Klimt, Japanese Katagami and the Vienna Secession

Japonism, the extraordinary influence of Japanese art on European artists in the late 19th century, affected many fields, from painting to fashion, including the decorative arts.  

Among the major figures of this period, Gustav Klimt, a leading figure of the Vienna Secession, was deeply influenced by Japanese aesthetics. A significant source of this influence, particularly in the field of textiles and patterns, lay in katagami.

The katagami are Japanese stencils made from mulberry bark. They were used to print patterns on wool or silk fabrics.
With Japan opening to international trade in the second half of the 19th century, after the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854, these objects, once simple craft tools, flooded into Europe.

Museums, such as London's South Kensington Museum and Vienna's Museum für Kunst und Industrie, purchased hundreds of these katagami. These collections became an invaluable resource, offering hundreds of designs to the artists of the Vienna Secession and the Wiener Werkstätte, considered the foundation of 20th-century design.

Gustav Klimt, whose studio housed an extraordinary collection of Japanese objects including kakemono, prints, kimonos, and even samurai armor, was passionate about this culture. He went so far as to dress in kimonos he designed himself, even in conservative Vienna at the time. This personal immersion is reflected in his art, where he deeply integrated the principles of Japanese textiles.

The influence of katagami and Japanese textiles is evident in the way Klimt treats patterns and composition. Japanese textiles often use rosettes on an organic or schematic background, or mon (heraldic emblems) on a schematic background. Klimt adopted these principles.

In works such as "The Kiss", we find ovoid shapes and patterns reminiscent of mon on the woman, and black rectangles on the man. These patterns are treated flat, parallel to the plane of the painting, an approach that incorporates the composition of Japanese textiles.

In portraits such as that of Adele Bloch-Bauer or in a painting titled "Japanese Woman in a Checked Kimono" (whose title itself emphasizes the garment), the face sometimes seems to disappear or become secondary to the omnipresence of the patterns of the garment and the background.

This approach, where the garment and wall decoration take precedence over the figure, is directly inspired by the visuality of Japanese prints and textiles, where patterns are paramount.

The vertically woven backgrounds or checked bodices seen in his works are directly linked to this influence. The idea of figures "absorbed" by the wallpaper or fabric was a visuality that would never have existed without the presence of Japanese arts.

In short, katagami served as an essential vector for the dissemination of Japanese textile patterns and composition principles among the artists of the Vienna Secession.

Gustav Klimt, through his personal passion and artistic genius, was able to deeply integrate these influences, using flat patterns, textile-based compositions, and the particular relationship between figure and ground to forge his unique style, which marked the history of Art Nouveau and design.

For those curious about Klimt's work, a very beautiful report on Arte TV: