Hans Bjarne Thomsen at Les Bernardes: Japan and the West through prints

Yesterday, 24 September, we had the privilege of attending a lecture by Hans Bjarne Thomsen at Les Bernardes. An art historian specialising in Japanese art and professor emeritus at the University of Zurich, Thomsen holds a PhD from Princeton University and has devoted much of his career to research, teaching and the study of Japanese art collections.

Taking Hokusai’s The Great Wave as his starting point, Thomsen explored how Japan and the West depicted one another in the nineteenth century. He introduced us to Yokohama-e, prints in which Japanese artists imagined the lives of foreigners using the images and objects available to them. He also showed how Western artists, fascinated by Japanese prints, incorporated them into their own work, often with only a partial understanding of the culture from which they came.

It was an exceptional opportunity to deepen our appreciation of the exhibition Images of the Floating World and to reflect on the power of images, their movement between cultures and the misunderstandings they can create.

Our sincere thanks to Hans Bjarne Thomsen for so generously sharing his knowledge, and to Les Bernardes for making this event possible.