Japonismes-impressionnismes

Abstract

The commercial and diplomatic opening of Japan in 1868 revealed to Western artists an aesthetic radically different from that which had been taught to them for centuries. Unceasingly reinterpreted, the ancient model reigned over the arts since the Renaissance. Japanese art offered a novel plastic vocabulary, which soon inspired the whole of artistic creation in Europe and the United States. The aesthetics of the Ukiyo-e were based on codes radically different from those taught to the students of the School of Fine Arts. The effectiveness of his images was due to the vividness of the colors, the absence of any modeling or volume of the forms treated in solid colors, as well as the originality of compositions based on asymmetry. In addition, like the Impressionists, the masters of print did not claim to deliver any message other than the celebration of nature and contemporary life. The most innovative painters were sensitive to the refinement of an art that met their aspirations, paving the way for a real aesthetic revolution. Since the 1980s, Japanism has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and the phenomenon has proved so vast that it seems to us more relevant today to evoke its manifestations in the plural, as we prefer to speak of impressionism. Our project focuses on its impact in the work of painters of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist generation, from the 1870s to the dawn of the XX th century. Claude Monet, who was one of the first French artists to take an interest in Japanese printmaking, is at the center of our presentation and the exhibition makes perfect sense in Giverny.