Converging Culture: Vincent Van Gogh And Edgar Degas

Influx of Japanese design, cultural exchange, and ukiyo-e prints influenced artists of the 18th and 19th century such as Vincent van Gogh and Edgar Degas. According to the video, Converging Culture, ukiyo-e was a pictorial tradition in Japan by which artists were depicting modern, everyday life as well as well-known landmarks. Ukiyo-e was first produced in the seventeenth century and showed scenes and characters from the entertainment districts of modern Tokyo, Edo. The thought that each moment in life should be enjoyed helped influenced these works of art.
Ando Hiroshige, one of the leading ukiyo-e landscapes artists of the late Edo period created a woodblock print called Evening Shower at Atake which Vincent van Gogh later imitated. Hiroshige’s …show more content…
In Van Gogh’s painting, he chose brighter colors than those in Hiroshige’s print as well as restructured the water with visible touches. Vincent van Gogh collected Japanese prints because he was fascinated by their composition and style. To copy the size of the print, Van Gogh created a border on his canvas and filled it with Japanese characters. He also imitated how the print lacked the distinctions of shadowing. Through researching the image online, I found out that the scene represents an “evening descent” of the thunder god, yudachi. The painting was created Hiroshige wanted to capture the beauty of a popular atmosphere one may encounter in Japan. Japanese art consists of off-centered arrangements, light with no shadow, and vibrant colors on plain surfaces, which Van Gogh mimicked onto his …show more content…
The contemporary work I picked was an offset lithograph by Takashi Murakami called Kansei Gold created in 2008 in New York. It has the dimensions of 30.04 in by 28.35 in and is a figurative work of art that has a neo-pop art style. It is figurative because is portrays items in the visible world such as trees and flowers. This work is a form of hybrid art because of the cultural combinations Murakami incorporated. The pop art style represents the culture of the United States while the Japanese characters in the lithograph represent Japanese culture. Murakami also used a superflat style which is a postmodern art movement influenced by manga and anime. Among his most famous recurring details are superflat, smiling flowers as seen in the lithograph. Takashi Murakami is an internationally productive contemporary Japanese artist who created artwork based on anime and manga where his signature artistic style represented western women with blonde, long hair and big eyes. He adopted pop art strategies, and included a very Japanese