Japonisme

Somm, who exhibited with the Impressionists in 1879, was among the French graphic artists most devoted to Japoniste subjects. Somm’s vision of Japonisme presented here consists of both Japanese objects and the fantasies they produced in the minds of European consumers. A miniaturized Japanese man holding a paper lantern on a bamboo rod extends a fan toward a white woman, perhaps invoking a traditional Japanese offering of cultural hospitality. He stands atop folios of papers, possibly containing prints, behind or from which another Japanese man in miniature appears, offering a porcelain teacup. The indeterminate space of the scene and the woman’s faraway gaze suggest that this dehumanizing, belittling view of the male figures is born of her imagination.