Impressioni d’oriente

Catalog of the Milan exhibition at MUDEC – Museo delle Culture (October 1, 2019 – February 2, 2020)

The exhibition Impressions of the Orient traces the profound fascination that Japan exerted on Western culture between 1860 and 1900, beginning with the discovery of Japanese prints by French Impressionist painters, and then delving into the role of Western travelers, collectors and intellectuals in the creation of a cultural climate in which the love of artistic objects and crafts that the Universal Expositions brought to Europe for the first time blossomed, giving way to a true obsession with the exotic Far East. Ample space is given to Italian Japonism, with works by De Nittis and Segantini, Michetti and Galileo Chini, within which the contribution of collectors such as Enrico Cernuschi and Count Giovanni Battista Lucini Passalacqua, whose collection is currently part of the collections of Mudec, the perfect venue to host the exhibition, is no less important. The essays in the catalog punctually delve into the main themes related to this new taste, highlighting how, through Japanism, European culture was dialoguing with itself. After all, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “the whole of Japan is pure invention.”

BY
Flemming Friborg – professor of art history at the University of Copenhagen, Chevalier des Arts et Lettres, Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Former director of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen (2002-2017), he is leading a research project on Impressionism and its sources, with support from the Carlsberg Foundation.
Paola Zatti – conservator of the GAM (Gallery of Modern Art) in Milan, for which she supervised a reorganization of the collections, has collaborated with numerous public and private institutions and participated in the realization of several exhibitions on the Italian Ottocento.