Kitagawa Utamaro. The kiss

At a glance we understand the great cultural and taste difference between the images of the West and Japan which, moreover, was completely isolated and without communication with other cultures and peoples.

We remind you that the painting is printed and a matrix is required for each color and that we are at the end of the 1700s and the early 1800s.

Japanese painting is divided into periods and this painting is from the Edo period. Finally, the "sumptuary laws" in Japan are meticulous and prescriptive as in any country in the world and even go so far as to indicate how one should dress and to the painters rigid canons to be observed in drawing and writing.

In Japan, for example, the Impressionists would all end up in prison for months for failing to observe the academic style.

Returning to the image, we realize that a hundred years before Klimt the style is already that of the Viennese painter, with the limits we have already mentioned.

Spot colors, outline drawing, two-dimensionality of the scene and decorative style of the clothes and the background.

There is no doubt that the spread of Japanese prints in the West in the mid-1800s heavily influenced not only the Impressionists but also the painting of the Viennese Secession.