Japanese art was immensely popular and influential in France in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The Japanese woodblock prints, in particular, attracted the attention of Western artists because they provided not only an alternative language that transformed Western artistic traditions but also a means to challenge prevailing social codes. Amid this cultural climate, women artists also adapted Japanese prints to represent femininity from a female perspective. However, deviating from the norms of the patriarchal society, their interpretations had been subsumed under the generalisation of art from this period as defined by male creativity. While the formalistic impact of Japanese art on French art has been comprehensively examined, its gender dimension has often eluded scholarly attention.
This talk will focus on the woman artist Mary Cassatt and her colour prints to demonstrate that women artists tended to engage with Japanese art from a gendered perspective. I will analyse how Cassatt adapted Japanese aesthetics into her own art in order to resist the prevalent gender stereotypes that are present in the works of her male contemporaries. By emphasizing Cassatt’s role in the cultural encounter, I aim to contribute to the feminist deconstruction of art history in order to better understand the historical positions of women artists and to raise awareness on how they came to be marginalised in the writing of art history.