Exoticism in Design Lecture and Diaghilev exhibition at the V & A

Claire Rose talked about Exoticism in Design, After researching and understanding about the exoticism culture, I visited the V & A museum for the Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballets Russes 1909 - 1929. I learnt that Diaghilev's greatest achievement was his dance company - the Ballets Russes. Created a century ago, the productions of the Ballets Russes revolutionised early 20th-century arts and continue to influence cultural activity today.


Visually, the first Ballets Russes seasons were marked by the exotic designs of the Russian-born artist Léon Bakst. His bejewelled colours, swirling Art Nouveau elements and sense of the erotic re-envisioned dance productions as total works of art. 


There were some interesting Russian ballet costumes that I got attracted too. 

Nikolai Roerich (designer), costumes for female dancers in The Rite of Spring, 1913.

Pablo Picasso (designer), costume for the Chinese Conjuror 

The productions of 1915-19 were both the most conservative and most experimental. The Ballets Russes toured popular works to new audiences in North and South America. Yet there were long periods in Europe without performing, in which the company could workshop original ideas.

Léonide Massine emerged as a talented new choreographer, drawing on influences from the countries of his travels, notably Italy and Spain. 

The designs and colours used in Ballets Russes productions forged a new aesthetic in the 20th century. Knowledge of the company's revolutionary ballets filtered through to theatre, fashion and daily life, including interior design.

Vincent Van Gogh 

The term Japonisme came up in France in the seventies of the 19th century to describe the craze for Japanese culture and art. Van Gogh like so many other Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists was one of the admirers of Japanese art. The Japanese influence is obvious in his art work.

The Fad For All Things Japanese

With the treaty of Kanagawa in 1854 between the American delegation headed by Navy commander Matthew Calbraith Perry (1794-1858) and the Japaneseshogunate government, a period of 216 years of Japanese isolation ended. In the years following, huge numbers of Japanese artifacts and handicraft articles flowed to Europe, mainly to France and the Netherlands. The Paris Exposition Universelle in 1867 had a Japanese stand and showed Japanese art objects to the amazed public.

All things Japanese were suddenly stylish and fashionable. Shops selling Japanese woodblock prints, kimonos, fans and antiquities popped up in Paris like mushrooms. The Impressionist painters and Post-Impressionists like Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec or Paul Gauguin were attracted and impressed by Japanese woodblock prints. In 1875 Claude Monet created his famous painting La Japonaise, showing his wife dressed in a Kimono and holding a Japanese fan. He later contemptuously called his own painting "trash".

The term japonisme was created by the French journalist and art-critic Philippe Burty in an article published in 1876 to describe the craze for all things Japanese.

Vincent Van Gogh.