JAPONISME: The Japanese Influence on Western Art Since 1858
By SIEGFRIED WICHMANN
Translated by Mary Whittall, James Ramsay, Helen Watanabe, Cornelius Cardew, and Susan Bruni. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1999. 432 pages, $36 (paperback)

John M. Lundquist

Siegfried Wichmann, a professor at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, is without doubt the foremost authority on Japonisme in the West. Over the course of a long and distinguished career, he has written a number of important books and has organized and written the catalogues for several highly influential exhibitions, such as the exhibition at the Munich Olympic games in 1972- "World Culture and Modern Art: The Encounter of 19th and 20th Century European Art and Music with Asia, Africa, Oceania, Afro- and Indo-America." Japonisme: The Japanese Influence on Western Art Since 1858 is certainly the most important, the most insightful and stimulating, and the most encyclopedic of any book on the subject in the English language, rivaled in any language perhaps only by the French- and Japanese-language catalogues that accompanied the Japonisme exhibition held in 1988 in Paris and Tokyo.
"Japonisme" (the term was coined in 1872 by the French critic Philippe Burty) refers to the influence that Japanese art has had on the fine and decorative arts of the West, including fashion, since the mid-1850s. This influence peaked in the 1920s with Art Deco, but is in many ways so pervasive and deeply ingrained within Western fine and decorative art traditions that one simply no longer "sees" common themes, motifs, and techniques as being Japanese. It is arguable that "modernism" in Western art would not have occurred, certainly not in the same way, without the influence of Japanese art. Wichmann's book introduces the reader to this phenomenon in its entirety, in fascinating detail, with extraordinary illustrations from all facets of art: painting, furniture, porcelain and glass, architecture, and fashion.

Having said this, one must point out some very peculiar facts regarding the publication history of this volume. This new book, published by Thames and Hudson in 1999, is an unchanged, unrevised, somewhat awkward, English translation of the original German text first published in 1980 by the Schuller Verlagsgesellschaft in Herrsching, (then) West Germany. There is no new preface or introduction, no updated bibliography. There are typos and minor factual errors. Numerous illustrations are referenced to the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, or the Mus¨¦e d'Art Modern in Paris when they are now, in fact, at the Mus¨¦e d'Orsay (which opened in 1986, after this text was written). Thus, though it gives the impression of being newly, the book represents the knowledge and scholarship of the late 1970s.
Nevertheless, I can state emphatically that I think this is the single most important book in English on the subject. Given the large-scale format of the volume, its treasure trove of illustrations (1,105, with 243 in color), and the organizing principle of the book (its 57 chapters are classified, encyclopedia-style, into the main subcategories of Japonisme: "Representative Artists," "Birds, Beasts and Flowers," "Objects from Eastern Life," "Artistic Devices," "Symbols, Themes and Abstractions," "Ceramics and Glass," "House and Garden," and "Calligraphy"), this is a scholarly and imaginative masterpiece, one that will retain its importance for many years to come. The scholarship in this field is not such that major new discoveries or theories have been advanced over the past twenty-odd years that would render Wichmann's conclusions out-of-date. Many of his insights are still not widely current in the study of Japonisme, including his emphasis on the deep impact of Chinese painting manuals such as the Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting on Japanese masters, including Hokusai and others. The book is in many respects a study of Art Nouveau, a major interest of Wichmann's, and he often refers to the Japanese-inspired aspects of Art Nouveau. Given the renewed interest in Art Nouveau, this increases the value and interest of this book.
The final chapter, "Calligraphy: From Zen to Tachism," is exceptionally good, bringing into focus the influence of East Asian ink painting, particularly calligraphic painting, on Western artists such as Franz Kline, Hans Hartung, Mark Tobey, Jackson Pollock, and others. Wichmann also documents the impact of East Asian ink/calligraphic painting on nineteenth-century European art, noting where Asian artists were represented at international expositions, and the impact of these artists on European painters' use of brush and line. The ideas and influences discussed in this chapter have been much studied and exhibited since, but not superseded. Wichmann's gift for analysis and interpretation and the brilliant juxtaposition of illustrations of art works within the text (for example, Vincent van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Muto Shui's fourteenth-century painting of The Monk Muso Soseki , or Claude Monet's Four Poplars and Gustav Klimt's Beech Wood with Hokusai's Mount Fuji in a Bamboo Grove) make this a stunning book.

John M. Lundquist is the Susan and Douglas Dillon Chief Librarian of the Oriental Division in The New York Public Library.