Where did Japanese motives come from in the works of Claude Monet and other famous Western artists?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Claude Monet, like many other Impressionist painters, was deeply interested in Japanese art. Its novelty and sophistication fascinated many Europeans. This was a real revelation, as Japan was completely isolated from the outside world for almost two centuries. During this time, from the 17th-19th centuries, Japanese artists were able to develop a special artistic vocabulary that had a profound influence on some Western painters.

However, in 1852, the Black Ships arrived in the harbor of Edo (present-day Tokyo), and the American navy forced the shogunate to finally open itself up to trade. For the first time in modern history, foreigners were able to get to the Land of the Rising Sun. And for the first time, the extraordinary paintings of the Rimpa school or beautiful multicolored ukiyo-e woodcuts were discovered in the Western world.

1. Influence of Japaneseism on European art

It is believed that contemporary artist Gustave Courbet, who paved the way for the Impressionist movement in France, allegedly saw the famous color woodcut The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai before painting a series of Atlantic Ocean paintings in the summer of 1869. After Courbet discovered Japanese art, it changed the artist's view of aesthetics: while in the 19th century European artists usually idealized the beauty of nature, Gustave instead offered an intense vision of a stormy sea, painful and unsettling, with all the wild power of natural forces. In action.

The vision he presented with his paintings deeply alarmed the academic traditionalists of the Paris Salon - a well-established institution that dictated the norms of aesthetics in European art, with wariness and skepticism about innovation. However, the influence that Japanese art had on European artists was not limited to just a handful of them. In fact, it became widespread in what would later be defined as Japonism.

This passion for everything Japanese soon became the main feature of French intellectuals and artists, among whom were Vincent Van Gogh, Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro and the young Claude Monet. Between the 1860s and 1890s, Western artists adopted the Japanese style, experimenting with new techniques. They also began integrating Japanese-style objects and decor into their paintings, and adopting new formats such as kakemono (a vertical scroll made of paper or silk).

In addition, European artists began to pay more attention to the harmony, symmetry and composition of empty spaces. The latter was one of the most fundamental contributions of Japanese art in Europe. The ancient philosophy of wabi sabi has deeply shaped aesthetics in Japan. Thus, the composition of empty spaces provided artists with a new opportunity to hint at hidden meanings or feelings in their works. Impressionist painters were finally able to transform rivers, landscapes, ponds and flowers into a poetic projection of the inner world.

2. Acquaintance with Japanese art

One day in 1871, according to legend, Claude Monet entered a small grocery store in Amsterdam. There he noticed several Japanese prints and was so carried away by them that he immediately bought one. This purchase changed his life and the history of Western art. The Paris-born artist has collected more than two hundred Japanese prints in his life, which greatly influenced his work. It is believed that he was one of the most influential artists in Japanese art.

Despite the fact that Claude loved ukiyo-e, there is still a lot of controversy about how Japanese prints influenced him and his art. His paintings are in many ways at odds with the engravings, but Monet knew how to be inspired without borrowing. It is believed that Japanese art had a much deeper influence on the impressionist painter. What Monet found in ukiyo-e, in oriental philosophy and Japanese culture, went beyond his art and permeated his entire life. For example, a deep admiration for nature has played a central role in Japanese culture. Inspired by this, Claude created a Japanese garden in his cherished home in Giverny. He converted a small existing pond into an Asian-style water garden and added a Japanese-style wooden bridge. Then he began to paint the pond and its water lilies until the end of his days.

The pond and water lilies became the main, almost obsessive, idea of his strenuous work, and the resulting paintings later became his most valuable and famous works of art. Needless to say, the artist considered his own garden to be the most beautiful masterpiece he ever created.

Monet figured out how to combine Japanese motifs with his own impressionist palette and brush strokes to create a hybrid, transcendental understanding of the primacy of nature.

He began to develop his own special artistic style, focusing on light, which, in fact, was an important theme in his paintings. Perhaps this is the main reason that Claude and his impressionist paintings - with his special approach to Japanese art and culture, instantly took root in Japan and still remain extremely popular there.

3. Claude Monet and Japanese art

Perhaps one of the most important monuments that Japan established for Claude Monet can be found at the Chichu Art Museum (Chichu), a building designed by star architect Tadao Ando and located in the middle of wilderness on a small island in the Seto Inland Sea.

Soichiro Fukutake, billionaire heir to Japan's largest educational publishing house, Benesse, began building the museum in 2004 as part of a charitable project that aims to empower everyone to rethink the relationship between nature and people. Therefore, the museum was built mainly underground, so as not to affect the beautiful natural landscapes.

The museum exhibits works by artists Walter de Maria, James Turrell and Claude Monet as part of its permanent collection. However, the room in which Monet's work is displayed is the most exciting. Here are exhibited five paintings from the "Water Lilies" series, painted by the artist in later years. The artwork can be enjoyed under natural light, which changes the atmosphere of the space, and thus, over time, during the day and throughout the four seasons of the year, the appearance of the artwork also changes. The size of the room, its design and the materials used have been carefully chosen to blend Monet's paintings with the surrounding space.

The museum also continued to create a garden of nearly two hundred species of flowers and trees similar to those planted at Giverny by Claude Monet. Here, visitors can walk through the flora, ranging from the water lilies, which Monet painted in the last years of his life, to willows, irises and other plants. The garden seeks to give a tangible experience of nature, which the artist wanted to capture in his paintings. And since the way to the heart of a person lies through the stomach, the museum store even offers cookies and jams according to recipes left by Monet.

So the love affair between Claude Monet and the Land of the Rising Sun remains extremely vivid even in modern Japan, forcing museum visitors to hold their breath from the atmosphere reigning around.

Art is so amazing, beautiful, multifaceted that every artist somehow draws his inspiration from something. Someone gives preference to new directions and styles, and Joan Miró was happy to combine incongruous thingsconstantly experimenting and improving their own skills. And it is not at all surprising that his paintings began to enjoy immense popularity around the world, serving as an example and inspiration for his followers.