Ownership and Appropriation, Part III: Appropriation of Others' Cultural Styles

Click the jump for the third part of my exploration of appropriation!

 Monet - "La Japonaise"

          There has long been a tradition of cross-cultural borrowing, wherein artists (often from a so-called Western culture) assimilate the artistic traditions of other, culturally different sources. Often, the borrowers see the source cultures as more primitive than their own, which leads to an interesting paradox: they believe themselves to be superior to – or more advanced than – the “other” culture, but at the same time they see the other’s art as revolutionary and fascinating simply because it is so different from anything they have experienced before. A well-known example of this phenomenon is the inspiration that Pablo Picasso received from Africa. Picasso was known to admire African art, and several of his figures (such as those in Les Demoiselles d’Avignon) show a distinct resemblance to African masks, but he refused to acknowledge a connection between the two. Famously, Picasso said “I have felt my strongest emotions when suddenly confronted with the sublime beauty of sculptures executed by anonymous artists of Africa” while, on another occasion, stating “African art? Never heard of it”.

Hiroshige - "Ohashi Bridge in the Rain"

Van Gogh - "Bridge in the Rain"

            More intriguing for our purposes is the larger-scale “Japonisme” movement of the mid-to-late nineteenth century. In 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry forced the opening of Japan’s closed empire, soon followed by the Meiji Restoration and several International Exhibitions. Due to their sudden visibility and availability, Japanese art items quickly spread through Europe as décor, curiosities, and souvenirs. The Impressionist artists of the time noticed that the visual style of Japanese art – particularly ukiyo-e wood-block prints – captured an energy and a natural beauty that standard Impressionism had not:

“Everything that they do is taken from observation. They represent what they see: the incredible effects of the sky, the stripes on a mushroom, the transparency of the jellyfish. …It is strange, this revolution brought by Japanese art in the taste of a people who…suddenly, are becoming impassioned over a plate on which the flower is not set dead in the middle, over a fabric in which harmony is not achieved by a gradation of tints but by a knowledgeable juxtaposition of colors. … The violence of the lines, the unexpectedness of the conjunctions, the arrangement of the accessories, the caprice in the poses and the objects, the picturesqueness… Looking at them, I think of Greek art, boredom in perfection, and art that will never free itself from the crime of being academic.” – Edmond de Joncourt, 1863-1867

Hokusai - "Red Fuji"

Japanese artists’ unique conception of the variable perception of color – as opposed to traditional portrayals of color as a constant – spoke strongly to the Impressionists’ desire to portray the transformative qualities of light. Before long, artists across Europe were showing the influences of Japanese art on their styles and compositions. Vincent van Gogh, for instance, created several direct copies of prints from Hiroshige’s One Hundred Views of Edo, applying his unique textural style to the unchanged compositions. He also used ukiyo-e prints as background décor in several portraits. Van Gogh’s appropriation is unusual among other painters in the Japonisme movement in that he used Japanese images directly, whereas others more subtly integrated individual elements of Japanese style into their own artistic vision. Claude Monet is an excellent example of this. In Japanese art, he saw liberation from traditional painting styles and a way for him to portray the world he saw with new, more vibrant eyes. Monet was particularly inspired by Hokusai’s work, including a collection of prints depicting Mt. Fuji at differing times of day and in differing states of appearance. “Before the example given by the Japanese,” Monet wrote, “the painter always lied. …All one ever saw on a canvas were subdued colors, drowning in a half-tone”. He owes much to the influence of Japanese artists’ ability to recognize the colors of nature and the way that they changed throughout the year, depending on weather and light quality. His Haystack, Sunset is highly reminiscent of Hokusai’s Fuji prints, both in color palette and composition.

Monet - "Haystack, Sunset"

            Monet also showed Japanese influence in his eventual shift towards natural subjects. After 1890, Monet painted only natural scenes, no longer using human figures. A description often placed on Japanese art at the time was “decorative”. This was intended by critics as an insult, implying the art to have no purpose or depth. However, most in the Japonisme movement appreciated the decorative quality. As Monet aged, his paintings became more and more decorative, neither telling any sort of story nor depicting an event; instead, they simply contained mountains or water lilies or snowy landscapes that the viewer could almost step into – scenes that evoke a Buddhist sense of spirituality towards nature. Though there are exceptions, the Japonisme movement was generally respectful towards their inspiration and the Impressionists only took graphic elements that they could apply to their own work. I see this as a positive type of appropriation – or, at least, an innocuous one. The original art was not degraded or devalued, and it was done with a genuine appreciation of the source.

Still from "Princess Mononoke"

Promotional art for "Avatar: The Last Airbender"

            Japanese art continues to be appropriated by Western culture even today, though that appropriation has taken an entirely different form. Japanese animation, or anime, largely started as a trend with the creation of Astro Boy in 1963. Today, over half of all feature films coming from Japan are animated. 1997’s Princess Mononoke even won an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, beating out all of the American nominees. Anime, then, is modern Japan’s most recognizable artistic export: it encompasses a wide variety of entertainment, from children’s Saturday-morning cartoons to adult-oriented films with dark themes. And yet, though anime’s highly distinctive visual style is inextricably linked to Japan – the genre was often referred to as “Japanimation” in its earlier days – American animators have begun to create their own anime-styled cartoons, blurring the line between Japanese and American cultural products. Take, for instance, Avatar: The Last Airbender, an animated series created by children’s television network Nickelodeon. There is not a single writing or directing credit with a Japanese name, and the vast majority of its voice actors are Caucasian. However, the show’s aesthetic is heavily Asian-influenced. The animation style is notably anime-inspired, prompting some to call it an “American anime.” The settings and characters are also non-white, drawing from Chinese, Tibetan, and Inuit cultures. It is difficult to say whether or not it is culturally acceptable for an all-American production company to create a series with such a non-American cultural concept. Do they have the right to depict cultures – albeit fictionalized versions – which, to them, are foreign? The creators took as much visual influence from anime as the Impressionists took from ukiyo-e prints, if not more so. The cultural influence is, perhaps, less clear. In Avatar’s defense, it gained great popularity on a prominent American network, which may well have inspired large numbers of young viewers to seek out genuine Japanese anime. It makes no effort to hide or “Westernize” its anime influences, making it a hard appropriation to criticize.

Photograph of samurai in Boshin War period

Still from "Samurai Jack"

            On the other end of the spectrum is Samurai Jack. In it, a swordsman from a vaguely Edo-period village is transported into the future and devotes his life to fighting the demon that has enslaved the world in his absence. This series, created by Cartoon Network, does not draw visual inspiration from anime. The drawing style is heavily stylized and holds a very unique – and visibly Western – aesthetic. However, the actual content of the series is distinctly Japan-inspired. The title character wears traditional samurai garb, ties his hair into a top-knot and carries a katana, all of which are stereotypical Japanese cultural traditions. His enemy, the demon Aku, takes its name from the Japanese word for “evil” and resembles illustrations of oni demons. Is this a more egregious example of cultural appropriation than Avatar? Jack and Aku are the only Japanese characters in the industrial, dystopian future portrayed in Samurai Jack. One could argue that this places the Japanese characters into a position of otherness or foreignness. Indeed, Jack’s sense of alienation in a strange world is a recurring theme in the series. However, this need not be viewed negatively, as Jack is also portrayed as heroic, generous, and committed to his goal. Additionally, the entire series is something of an homage to samurai films, containing stylishly choreographed fights as well as cinematic moments of serenity. The creators clearly have a love for the genre. Though it may toe a thin line with regards to stereotypical Japanese characters, both in appearance and demeanor, I do not find it terribly difficult to label the cartoon as an affectionate tribute as well as an appropriation. Why is it that shows like Avatar and Samurai Jack do not receive the same scrutiny that the Impressionists did when they began adopting Japanese techniques? Some may argue that cartoons are not perceived as fine art, which leads us to forget them as anything but entertainment. However, it may be a product of increased globalization. As countries share more and more of their own cultures with the rest of the world, perhaps the distinctions between our cultures become blurred to the point where we are no longer concerned when an artist from one society is using elements from another.