ABSTRACT
An Australian awareness of Japan was propelled from the late 1860s by the arrival of Japanese performers and official delegations, and through the accounts of returning travellers and visitors from Europe. Like their European counterparts, a number of modern Australian artists such as Margaret Preston (1875–1963) were drawn to the aesthetic conventions and techniques employed in Japanese woodblock prints for their radical departure from traditional Western methods of pictorial representation. Although Japonisme also became a platform for expressive experimentation among other notable Australian artists, this chapter argues that Preston was unusual for her sustained reference to the Japanese pictorial modes (repetitive patterning, flat areas of colour and strong black outlines) that ultimately became synonymous with her hallmark style.
