Japonisme and Art Nouveau.... kinda

[theblowingrose]

Lately I've been trying to add more non-fiction to my reading diet.  Currently I am devouring "Japonisme Comes to America: The Japanese Impact on the Graphic Arts 1876-1925" and it is dry but really interesting (is that even possible?).  It doesn't have much to say about actual Japanese artists, but it does give some in depth info on various

Comments

[lark]

omg, I am such a huge fan of this era in western art where they suddenly realized that the East was awesome and that they wanted to pillage it ruthlessly. SO MANY GOOD THINGS CAME OUT OF THIS PERIOD. Can you tell me dates, just so I can make sure it correlates? Is it around 1920s to 1930s? Because that's when imagists and modernists popped up, and imagists in particular (like Ezra Pound) took so much from asian art ideals.

Art Nouveau is such a gorgeous movement and thank you so much for posting these-they're beautiful! I love the soft simplicity.

[theblowingrose]

It's actually earlier- Homecoming is from 1905 and Theater Street is from 1907. Daruma Branch is from 1910. It's funny how many people were affected by the spread of Eastern aesthetics through France :)

I actually feel a little conflicted in liking these- most of the Westerners who came over to study were racist/condescending pricks. It killed me to read part of Helen Hyde's lecture on the concept of Japanese 'natural beauty': "The Japanese are a people so lacking in physical beauty themselves that... they must compensate for their deficiencies, and one becomes so fascinated with this acquired, quaint beauty that it amply compensates for the niggardliness of fate."

I try to remember that if one judges art based on the worthiness of the artists and not the worthiness of the piece itself there would be no good art, but it still leaves a sour after taste.