelain; H. 11 in.
The production of Japanese-style porcelains was a priority at Chantilly; even
the patent granted to the factory by Louis XV in 1735 specifically describes
the right to make porcelain "in imitation of the porcelain of Japan.“
“Oh, would that I could live up to my blue china!”
Oscar Wilde
Empress Marie Theresa of Austria (1740-80) was a great collector of Japanese
lacquer ware, which was inherited by her daughter, Marie Antoinette. In 18th
century France, screens, cabinets, or panels of lacquer were imported, cut up
and adapted to form hybrid mirror frames, cabinets, tables and chests of the
aristocracy.
Japanese black lacquer
cabinet, lacquer and gilt wood
17th century, 38” high
Bedroom of Marie Antoinette from a
recent exhibition in Tokyo included pieces
from her collection of Japanese lacquer
ware.
(left) Shiba Kokan (1747-1818), The Barrel Maker, 1789, hanging scroll, oil
paint on silk, based on engraving from a Dutch book brought to Japan
(center).
(right) Kokan, The Archery Gallery, c. 1771-4, color woodblock, 10 x 7 in
“Japanese and Chinese paintings are like
toys and are not of much practical use.
Western painters use light and shade to
express contrasting effects – smoothness
and roughness, distance and proximity,
depth and shallowness.”
Shiba Kokan
One-point linear perspective:
Western influence
Shiba Kokan, View of the Mimeguri Shrine,1783, 26.5 x 38.7 cm. First
etching by a Japanese artist. Technique learned from a Dutch manual.
(left, above) Portrait of Commodore Perry, a North American, woodblock
print, ca. 1854, Nagasaki Prefecture; (right, above) Daguerreotype by
Mathew Brady (detail) ca.1856
(below) Gountei Sadahide, Complete Picture of The Newly Opened Port of
Yokohama, woodblock, 1863, c. 27 x 75“ (Three separate woodblock prints
pieced together.)
Utagawa Yoshitoro, American
Drinking and Carousing, 1861, color
woodblock, 14 x 9 in. Yokohama
Utagowa Yoshitora, Railway
Timetable, 1872-9, color
woodblock, 13 x 9 in. Miniature
train given to Japan in 1853 by
the US to introduce the power of
steam, 117 yd circular railway
line went 20 MPH. Yokohama
Utagawa Sadahide, A Sunday
in Yokohama, 1861-2, color
woodblock, 14 x 29 in
Before the end of the 1850s a
series of treaties was signed with
Great Britain, France, Russia, and
the Netherlands. Japan began an
astonishingly rapid
Westernization (Modernization).
Yoshikazu, Picture of
Foreigners Enjoying a
Banquet, December
1860, Yokohama
Children dance
at the May
Festival Ball
given in honor
of the Japanese
ambassadors,
Frank Leslie’s
Illustrated
Newspaper,
June 6, 1860
“It is strange, this revolution brought
by Japanese art in the taste of a people
who, in matters of art, are the slaves
of Greek symmetry and who, suddenly,
are becoming impassioned over a plate
on which the flower is not set dead in
the middles, over a fabric in which
harmony is not achieved by a
graduation of tints but by a
knowledgeable juxtaposition of raw
colors.
Edmond de Goncourt
1877, Paris
Eugene Rousseau,
etched glass vase, 187885, Paris, emulated
irregular profiles of
Japanese ceramics and
flow of glazes. Source for
carp is a manga print.
JAPONISME
and
Avant-Garde Painting
in Paris
(below) Edgar Degas, The Tub, 1886, pastel on paper,
23 x 32”
(left) Katsushika Hokusai, Women at the Public Bath,
from the Manga vol. I, c. 1820, color woodblock, 7 x 4”
In the manga, Degas said, he found relief from Western
art’s obsession with “the female form divine.” European
artists continually borrowed motifs from the manga.
Both subject matter –
contemporary woman
bathing – and style that
was considered
radically anti-academic
and modern, are
directly influenced by
Japanese art.
(left) Kitagawa Utamaro, Creation of a Woodblock, woodblock print, 1775
(center) Edgar Degas, Women Ironing, 1884; (right, below) The Name Day
of the Madam, 1876-77, pastel over monotype 10 x 11”. Musée Picasso, Paris
Degas’ influential interest in the candid portrayal of the
daily life of women of all social classes and his stylistic
inventions of diagonals, flattened space, partial figures,
is largely derived from Japanese ukiyo-e prints and
manga collected by members of his circle of Parisian
artists and writers. A fascination for urban life
characterizes “modern” art.
(left) Edouard Manet, The Cats’ Rendezvous, lithograph, 1868-70, 17 x 13
in.
(center) Manet, Cats, etching, 1869, 7 x 9 in.
(right) Hiroshige, page from Ukiyo Ryusai Gwafu devoted to cats, probable
source for Manet’s Cats (center)
Manet is considered the “father of modern painting.”
Edouard Manet, Portrait of
Emile Zola, 1867-8, oil on
canvas, 57 x 44 in. Musée
d’Orsay, Paris
The novelist Zola, art critic and
supporter of the Parisian avantgarde, filled his home with
Japanese prints. He defended
Manet’s paintings, always
under fierce attack, by comparing
them with Japanese prints, which,
according to Zola, resembled
Manet’s work “in their strange
elegance and their magnificent
patches of color.”
Manet, At the Café, oil on
canvas, 1873. Subject of
urban night life, flattening,
multiple focal points,
decentralized composition, and
cropping all influenced by
Japanese prints.
(right) Mary Cassatt (American expatriate in Paris) In the Omnibus,
drypoint and aquatint in colors, series of 10, 1890-91
(left) Suzuki Harunobu, Women and Child, woodblock print, c.1750
(left) Katsushika Hokusai, South Wind, Clear Dawn, from Thirty Six Views
of Mount Fuji, c. 1830-2, color woodblock, 10 x 15”
(right) Claude Monet, Haystack, Sunset, 1891, oil on canvas, 28 x 36in, MFA
Boston
Monet’s 23 views of haystacks (1891-2) under various light conditions is
thought to be influenced by Hokusai’s 36 views of Mount Fuji. Monet owned
a copy of this print by Hokusai.
“People are not sufficiently aware of how much our contemporary landscape
Artists have borrowed from these pictures, especially Monet, whom I often encounter
at Bing’s in the little attic where Levy is in charge of the Japanese prints.”
Edmund de Goncourt, 1892
(left) Utagawa Hiroshige, Wisteria
Blooms Over Water at Kameido, from
One Hundred Views of Edo, c. 1857,
color woodblock 14 x 9 in. Brooklyn
MA
(below) Claude Monet, Water Lilies
and Japanese Bridge, 1899, oil on
canvas, Princeton University
(left) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril au Jardin de Paris, 1893, color
lithograph, 51 x 37 in
(right) Hiroshige, The Benten ford Across the Oi River, 1858, color
woodblock, 14 x 9 in
Hiroshige, Plum Estate,
Kameido, 1857, woodblock print
Van Gogh, Plum tree in Bloom
(after Hiroshige), oil on canvas
1887 (Paris)
The Montmartre gallery of Samuel Bing was next door to Théo van Gogh’s apartment.
Bing kept thousands of Japanese prints in stock. Vincent became an avid collector of
ukiyo-e prints.
Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Père Tanguy, 1887-88, oil on canvas
Japonisme and emergent Expressionism
Van Gogh & Gauguin both appropriated
Japanese perspective, composition,
and figurative invention. Cloisonné line
developed by Gauguin.
Hokusai, Sumo Wrestlers
from the Manga vol. III,
1815, color woodblock
7 x 4.5in
Van Gogh, Plum tree in Bloom
(after Hiroshige), oil on canvas,1887
Gauguin, Vision After the Sermon:
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1888
Parisian Avant-garde painting looks to Africa in the early 20th century
Henri Matisse, Blue Nude: Souvenir of Biskra, 1907, oil on canvas
(right) Fang reliquary (“The Black Venus”), unknown artist, pre-colonial Southern
Gabon
Coinciding with the first decades of the Meiji restoration, Paris becomes the
international center for avant-garde art. Artists come from all over the world to
participate in the radical transformation of the Western visual art tradition. SubSaharan African sculpture becomes the primary non-Western influence on art, not
Asian art. Matisse’s Orientalist Blue Nude draws freely upon world art traditions,
none of which are representational.
Japan encounters Paris
“The Capital of Modern Art”
Poster for the 1900 Paris Exposition
Uchida Kuichi, Portrait of the Emperor Meiji, 1873, Albumen silver print
Emperor Meiji ruled from1868 to 1912. During this time, Japan started its
modernization and rose to world power status. Art, like all aspects of life,
became “modern” (Western)
If you ask of what the artistic life consists, the answer is not difficult to give.
The artist creates his own group, apart from society, and neglects everything
else. From morning to night, he does nothing but look at art, hear about art,
talk about art, as though art were all the life he knew. You might think that
this could be done in London or New York, but it cannot be . . . For the best
artistic minds, Paris alone has the right feel, the proper atmosphere.
Iwamura Toru
The Art Students of Paris, 1902
Academic study by
Henri Matisse, 1892
Nude studies by Japanese artists sent to study in Paris:
(left) Yasui Sotaro, 1907-10; (center) Kuroda Seiki,
1889; (right) Kume Keiichiro, 1887; all chalk on paper,
24 x 18 in. The nude was the foundation subject for
students of Western art in the “Great Tradition”: Greek
and Renaissance humanism.
(left) Kuroda Seiki, Morning Toilette, 1893, Oil on canvas, 70 x 39 in,
destroyed in WW II (right) Sentiment (from Wisdom, Impression, Sentiment),
c. 1900, oil on canvas, Kuroda Memorial Hall, Tokyo. Launched the famous
“nude controversy” in Japan.
An 1895 caricature of
Japanese viewing
Kuroda’s Morning Toilette
by the French artist and
satirist Georges Bigot,
who was residing in
Japan at the time.
(left) Asai Chu, Fields in Spring , oil on canvas,1888
(right) Camille Pissarro, Gleaners, oil on canvas,1889
Post Impressionism
(left) Henri Matisse, Portrait of Derain, oil on canvas, 1906
(right) Yorozu Tetsugoro, Self Portrait with Red Eyes, 1912, oil on canvas
Fauvism // Cubism and Futurism
Tetsugoro did not go to Europe.
(left) Georges Braque, Dish of
Fruit, Glass, and Bottle, 1926, oil on
plywood
(right) Koide Narashige,
Vegetables on a Table, 1927
Post-Cubism
France and Japan
Art After World War II
Art Informel / Les Nouveaux Réalists and
Gutai
Georges Mathieu, 1956
Kazuo Shiraga, 1955
Jean Fautrier (French, 1898-1964) Art Informel, Head of a Hostage, 20,"
oil on panel, 1944, one of over thirty “hostage” paintings and sculptures that
he made during the occupation of Paris, as a witness to Nazi atrocities.
“These paintings addressed the
most important issue of their time,
epitomizing a 'new human resolve'
against the horrors of war."
Fautrier
(left) Jiro Yoshihara (Japan 1905 – 1972), Painting, 1960, Gutai
(right) Jean Fautrier, Head of a Hostage, 20," oil on panel, 1944, Art
Informel
Japanese Gutai and French Art Informel were both fundamentally
responses to the horrors of WW II. For the Japanese artists that included the
profound shock of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Shozo Shimamoto, (left) Holes, 1954
(right) Painting, 1955 (slashed, punctured) Gutai
Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956) painting in Springs NY studio, 1950
Action Painting – American Abstract Expressionism
“I believe the easel picture to be a dying form.”
(Pollock, Guggenheim Application, 1947)
James Dean in
Rebel Without a
Cause
8 August 1949 issue of Life magazine:
first artist to become a media celebrity.
Willem De Kooning, American Action Painter,
in studio, Springs, NY, 1960s
"Gutai art does not alter matter; it
gives matter life... In Gutai art, the
human spirit and matter, opposed
as they are, shake hands... My
respect goes out to the works of
Pollock and Mathieu. Their works
are the cries uttered by matter: by
oil paint and enamel themselves."
Jiro Yoshihara
Gutai manifesto, 1956
Georges Mathieu (French)
“Action Painting” in Fontainebleau,
1960. The completed painting took
1.5 hours.
Georges Matthieu,
Public Action, 1957,
Gutai Festival Osaka,
Japan
Georges Mathieu, Desert Shadows, oil on canvas, 57 x 49 in. 1975, Art Informel
Saburo Murakami, Gutai perfomance: Smashing Through (21
panels of 42 papers) second Gutai exhibition, Tokyo, 1956
Shiraga, Gutai performance, painting with feet; (right, below) Painting (as
object)
(right) Shiraga Gutai exhibition of Shiraga’s paintings made with feet
Pierre Huyghe (French), Anywhere Out of This World, multimedia
installation, 1999
(left, below) still from Anywhere, Manga character, Annlee, explaining her
original identity.
Pierre Huyghe, Annlee
Fireworks (the end of Annlee),
Miami, 2002
Dōmo arigatō and merci beaucoup!
Yves Klein, performance of Anthropométrie de l’époch bleue (3 views) Paris,
1960
(right, below) Anthropométrie de l’époch bleue (Anthropometry of the Blue
Epoch), pure pigment in resin on paper mounted on canvas, 1960, Les
Nouveaux Réalists (New Realists)
“In 1961 I shot at: Daddy, all the men, small men, tall men, important men,
fat men, men, my brother, society, church, school, my family, my mother, all
the men, Daddy, myself, men again.”
Niki de Saint-Phalle, “Shoot” paintings
1961, Art Informel, Nouveau Realisme