Japanomania in the Nordic countries, 1875-1918 / edited by Gabriel P. Weisberg, Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff, & Hanne Selkokari.

Brussels : Mercatorfonds ; Helsinki : Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery ; Oslo : National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design ; Copenhagen : SMK - Statens Museum for Kunst, [2016]

Brussels : Distributed in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg by Mercatorfonds ; New Haven ; London : Distributed outside Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg by Yale University Press, [2016]

©2016

296 pages : color illustrations ; 30 cm.

Catalog from an exhibition held at Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland, February 17-May 15, 2016; National Gallery of Norway, Oslo, Norway, June 16-October 16, 2016; and National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark, January 19-April 21, 2017.

"This extensive publication, complete with hundreds of illustrations by such renowned artists as Carl Larsson, Edvard Munch, Vilhelm Hammershoi, Pekka Halonen, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Christopher Dresser, Pietro Krohn, Alf Wallander, and Frida Hansen, among others, offers an unprecedented study of Japanese influence on the visual arts in the Nordic countries. This unlikely diffusion of Japanese culture, known collectively as Japonisme, became increasingly apparent in England, France, and elsewhere in Europe during the 19th century, although nowhere was the influence seemingly as pervasive as it was throughout the Nordic countries. The book reveals how the widespread interest in Japanese aesthetics helped to establish notions of a fundamental unity between the arts and transformed the region's visual vocabulary. The adoption of Japanese motifs and styles in Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark provided a necessary cohesion to their existing artistic language, forming a vital balance within and among all of the applied arts."--Publisher.

English

April 20, 2016

Includes bibliographical references (pages 290-291) and index.