The impact of the West on Japan and of Japan on the West in the late nineteenth century is endlessly fascinating. It is a story of exploitation, adulation, and constant misunderstanding. Whey was there such a vogue for Japanese art (and Japonisme) in America at the turn of the century? Perhaps most importantly because it was new, which is to say “exotic.” In addition, at the instigation of such influential interior decorators as Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) in New York, it came to be fashionable; moneyed people were buying it, setting the trend. At a time when crafts in general were held in high esteem, the Orient was a fresh discovery.
After 1859, when Japan emerged from more than two centuries of isolation and Yokohama was enlarged as a treaty port for foreigners, the demand for Japanese merchandise grew in the West. The new government that took power at the beginning of the Meiji era (1868-1912) sent its artisans overseas to study the market and learn modern techniques. Their products, often more Victorian than Japanese, were then exported to international expositions, where thereby earning foreign currency needed to finance the industrialization of Meiji Japan.
Between the Vienna International Exposition of 1873 and the London exposition of 1910, Japan participated in at least twenty-five foreign exhibitions. The fair that made Americans sit up and take notice was the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876, a kind of Olympic competition of art and industry in which the products of different countries were pitted against one another. The Japanese exhibit feasted large, gaudy, realistically modeled bronzes, ceramics, and lacquers, most of which were specially made for the export market. The cult of Japan in America was initiated by decorative arts that were often not on a high level of sophistication. The more subtle, esoteric forms of Japanese art such as calligraphy and black raku tea bowls were not appreciated until the age of Abstract Expressionism.
By the 1880s, professional Japanese dealers and export-import firms moved into the market, and soon Japanese art could be purchased not only in Paris and London but also in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and elsewhere. With the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston leading the way in this country, Asian art could be seen in permanent public displays as well. Auction houses entered the picture in the 1890s, and soon huge collections were amassed, by artists and connoisseur-collectors alike, each stimulating the other in the still small and ingrown world of Oriental art appreciation.
The cult for things Japanese peaked around 1890 and was followed by a more mature and discerning level of understanding. Of course, the role of French and English progenitors of Japonisme (Toulouse-Lautrec and Henri Riviere, for example) was not insignificant in forming the taste of American artists, but Americans tended to go directly to the source. By the end of the Century Americans were ready to travel to Japan to study at the feet of the masters. The color woodcut in particular proved to be an alluring new technique for artists who were themselves active collectors of traditional ukiyo-e prints. Japanese prints were readily available. Most importantly, the medium itself (a multiple art form) related technically and functionally most directly to the graphic art concerns of Western artists. Indeed, while the Japanese print offered new aesthetic options it also reinforced two basic tenets of the Arts and Crafts Movement in America. First, that art should be available to
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