LONDON -- More so than in any previous era, the development of modern art has been characterized by a healthy international cross-pollination of styles and movements. I have on many occasions remarked, sometimes disparagingly, on the strong influences Japanese artists have absorbed from their Western contemporaries. But I am in London this week (researching the tradition of English stained glass, while also enjoying many pints of beer in pubs), and so I think it appropriate to look a little at the influence that Japan has had on some British artists.
Now, I was going to touch on the effect that the late 19th-century japonisme movement had on British or British-based artists such as Aubrey Beardsley and James A. McNeill Whistler, then track forward to the present and artists such as 2002 Turner Prize-nominee Catherine Yass, whose new work deals with Tokyo. I'd reckoned on wrapping up with a look ahead at the Japan-British Art Now series of exhibitions and workshops coming to Tokyo in May.
But my plans changed last week when I met, here in London and under the most extraordinary circumstances, an artist named Alan Dick.