The Louvre Abu Dhabi – Part 3b Globalisation

In a world with new broadened horizons, the notion of the norm, the model and role of the artist were reexamined in new terms.

The circulation of goods and people experienced unprecedented acceleration during the modern period. In just three centuries, new systems of global exchange and the emergence of new empires transformed societies and territories, resulting in enormous displacements of people, either due to slavery, economic migration or war.

First globalisation

Quickening the pace of cultural, material and spiritual transmission, these disruptions and transformations also facilitated social and cultural exchange within and between empires. Artists and craftsmen visualised these developments while exploring new materials, aesthetics and techniques.

Towards a Modern World

By way of established global trade networks, affluence was no longer exclusively the privilege of monarchs but was now increasingly attainable by a large segment of society: the middle class.

The spread of manufactured products and the slave trade transformed economies and stimulated new modes of consumption via additional routes and colonial empires. In the 1700s, the East India Companies of both England and France dominated the world as parallel powers, displacing their Portuguese and Dutch predecessors. The arts reflected an increased emphasis on the private sphere, the individual and the family.

With the growth of global exchanges, a vivid image of remote lands and cultures pervaded. A philosophy of progress and reason, known as the Enlightenment, spread through Europe, inciting discussions on human rights. Illustrated by the American and French revolutions at the end of the century, this intellectual movement focused on the individual and their role in history.

A New Art Of Living

During the 18th century, the affluence that had previously been the preserve of monarchs was attained by an increasingly large segment of society. The spread of manufactured products around the globe progressively transformed economies and stimulated new modes of consumption in China, Japan and Europe where manufacturers offered new goods to an increasing number of consumers. As a result, greater attention was paid to the furnishing and decoration of houses as well as personal adornment and dress.

Across all continents, the arts reflected an increased emphasis on the private sphere, the individual and the family and with the growth in global exchange, the arts developed an imaginative image of remote lands and cultures. Europe was increasingly pervaded by a philosophy of progress and reason referred to as the Enlightenment. This intellectual movement focused on the individual and their role in history, as illustrated by the American and French revolutions at the end of the century.

Japanism, A Passion for Japan

Increased contact with non-Western cultures offered artists an antidote to the increasingly industrialised conditions of modern society. The influence of Japan, in particular, reached its peak in Europe in the 1880s, following the country’s opening up to free trade and participation in World Fairs. The direct impact of these exchanges can be seen in the work of Paul Gauguin where a flattened green expanse removes all spatial depth, recalling the linear and stylised quality of Japanese prints.

Questioning Modernity

From the end of the 1700s through the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution radically reshaped the world and the nature of social relations. Technical progress in modes of communication, in the form of the telegraph, rail and road networks, saw distances dwindle and the circulation of goods and people accelerate.

Colonial expansion intensified as European powers extended their influence into Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. The advent of modernity marked the end of isolationist policies, a broadening of horizons and a deeper fascination for unknown cultures and peoples.

The invention of photography in 1839 created the exhilarating feeling of immediate contact with the outside world and helped to eliminate notions of distance and remoteness. The new medium also had a major impact on artistic development by liberating artists from established canons and allowing them to explore subjects and techniques through a contemporary lens.

Must-See Exhibits

The museum’s growing collection of treasures includes important artworks and artefacts spanning the entirety of human history around the world. Via twenty galleries, journey through twelve chronological chapters as you travel through centuries of world civilisation.

Pair of Folding Screens from Japan showing the arrival of Portuguese merchants

Japan, about 1625 | Ink, colours and gold on paper | Louvre Abu Dhabi

These screens illustrate Portuguese merchants doing business with Japan and symbolise the opening up of the country to foreign trade. The ships on the right-hand screen are being loaded in a foreign country, while the Portuguese ship on the left-hand screen is unloading in a port in Japan.

Portuguese merchants played a significant role in early interactions between Europe and Japan, initiating trade and cultural exchange during the Nanban period (roughly 1543-1640). They introduced firearms, silk, and other goods to Japan while also facilitating the export of Japanese swords, lacquerware, and silver to Europe and other parts of Asia. This period of exchange, though relatively short-lived, had a lasting impact on Japanese society and culture. ¹

Charpentier “The Cup of Chocolate”

France, Versailles, 1768-1776 | Jean-Baptiste Charpentier (Paris, 1728-1806) | Oil on canvas | Musée national des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon

Jean-Baptiste Charpentier the Elder (1728-1806)² was a French Rococo portrait painter, associated with the Royal Court. He is best known for portraits of Marie-Antoinette and Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, Duke of Penthièvre. He also painted members of the Duke’s family. His early works were mostly genre scenes.

Seemingly an informal family reunion, this is an official dynastic portrait of one of the greatest noble lines of the 1700s, Seen amidst finery on the left is the wealthiest heir to the French kingdom, the Duke of Penthièvre, the grandson of King Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan, with his family.

Hiroshige, from the series “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji”

Japan, 1858 | Utagawa Hiroshige (Tokyo, 1797-1858) | Ink and colours on paper | H x W: approx. 34 x 22 cm (without margins) 56.7 x 44.3 x 3 cm (framed) 54 x 41.5 x 0.4 cm (mounting) | Louvre Abu Dhabi

Introduced into Japan by the Dutch in 1829, Prussian (or “Berlin”) blue was such a hallmark of the artist’s style that it was even known as “Blue Hiroshige”.

Footnotes:

1. In 1543, three Portuguese adventurers were the first Europeans to set foot in Japan. A typhoon drove them into the Ryukyu Archipelago and, in a chance encounter that ended up shaping the future of Japan, their Chinese junk got shipwrecked on one of its islands, Tanegashima.
   Those Portuguese interlopers introduced locals to matchlock-style firearms, an early form of musket that used a length of burning rope to ignite the gunpowder within. The island happened to be home to skilled swordsmiths who were able to quickly reproduce the gun; their version of it became known as ‘tanegashima’ and was adopted by the Japanese samurai. Ultimately, the weapon allowed the feudal lord and military leader Oda Nobunaga to reunify what was then a torn-apart country.
   Japan’s reunification took place during the so-called Nanban period of trade, another direct result of the 1543 shipwreck. Portuguese traders went on to ply a route connecting isolated Japan with southern China (Nanban, incidentally, means ‘southern barbarian’). They’d buy Chinese silk at the fairs of Canton to sell in Japan, where they stocked up on gold, silver and copper for their return voyage to China. Just a few years into this highly profitable era of mercantilism, Portugal claimed conveniently located Macao as its base for trade with the Far East.
   Nobunaga, by then Japan’s effective ruler, encouraged free trade and offered protection to the Portuguese merchants sailing in from Macao. And where European traders go, Christian missionaries follow. Japan was no exception. Francis Xavier, one of the founders of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) reached Japan in 1549 as an Apostolic Nuncio and it was in that capacity that he presented himself to the daimyo of Yamaguchi. Jesuits brought with them Catholicism, but also the latest scientific advances and culture from Europe. From European fashions and food to Western medical knowledge and architectural techniques, the Japanese absorbed it all. The missionaries founded Japan’s first ‘modern’ hospital, orphanage and Western-style art school. They also published the first Japanese dictionary and grammar books.
   https://macaomagazine.net/portugal-and-japan-480-years-of-cooperation/#:~:text=Japan’s%20reunification%20took%20place%20during,trade%20with%20the%20Far%20East. ↩︎
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Charpentier_the_Elder ↩︎
3. Utagawa Hiroshige is recognized as a master of the ukiyo-e woodblock printing tradition, having created 8,000 prints of everyday life and landscape in Edo-period Japan with a splendid, saturated ambience. Orphaned at 12, Hiroshige began painting shortly thereafter under the tutelage of Toyohiro of the Utagawa school.
   Much of Hiroshige’s work focuses on landscape. Partly inspired by Katsushika Hokusai’s popular Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, Hiroshige took a softer, less formal approach with his Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido (1833–34), completed after traveling that coastal route linking Edo and Kyoto. Mountains grow green and bands of salmon-colored sunrise hang in the mist in prints like Maisaka—No. 31, where traders and farmers mundanely pass by in the foreground.
   Hiroshige’s prolific output was somewhat due to his being paid very little per series. Still, this did not deter him, as he receded to Buddhist monkhood in 1856 to complete his brilliant and lasting One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (1856–58). He died in 1858, 10 years before Monet, Van Gogh, Whistler, and a host of Impressionist painters became eager collectors of Japanese art. And so Hiroshige’s surging bokashi, or varied gradient printing, lives on—visibly influencing artists like Paul Gauguin (see the Art Institute’s Mahana no atua, 1894) and Frank Lloyd Wright.
   https://www.artic.edu/artists/34946/utagawa-hiroshige ↩︎