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Erotic Japonisme
The Influence of Japanese Sexual Imagery
on Western Art
Ricard Bru
At its height in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, Japonisme had a tremendous impact on Western art.
In this publication, author Ricard Bru approaches the cultural
phenomenon of Japonisme from an innovative standpoint. He
presents an in-depth discussion of the influence of Japanese
printed erotic imagery by ukiyo-e masters such as Kitagawa
Utamaro, Katsushika Hokusai, and Utagawa Hiroshige on
European artists, including Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, Henri
de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustav Klimt and Pablo Picasso, as well
as writers, critics, and collectors, such as Edmond de Goncourt,
Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Émile Zola. With over 160 color
illustrations sourced from public and private collections, Erotic
Japonisme demonstrates the rich artistic dialogue that existed
between Europe and Japan.
HOTEI PUBLISHING
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127 Gustav Klimt. The Blood of Fish (Fischblut),
in Ver Sacrum 1, February 1898. Book illustration,
print based on ink drawing, 18.5 x 18.5 cm.
Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna, ZII167.
As seen in this piece, the curvilinear
forms that Klimt observed in Japanese stencils
(katagami) and in the Japanese prints in his private
collection provided inspiration for his erotic
drawings and illustrations. This image was created
for the journal Ver Sacrum, founded by Klimt,
Koloman Moser (1868–1905), and Josef Hoffmann
(1870–1956) as the official magazine of the Vienna
Secession. Ver Sacrum illustrated countless examples
of the diverse influences of Japonisme on
Viennese artists.
BRILL’S JAPANESE ART CATALOG 2014
however, Japonisme did not advance in Vienna until the turn of the
though both men made erotic drawings that call to mind shunga. 250
century: it was not until this time, with the emergence of the Seces-
Klimt was a collector of Asian art with wide ranging tastes: his Japa-
sionist movement in 1897 and its fourth exhibition in 1900, that
nese holdings included samurai armor, kimono, and masks. His uki-
Japonisme became firmly rooted in that city. 247
yo-e collection included material by Kiyonaga, Hokusai, Kuniyoshi,
69
68 Torii Kiyonaga. Interior of a Bathhouse, ca. 1787. Color woodblock
print, diptych, 38.8 x 26.3 cm (each sheet). Former Edgar Degas
collection. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, William Sturgis Bigelow
Collection, 30.46-7.
Gustav Klimt’s richly ornate style perhaps best exemplifies the
influence of Japonisme on the development of modern Viennese
painting. Klimt’s use of flat surfaces, gold backgrounds, and a sense
of two dimensionality—as well as the embellishment of the forms
and clothing with repetitive, schematic, abstract elements, or motifs
and Kunisada, and some of these were on display in his studio on
Feldmühlgasse in Vienna. Furthermore, Klimt’s library contained
works by Hayashi Tadamasa, Siegfried Bing, Ernest Fenollosa (1853–
1908), and books on Japanese art, including the volumes of Kōrin-ha
gashū (1903–1906), which dealt with the decorative Rinpa school,
69 Edgar Degas. The Tub (Le tub), 1886. Pastel on card, 83 x 60 cm.
inspired by Japanese heraldic symbols—offered a new concept in
and the volume Japanische Erotik (fig. 52). The latter two were impor-
Musée d’Orsay, Paris, RF4046.
Kiyonaga’s Interior of a Bathhouse is a rare print with only three
copies known today (Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Guimet Museum,
and Kawasaki Isago no Sato Museum). It illustrates a scene of naked
and semi-naked women at a public bath in poses similar to those of
women in the bath portrayed by Degas, such as Woman in a Tub (ca.
1883, Tate Gallery, London) or The Tub. Kiyonaga’s diptych was one of
decorative painting. 248 The Kiss (fig. 128), a work dating to the artist’s
so-called “golden phase,” is the ultimate expression of this decorative
effect, illustrating an isolated couple whose passionate embrace
envelops them such that they appear as a unified whole.
In addition to his paintings, Klimt’s drawings and those by Egon
Schiele created between 1905 and 1918, approximate the same type
tant sources for his paintings. 251 On the other hand, according to
Frank Whitford, Schiele’s atelier was “reputed to have possessed the
best collection of erotic Japanese prints in Vienna.” 252 Schiele, impressed
by the theories of Sigmund Freud, also portrayed sexual
scenes as a means of expressing his inner world, one filled with obsession
and emotion (fig. 131). The impact of shunga on his nudes is
Degas’s favorites, and it apparently hung above his bed, close to two
drawings by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and a landscape by
Camille Corot (1796–1875).
of pure eroticism encountered in Japanese prints (figs. 129 & 130).
This personal, pure, and aesthetic eroticism is grounded in the compositional
elements, in the configuration of the figures, and in the
detectable through the suggestive positions of his subjects: couples
caressing, embracing, or engaged in sexual intercourse. However, to
date the only woodblock prints documented from his collection are
manner in which the artist represented the forms of his subjects. 249
two landscapes, a portrait by Utamaro, and an erotic image by Hoku-
Unfortunately, there is no detailed information regarding the na-
sai. 253 Nevertheless, there is no doubt that both he and Klimt had
ture of the Japanese print collections of Klimt and Schiele, even
easy, direct access to a great number of Japanese woodblock prints
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Erotic_Japonisme_p001_192.indd 118 28-10-13 08:49
• December 2013
• ISBN 978 90 04 25832 7
• Paperback (192 pp., with 200 illus.)
• List price EUR 59.- / US$ 76.-