6 October 2017

JAPONISME IN GRAPHIC ART


To reinforce the point about the similarity of Kós’s graphic style to the Beggarstaffs (James Pryde and William Nicholson), here (above) is one of their best designs, a highly original theatre poster for A Chapter from Don Quixote by W. G. Wills, performed at the Lyceum Theatre in 1895 and starring Henry Irving. Irving didn’t like and it wasn't used but it was often reproduced, so it has become familiar. The common elements of asymmetry, strong outline, flat colour and empty space are even more evident in Nicholson's Queen Victoria print (below). (The originals of both designs are in the V&A.)




There is the same in Lautrec's posters (above) and Gauguin's painting, but the immediate source for ­Kós must have been the graphics of the Secession (below). The ultimate source, of course, was Japonisme, and in particular Japanese woodblock prints. So Kós’s renderings of his country's rural folk art also had metropolitan and international sources.

Kolomon Moser, Woglinde, 1901




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