Tuesday 01/10/19- Art For Art's Sake with Tony Peart

​So, the year is 1853, and Japanese ports have reopened to trade with the West. Along with many other goods, Japanese art was one of the main things which were imported into the western art world.

Woodcut prints by masters of the ukiyo-e school of printmaking, transformed Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art by demonstrating that simple, transitory, everyday subjects from ‘’the floating world’’ could be presented in appealingly decorative ways.

For this weeks blog task we were asked to: take two differing pieces of art or design from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century and explain how the Art of Japan influenced their form, function or manufacture.

Upon looking at the work of Vincent Van Gogh, it's clear to see that he was massivley influenced by the art of Japan. Gogh made copies of two Hiroshige prints. He altered their colours and added borders filled with calligraphic characters he borrowed from other prints.

As you can see, the prints below are almost identical to the original image:

​Japonaiserie (English: Japanesery) was the Dutch term that Gogh used to express the influence of Japanese art. He strongly admired the techniques that the Japanese used in their work, in a letter to his brother Theo, he wrote:

"I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity that everything in their work has. It's never dull, and never appears to be done too hastily. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure with a few confident strokes with the same ease as if it was as simple as buttoning your waistcoat."

Another artist who was influenced by Japan was Claude Monet. One of Monet’s interests- in addition to painting and gardening- was collecting Japanese art.  His home had 231 Japanese woodblocks, Hokusai being prominent among them.

The influence of Hokusai’s numerous depictions of flowers without backgrounds can certainly be seen in Monet’s Water Lilies. Hokusai’s flowers did not need landscape as background to make them beautiful. Monet would blend this with his love of the sea to eventually create paintings of only his water lilies and the water. 

Monet also went and depicted his wife in Japanese costume against a background of falling fans- surrounded in the spirit of Japan in Madame Monet en costume Japonais. 

Madame Monet en costume Japonais- Claude Monet, 1876

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