“Space Oddity”

In this first discussion, I would like to briefly show the delineation of depth “perspective” in western paintings and Japanese prints: Western paintings traditionally prioritize creation of a three-dimensional space using perspective technique. The appreciation of paintings relied on the way in which the painters created a three-dimensional illusion in two dimensional space, without drawing obvious lines of geometry on canvas: Western art was traditionally rooted in scientific standpoints. The artists precisely set a dominant vantage point in order to complete a perfect illusion as if we are actually viewing the real objects.

Japanese prints, on the other hand, are less concerned with the exactness of the perspective: For example, in one of the traditional folding screen prints, Rakuchu-Rakugai-Zu, the vantage point of the viewer is set above clouds with a bird’s-eye-view, however, the viewer can capture small details everywhere, which would not have happened if you actually did stand and view from above the clouds: The print prioritises aesthetic aspects rather than the technique.

[Rakuchu-Rakukai-Zu]

Also Japanese art prints show two-dimensionality that therefore look comparatively flattened. For example, strong vertical and horizontal lines are frequently depicted in Japanese prints, a feature less common in western paintings before 1860s. A good example is found in the use of ‘the shoji”, a shoji is a Japanese traditional window or door with translucent paper over the frame of wood and bamboo in check board design. In The Nakadaya Tea House(1794-5) by Kitamaro Utagawa, the depth at the back of the female figure is mystified by a flat shoji. There is a shadow on the shoji, which creates an illusion of another painting further highlighting two-dimensionality. One can see many vertical and horizon lines in the composition of the image but they make a beautiful contrast to the curvy female physique in her kimono that is softly and gracefully rendered.

[Image form British Museum, Utagawa, The Nakadaya Tea House, 1794-5 ]

 

A similar effect can be seen in Whistler’s Symphony in White No.2:The Little White Girl (1864) and Variation in Flesh Colour and Green: The Balcony(1867-8), James Tissot’s La Japonaise au bain (1864), and Manet’s In the Greenhouse (1879) and Saint-Lazare Station (1872-3) These all make a comparison of the sharp vertical and horizontal lines to the women’s soft physique and dresses while implying the illusion of depth.

[Whistler, Symphony in White No.2:The Little White Girl, 1864 ]

 

 

 

[Whistler,Variation in Flesh Colour and Green:The Balcony ,1867-8]

 

 

 

[Tissot, La Japonaise au bain, 1864 ]

 

 

[Manet, Saint-Lazare Station, 1872-3 ]

 

 

 

Oscar Wilde once wrote to his friend in a letter that:

 

“I feel an irresistible desire to wander, and go to Japan, where I will pass my youth, sitting under an almond tree, drinking amber tea out of a blue cup, and looking at a landscape without perspective.” (Letter from Oscar Wilde 1882, quoted from Lamboure Lionel, The Aesthetic Movement, 27, 1996)

 

“Without perspective” can be literally interpreted as the novelist’s desire to see landscape as flat as depicted in Japanese prints, but also can be read as “without any orthodox perspective.”
Wilde, homosexual, was suffocating in the air of Victorian moralistic society, which he might have viewed it as a superficial and artificial creation. Homosexual activity was a crime in his period and Wilde could have seen idealized heterosexual marriage as artificial illusion. While suffering from prejudice at home, he could have fantasized about the world of Japan where the way of seeing is completely different.

An impression of the country was fantasized as a utopia evoked through Japanese art objects. The “immigrant” that was Japanese art therefore could have brought diverse fantasies and a new sense of unorthodox ‘beauty’ as well as the unfamiliar artistic composition of paintings. Wilde could have related to the unorthodox beauty of Japanese art as he himself embraces a sexual unorthodoxy.