The Influence of Japonism in Van Gogh's Works - Essay Example

? Describe the Influence of Japonism in Van Gogh’s Works Emperor Moth and Road Menders “Japonism” is the term used to describe the vogue for Japaneseart and artefacts which affected the western world in the second half of the nineteenth-century. It was made possible by the fact that - from 1853 onwards - trade barriers between Japan and the West were largely dismantled. Japanese art had an important influence on the style of many European artists, including Degas, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Van Gogh (Fahr-Becker 30). Van Gogh was an enthusiastic buyer of Japanese prints, most of which he acquired from the shop of a man named Bing, a Paris-based dealer who specialised in Japanese art (McQuillan 132-133). Later, in the South of France, Van Gogh wrote his brother Theo (who was in Holland) to describe the reasons for his love for the art of Japan. He told Theo that Japanese art makes us “happier and more cheerful.” It is an art of great simplicity, for the Japanese artist can find beauty in “a single blade of grass” and can create pictures rapidly, “with a few confident strokes.” Van Gogh particularly admired the prints: “Japanese prints, coloured in flat tones, are admirable” (Van Gogh letter number 686, Sep. 23 or 24 1888). Many of Van Gogh’s own paintings contain allusions to Japan. For example, Japanese prints are depicted in the background of his portraits of Pere Tanguy (1888) and Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear (1889). Some of his paintings are very “Japanesey” in their subject matter, for example Branches of an Almond Tree in Blossom (1890). But more important was influence which the Japanese prints had on the actual style of Van Gogh’s work. At first sight, his painting Emperor Moth (1889) has no obvious connection to the art of Japan, but if we examine it more closely we can see how deeply Van Gogh had absorbed Japanese aesthetic principles. He told Theo that he had encountered “a rather rare night moth called the ‘death’s head’, its coloration astonishingly distinguished: black, grey, white, shaded, and with glints of carmine or vaguely tending towards olive green” (Van Gogh letter number 776, May 23 1889). He sent Theo a drawing of the moth and later made a painting. This painting of the Emperor Moth is partly made up of different shades of green, which contributes greatly to the beauty and delicacy of the work. What also strikes us about the painting is its bold design and draughtsman-like qualities. The forms are edged with hard outlines, like the forms in a Japanese print. The painting has a decorative and semi-abstract quality, possibly reminding us of Japanese textile patterns, while the wings of the moth could almost make us think of the patterns on a kimono. The earlier letter to Theo had praised the “flat tones” of Japanese prints, and the painting is basically a flat design, without much perspective depth. The letter to Theo praised the rapid, calligraphic brushwork of Japanese painting, seen here in the rapid delineation of the grasses and the leaves. Van Gogh had also written to Theo about the Japanese love of nature and simplicity, seen here in his own painting of a single moth, set against a background of plants. Hokusai – most famous for his print of The Great Wave at Kanagawa - was a Japanese printmaker whom Van Gogh much admired, and we could compare Van Gogh’s Emperor Moth with prints like Hokusai’s Irises and Meadow Cicada and Hibiscus and Sparrow, which depict details of nature (illustrated in Fahr-Becker 154-155). Hokusai wrote that he wanted to understand “the nature of birds, animals, insects, fishes – the vital nature of grasses and trees” (Stanley-Baker 192), which reminds us of Van Gogh’s paintings of butterflies, clumps of grass, lilacs and irises, all of which he painted around the same time as his moth picture (McQuillan184). It is important that Hokusai devoted a great deal of attention not just to flowers but also to their stems and their leaves. This can be seen in Van Gogh’s Emperor Moth painting, which includes a variety of leaves and grasses. One or two of these leaves appear to be brownish and dying, a characteristic often found in the leaves of Hokusai. In Van Gogh’s Sunflowers (1888) – perhaps his most famous painting – the flowers are not perfect and some of them appear to be dying. This interest in decaying things illustrates the affinity between Van Gogh and the artists of Japan, who loved nature in all its aspects. There may also be an awareness here of the transience of life. Van Gogh called his painting Emperor Moth, possibly reminding us of the Emperor of Japan, but the “Japanese” quality of the painting lies much more in its pictorial qualities than in its title. Later that same year, Van Gogh painted Road Menders (1888), which exists in two different versions: the earlier version is in the Cleveland Museum of Art and the later version is in the Phillips Collection in Washington. We shall here discuss the version in the Phillips Collection because it reflects Van Gogh’s final thoughts on the subject. Van Gogh described the scene which inspired Road Menders in another of his letters to Theo: “people were at work - under enormous plane trees – repairing the pavements - so there are piles of sand, stones and the gigantic tree trunks – the yellowing foliage, and here and there glimpses of a house-front and little figures” (Van Gogh letter number 824, Dec. 7 1889). Road Menders has a bold and decorative quality, like so many Japanese prints. It is made up of bright colors, swirling forms, and dabs of paint. The colors are not particularly naturalistic and the whole picture is somewhat stylized, rather like a Japanese print. This all contributes to the deliberate quality of flatness, though that is offset by the bold perspective diagonal formed by the trees and the building stones. Such a diagonal composition is often found in the prints of Hiroshige – another Japanese printmaker whom Van Gogh much admired – such as his series of scenes of 100 Views of Famous Places in and Around Edo (the old name for Tokyo), in which bridges or roads sometimes create striking diagonal lines across the pictures (illustrated in Fahr-Becker 185, 189). These scenes by Hiroshige are usually viewed from a height, and in Van Gogh’s Road Menders we likewise seem to be looking down from quite a high vantage point. In Road Menders, parts of the scene are cut off by the frame - for example, the tops of the trees are missing - and this “cut off” quality is often found in Japanese prints, for example Hiroshige’s Plum Orchard in Kameido, where half of the big tree branch is missing (illustrated in Fahr-Becker 184). The little figures in Hiroshige’s prints are usually dwarfed by their surroundings, and in Road Menders the road menders themselves take second place to the enormous trees. These trees are gnarled and old, perhaps reminding us of the love of old, decaying things which we found earlier in Hokusai’s and Van Gogh’s studies of flowers, leaves and grasses. In Road Menders Van Gogh uses a limited number of colors – mainly green, orange and brown, with a few touches of red and black – and these colors are pure, not mixed with other colors. This may be yet another characteristic which Van Gogh derived from Japanese prints, which - because of the way they were made - demanded a limited number of colors, since in multi-block printing “each color required a separate block” (Stanley-Baker 190). The colors used in Road Menders - orange, brown, red and green - are the colors of the Fall, perhaps reminding us again of the transience of life. The influence of Japan was, of course, not the only important influence on Van Gogh. For example, the bright colors of his later paintings were surely inspired not just by Japanese prints but also by the sunshine and the strong colors of the South of France. The technique of cutting off part of the composition by the frame – seen in so many Japanese prints – occurs often in photography, which perhaps also influenced Van Gogh. But the fact that a Japanese influence is not always immediately obvious in Van Gogh’s work only serves to show how deeply he had absorbed the Japanese way of seeing into his own artistic practice. It had become not a trick or a formula but a part of his own nature. Works Cited Fahr-Becker, Gabriele, ed. Japanese Prints. Koln: Taschen, 2007. Print. McQuillan, Melissa. Van Gogh. New York: Thames & Hudson, 1989. Print. Stanley-Baker, Joan. Japanese Art. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000. Print. Van Gogh, Vincent. The Letters. Ed. Leo Jansen et al. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2009. Print. 6 vols. The letters in this book are individually numbered. The complete text of the book is also available on the Internet at www.vangoghletters.org Read More