VISIONS OF THE ORIENT:JAPANESE ART AND THE WESTERN ARTISTIC IMAGINATION

For over two hundred years, until 1853, Japan had been almost entirely cut off from the western world. But almost immediately after trade routes re-opened, Japanese art and artifacts – as evidenced by countless portraits of beautiful women sporting kimonos and fans, with a backdrop of splendid porcelain vases - became all the rage in the West. But there was another, more profound and long-lasting, influence at work: namely that of the decorative, non-naturalistic woodcut prints by masters of the ukiyo-e (‘floating world’) school, which – combined with the influence of the new medium of photography – opened avant-garde artists’ eyes to entirely different ways of representing the world.

THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Ms Monica Bohm-Duchen

London-based freelance lecturer, writer and exhibition organiser. Has lectured for Tate, the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Open University, Sotheby's Institute of Art and the Courtauld Institute of Art. Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck College since 2005, and has led many tours. Publications include Understanding Modern Art (1991), Chagall (1998/2001), The Private Life of a Masterpiece (2001),The Art and Life of Josef Herman (2009) and Art and the Second World War (2013). She is the initiator and Creative Director of the nationwide Insiders/Outsiders arts festival (see https://insidersoutsidersfestival.org/), and contributing editor of the companion volume, Insiders/Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture (2019).