Exotic as Erotic: The Sexualization of the Japanese Kimono in Nineteenth Century European Art

Abstract

The late nineteenth century represented a unique period for art production as artists searched for a solution to the restrictive style of the royal art academies and new ways to represent contemporary society. With the increasing connectedness of the world during this time, due to trade, came a renewed interest in the world outside of Europe with world fairs and international exhibitions. This international intrigue was manifested in Europe through an obsession with material objects from exotic cultures. Japanese objects were of particular interest as Japan had recently been opened to the West for the first time since the sixteenth century. Exotic material culture provided the unique and contemporary approach to art that European artists were searching for. One of the most popular and visually represented aspects of exotic material culture during the nineteenth century were Japanese kimonos which artists used as an erotic symbol. My research will examine the social and cultural factors that led to the eroticization, and often fetishization, of an entire culture through the misrepresentation of a single culturally significant object. These factors include a colonialist interest in the exotic, the eroticization of Japanese prints featuring kimonos, associations between kimonos and Geishas, and the use of kimonos in Europe as a boudoir garment. This prolific eroticization of the kimono in nineteenth-century European art is just one of many cases of the appropriation of foreign cultures through culturally specific objects, an issue that still prevails today.