KATAGAMI Style - Paper stencils and Japonisme
About the Exhibition
In the late 19th century, a huge number of Japanese katagami, a traditional type of stencil used for dyeing cloth, were exported to the West along with ukiyo-e prints, leading to the rise of Japonisme. Katagami had fervently embraced a wide range of modernization efforts.
It is a well-established fact that Western artists and designers discovered the charm of ukiyo-e on their journeys to Japan and were greatly influenced by the innovative compositions and colors of the woodblock prints, but katagami
were similarly eye-catching, and also served as a source of
inspiration. This influence can be detected in a variety of genres
including Charles Rennie Mackintosh's furniture in the U.K., René
Lalique's jewelry in France, Koloman Moser's textiles in Austria, and
Louis Comfort Tiffany's glassworks in the U.S. Also, like ukiyo-e,
the paper stencils helped spawn the trend of Japonisme as evidenced in
the Art Nouveau and Jugendstil movements. And even today, katagami designs continue to appear in contemporary products.
Along with actual katagami, in the exhibition we present kimono that were dyed with the patterns and ukiyo-e
prints in which they are depicted as well as glass- and metalwork,
ceramics, posters, furniture, and textiles that were produced in the
West between the late 19th and early 20th century. In addition to items
from noteworthy Japanese collections, a number of the many katagami that were taken abroad in the 19th century will be returning to Japan for the first time in over a century.
Viewers will have a special opportunity to see just how enamored Western artists of the period were of the charming katagami through a diverse selection of works from both domestic and foreign museums.
No comments:
Post a Comment