The Japanese influence

Gerhard Riessbeck, 'Kamchatka"  

From his current exhibition at Manggha,

Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Cracow  

Manggha is a great institution.  Its way of thinking about the Japanese aesthetic and "the rest of the world" is wide and inspirational.  I am reminded here of a quote from Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński, whose collection of Japanese art became the basis for the museum.   

What he wrote is a pretty good recipe for a strong visual composition, effective artistic installation or a captivating film:

“All that is best in modern European landscape art is owned to Japanese influence. And it is always a synthesis of the most essential properties, intensification of the primary features, omitting the secondary ones. (..) A narrow blue stripe here is your sky. A few lines - here is your tree. Through the furious study of nature, which is still manifest, the whole ballast is ultimately discarded, and what is reached is a kind of brilliant artistic shorthand.”   -  Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński, 1906

(emphasis - PK)