Post #651632 by Grand Kahu on Tue, Sep 11, 2012 1:49 PM

Indeed, poly-pop/tiki culture is simply another in a long list of Western-fantasies-meet-Asian culture, a phenomenon which dates back to ancient times but in more recent history reached one big crescendo in the later 19th century with what I like to term "eclecticism gone wild" or, to our point, the ultimate notion of exoticism. After all, bamboo furniture, palm trees, and a host of Asian and tropical motifs were not only a fashion in late 18th century England (and to a lesser, further filtered degree, North America), but in the 1870s following the opening of Japan to the West. Certainly it's an important predecessor to the poly-pop-to-tiki timeline BigBro has created. If one reads about what was considered "authentic" Japanese art in the 1870s-90s and some of the critics debating over the debasement of the "pure" (a nonsensical issue, as culture and art are always in flux) Japanese forms with tourist art or "worse," that made by Westerners to merely give the sense of the exotic far east. But just as people in the 50s and 60s ate up tiki culture as East-meets-West fantasy, so too did thousands of others, who during the late 19th century bought up anything in the Japanese taste, regardless of where and under what circumstances it was made. Smoking jacket kimono to Hawaiian shirt -- just change up the motifs and the century and there you go!

GK