This was after two centuries of self-imposed isolation set off a craze for all things Japanese among European and North American collectors, artists and designers.
The phenomenon, dubbed japonisme by French writers, radically altered the course of Western art in the modern era.
San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum surveys this sweeping development in the traveling exhibition Looking East: How Japan Inspired Monet, Van Gogh, and Other Western Artists. The exhibition traces the West’s growing fascination with Japan, the collecting of Japanese objects, and the exploration of Japanese subject matter and styles. Looking East will be on view from Oct. 30, 2015–Feb. 7, 2016 with the exhibition's final weeks marking the start of the museum's 50th anniversary year in 2016.
Looking East features more than 170 artworks drawn from the acclaimed collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, with masterpieces by the great Impressionist and post-Impressionist painters Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, among others. The art and culture of Japan inspired leading artists throughout Europe and the United States to create works of renewed vision and singular beauty.
Photo Caption: AAM Looking East Suido Bridge
and Surugadai EX2015.4.24_01
Suido Bridge and Surugadai
, 1857, from the series
One
Hundred Famous Views of Edo
, by Utagawa
Hiroshige I (Japanese, 1797–1858). Wood
block print; ink and color on paper.
Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, William Sturgis Bigelow Collection
The exhibition is organized into four thematic areas, tracing the impact of Japanese approaches to women, city life, nature and landscape. Within each theme, artworks from Japan are paired with American or European works to represent the West’s assimilation of new thematic and formal approaches. Japanese woodblock prints by such celebrated masters as Kitagawa Utamaro, Utagawa Hiroshige and Katsushika Hokusai are shown in dialogue with oil paintings, prints and photographs by a diverse mix of Western artists, demonstrating regional variations on japonisme. Bronze sword guards and paper stencils from Japan are juxtaposed with metalwork by Western manufacturers Boucheron, Gorham and Tiffany. Other objects used in daily life, like a chair designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, also show the wide-ranging impact of Japanese design in the West.
Additional highlights in the exhibition include Vincent van Gogh’s painting Postman Joseph Roulin; Claude Monet’s The water lily pond; Five Swans, an elegant wool tapestry designed by Otto Eckmann; Paul Gauguin’s canvas Landscape with two Breton women; and Otome, a print by Kikukawa Eizan.
“Everything the Asian Art Museum does—exhibitions, programs, events, outreach— directly links back to our vision: With Asia as our lens and art as our cornerstone, we spark connections across cultures and through time, igniting curiosity, conversation and creativity,” said Asian Art Museum director and CEO Dr. Jay Xu. “One way we spark these connections is by exploring Asia’s global relevance. Looking East is a perfect example of this. For the first time, the museum will present great Western artists, like Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Mary Cassatt, who were moved by Japanese art and culture.”
Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the exhibition was curated by Dr. Helen Burnham, the Pamela and Peter Voss Curator of Prints and Drawings from MFA, Boston. The exhibition premiered at Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts, followed by a tour in Japan and then a stop at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec. The Asian Art Museum’s presentation, curated by Dr. Laura Allen, curator of Japanese art, and Dr. Yuki Morishima, assistant curator of Japanese art, is the final stop on the exhibition’s international tour.
Visitors are encouraged to begin their journey in the museum’s Osher Gallery, followed by Hambrecht Gallery and then Lee Gallery.
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