Between Japan and FranceEncounter, Transformation

And the Making of Modern Art

Pre-Modern EncountersBetween 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.

Bedroom of Marie Antoinette from a recent exhibition in Tokyo included pieces from her collection of Japanese lacquer ware.

Japanese black lacquercabinet, lacquer and gilt wood17th century, 38” high

(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, 1878-85, Paris, emulated irregular profiles ofJapanese ceramics and flow of glazes. Source for carp is a manga print.

JAPONISME and

Avant-Garde Paintingin 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 avant-garde, filled his home with Japanese prints. He defended Manet’s paintings, alwaysunder 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 landscapeArtists 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

Van Gogh, Plum tree in Bloom (after Hiroshige), oil on canvas1887 (Paris)

Hiroshige, Plum Estate, Kameido, 1857, woodblock print

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 canvasJaponisme and emergent Expressionism

Gauguin, Vision After the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, 1888

Van Gogh, Plum tree in Bloom (after Hiroshige), oil on canvas,1887

Van Gogh & Gauguin both appropriatedJapanese perspective, composition, and figurative invention. Cloisonné linedeveloped by Gauguin.

Hokusai, Sumo Wrestlersfrom the Manga vol. III, 1815, color woodblock7 x 4.5in

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. Sub-Saharan 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.

Parisian Avant-garde painting looks to Africa in the early 20th century

Japan encounters Paris“The Capital of Modern Art”

Poster for the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle

Uchida Kuichi, Portrait of the Emperor Meiji, 1873, Albumen silver printEmperor 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

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.

Academic study by Henri Matisse, 1892

(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 ofJapanese 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, 1950Action Painting – American Abstract Expressionism

“I believe the easel picture to be a dying form.” (Pollock, Guggenheim Application, 1947)

8 August 1949 issue of Life magazine:first artist to become a media celebrity.

James Dean inRebel Without aCause

Willem De Kooning, American Action Painter, in studio, Springs, NY, 1960s

Georges Mathieu (French) “Action Painting” in Fontainebleau, 1960. The completed painting took 1.5 hours.

"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 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” paintings1961, Art Informel, Nouveau Realisme