THE EFFECTS OF JAPANISM ON THE IMPRESSIONIST ART MOVEMENT

Abstract

The Japanese art and culture, which had been isolated from the West for long periods, opened their doors to the whole world in the 1850s and Japanese culture and art became a “fashion” especially in Europe after they spread through trade across the globe. Exotic Japanese commodities obtained through Western merchants aroused a huge interest among some artists of the time and served as a source of inspiration for modernist movements. In the 19th century, especially lithographic pictures called “estamp” made by Japanese lithographers were collected by European artists of the time. Examination of Japanese lithographic pictures brought new points of view to the European modern art and artists laid the foundations for new artistic pursuits in light of impressions they obtained from those pictures. The basic goal of this study is to obtain information about Japanese culture and art, one of the sources that fed the Impressionist Art, which occupies a significant place in the history of Western Art, and to investigate the relationships between the Impressionist or Post-Impressionists works and the Japanese art, which they interacted with.Japanese art did not only influence the Impressionist art movements but it also inspired movements such as Art Nouveau, Expressionism, Fauvism and Cubism. However, the scope of the study was limited to the 19th century Impressionist movement and artists and the examples were focused on well-known Impressionist artists and their works so as to understand the subject better.