Oriental lines

Conventional wisdom says American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries drew their influences solely from the great art movements of Europe. But Alexandra Munroe, the Guggenheim Museum's senior curator of Asian Art, challenges that idea. Munroe's recent book The Third Mind - and Guggenheim show of the same name - say Asian art also played an important part.

Her work traces how the art and philosophy of Asia was appreciated and appropriated by Americans, who used its forms and ideas to transform the country's art. Asia's influence was deep and ranged across painting, music, literature and dance, the New York curator says.

'We're not arguing that Asia through this period was the primary influence on America, or that it was as important as the European influences,' she says. 'But we are arguing that America did have a consistent engagement with Asian sources that was transformative in the articulation of her visual and conceptual creative language.

'We have set a limited timeframe for our academic project - from the opening up of Japan to the end of the cold war. We are saying that during this time, there were influences from Asia and the non-west among those from Europe.'

American artists were influenced by the aesthetics and the philosophical beliefs of Asia. In the 19th century, the formal elements of Japanese art were studied by Americans, Munroe says.

'Whistler, for instance, based his Old Battersea Bridge Nocturne on a print by Hiroshige,' she says. 'Mary Cassatt was more experimental. She didn't adapt a specific composition, but looked more generally at themes. She also took notice of the decorative structure of Japanese woodblock prints: the flattening of the picture frame, the outlining of the forms with a strong black line, and the filling-in of those forms with heavy colour and pattern.'