''Artistic Japan'' was a magazine of

Japanese art Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ''ukiyo-e'' paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, and more recently manga and anime. It ...

, published by German-born French art dealer Siegfried Bing. It ran for thirty-six monthly issues from 1888 to 1891 in French, English, and German editions and contributed to a revival of

Japonism ''Japonisme'' is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858. Japon ...

Background

Art critics and collectors in Europe spearheaded a craze for Japanese art in the late 19th century; prominent promoters of this

included Edmond de Goncourt (1822–96),

Philippe Burty Philippe Burty (6 February 1830 – 3 June 1890) was a French art critic. He contributed to the popularization of Japonism and the etching revival, supported the Impressionists, and published the letters of Eugène Delacroix. Burty was born in ...

(1830–90), and Siegfried Bing (1838–1905). Burty made an attempt at a magazine devoted to Japanese art that lasted a single issue. The wealthy collector and dealer Bing had placed himself at the centre of Japanese art circles in Paris; where he had relocated from Hamburg in Germany to take over a branch of the family business dealing in imports of

French porcelain French porcelain has a history spanning a period from the 17th century to the present. The French were heavily involved in the early European efforts to discover the secrets of making the hard-paste porcelain known from Chinese and Japanese export ...

. In the late 1870s he opened a shop selling Japanese art objects and travelled to the Far East to study art in 1880. He developed connections with art sources in Japan and amassed what was considered one of the finest Japanese art collections in the West. He desired to spread word of Japanese aesthetics to a broad public, and used his wealth and connections to populate a new magazine to this end.

Publication

Bing enlisted his friend, the director of the

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (''Museum of Art and Design Hamburg'') is a museum of fine, applied and decorative arts in Hamburg, Germany. It is located centrally, near the Hauptbahnhof. History The museum was founded in 1874, foll ...

Justus Brinckmann (1843–1915), to translate and print a German-language edition of the magazine. The English art dealer

Marcus Bourne Huish Marcus Bourne Huish (25 November 1843 – 4 May 1921) was an English barrister, writer and art dealer. He was the son of Marcus Huish of Castle Donington and his wife Margaret Jane Bourne. His mother died in 1847 and in 1849 his father remarr ...

(1845–1922) handled publication of an English-language that also circulated in the United States. The magazine aimed to educate the public, and enjoyed high-quality printing featuring reproductions drawn from private collections. Each issue had several colour tipped-in pages of reproductions of Japanese artwork such as paintings or

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

prints. It featured essays on Japanese art and art history by critics such as Burty, de Goncourt, and

Louis Gonse Louis Gonse (16 November 1846, in Paris – 19 December 1921, in Paris) was an art historian, Editor-in-Chief of the ''Gazette des Beaux-Arts'' and Vice-President of the Commission for Historic Monuments. He was also one of the first European ex ...

, drawn from Bing's wide circle of acquaintances in the art world. The articles examined a wide variety of Japanese arts: its architecture,

painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

woodblock printing Woodblock printing or block printing is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later paper. Each page or image is create ...

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...

, and even

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...

and

theatre Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perform ...

. Bing also drew attention to the high aesthetic quality of everyday objects such as combs, tea ladles, and fabrics.

Reception and legacy

Bing made effort to have ''Artistic Japan'' widely reviewed. It received positive reviews throughout the West, as far away as Scandinavia and the US. The London-based periodical '' The Academy'' praised its first issue's "attractiveness". The American ''The Critic'' rated it "among the highest class of art-journal". The established reputations of the contributing writers to which Bing had access contributed to the magazine's quick acceptance as an authority. The vogue for Japanese art had reached a peak by the time the magazine appeared. French artist and collector of Japanese art

George Auriol George Auriol, born Jean-Georges Huyot (26 April 1863, Beauvais (Oise) – February 1938, Paris), was a French poet, songwriter, graphic designer, type designer, and Art Nouveau artist. He worked in many media and created illustrations for the ...

expressed hope that the magazine would rekindle an appreciation of its true aesthetic qualities in the face of its brimming commercialization. The ''Japan Weekly Mail'' newspaper ran regular denigrating reviews of the magazine's reproduction and writing quality and Bing's understanding of Japanese history and society. The magazine benefited Bing as a dealer, as prices for Japanese artworks rose with awareness of their value; this was one aim of Bing's, and he attracted some criticism for it. The magazine's reproductions served as models to Western graphic designers.

Gabriel P. Weisberg Gabriel Paul Weisberg Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, OAL is an American art historian and educator. Weisberg is Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Minnesota. Career A native of New York City, Weisberg received a Bachelor of ...

has asserted that ''Artistic Japan'' was a major force in solidifying the valued position Japanese art was to have in the West. The aesthetic quality of the magazine itself won lasting recognition; in 1906

Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's prim ...

obtained a complete run.

References

Works cited

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External links

{{Authority control 1888 establishments in France 1891 disestablishments in France Defunct magazines published in France Monthly magazines published in France Japonisme Magazines established in 1888 Magazines disestablished in 1891 Magazines published in Paris Multilingual magazines Visual arts magazines French art publications