Japonisme in American Graphic Art, 1880-1920

published Mar 27, 2008
Japonisme in American Graphic Art 1880-1920
Featuring more than twenty-five rarely seen works on paper from the Brooklyn Museum's permanent collection, this exhibition explores the impact of Japanese art on the graphic arts of America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

During this period, Americans were avidly discovering, studying, and collecting the arts of Japan.

Artists were particularly fascinated by these exotic objects and found in them inspiration for revitalizing Western pictorial traditions.

James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Robert Blum, Winslow Homer, Arthur Wesley Dow, and others began incorporating Japanese motifs, aesthetic principles, and techniques into their own art - a phenomenon known by the French term "Japonisme."

Japonisme in American Graphic Art, 1880-1920 examines myriad manifestations of Japonisme in a selection of fine etchings, lithographs, watercolors, pastels, and other graphic media created by American artists.

James McNeill Whistler, for example, created compositions with dramatic contrasts of blank and filled areas and subtle atmospheric effects.

His brand of aesthetics influenced many younger Americans, including Joseph Pennell and Robert Blum.

Mary Cassatt was inspired by Japanese prints to create some of her most formally and technically daring color etchings characterized by flattened figures, unmodulated planes of color, and strong linear design.can Art.