Vases, Whistler, Blue-and-Gold: The Way James Abbot Whistler Reformulated Chinoiserie in 1876–1877

World renowned American-English artist James Abbot McNeil Whistler (1834–1903) is usually rightfully associated with the beginnings of proto-Impressionistic movement in Western art. While the close ties between Impressionism, Post-Impressionism and the Far Eastern artistic influences are quite well known, the role of Whistler’s famous Harmony in Blue and Gold: Peacock Room on the preexistent Orientalistic style and long-lasting infatuation with Chinoiserie is yet to be established. Though the main style of this unique oeuvre is undoubtedly Chinese (white-and-blue porcelain vases, The Princess from the Land of Porcelain imaginary portrait in generic kimono-qipao style gown, the general style of the literati study (wenfang; 文房)), Whistler was equally inspired by Japanese woodcut landscape prints long before Claude Monet and Vincent Van Gogh and had even emulated some of them in his previous paintings before Van Gogh followed suit. The talk, illustrated by Whistler’s Orientalistic works, — both paintings and applied artistic objects and their collections, such as the Peacock Room, — will deconstruct the Gesamtkunstwerk of the iconic Whistler’s Chinese Study and demonstrate the way this artist processed Chinese and general Eastern Asian art remaining astoundingly true to its spirit and thus utterly unique.