This post is not a political or feminist statement. 

It is made up of images of settings containing one or more shrunken or disproportionate human figures. 

It is not always clear what is going on.

 

 

 

Woman Teasing Miniature Men, etching, 19th century. 

Henry Somm, 1844-1907, French. Baltimore Art Museum

 

A misogynistic representation of a ‘femme fatale’ playing with 3 men.  She is depicted as a human with snake-like attributes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An 18th century Gujarati painting from the LalBhai Dalpatphai Musuem in Ahmedabad, Gujerat , India. 

This ‘man’ may not be a man but the representation of a god with his female adepts.

 

 

 

 

 Woman Reading, oil on canvas, 1880. 

Gustave Caillebotte, 1848-1894, French.  On display in 2009 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY

 

The man in this painting is far too small for his distance from the woman.  Caillebotte was a skilled draftsman and painter.  I don’t know the reason why he miniaturized the man.

 

 

 

Hand of Rodin with a Female Figure, 1917, plaster. 

 Auguste Rodin, 1840-1917, French.  Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY

 

 

 

The Orator, 1939, oil on canvas

Antonio Ruiz, 1892-1964, Mexican.  Private collection on display in 2016 at the Philadelphia Art Museum. 

The artist prepared this for the International Exhibition of Surrealist Paintings in Mexico City in 1940.  He is mocking the empty oration of orators speaking to people who understand little.

 

 

 

 

 

The man at the front left is very small.  It is possible that this is a depiction of a dwarf (person of little stature).

 

 

 

 

 Botanists take a Core Sample of a 350 ft. Redwood Tree, Redwood National Park, California.

  Photograph taken by Michael (Nick) Nichols, 2008.  On display at the Philadelphia Art Museum, summer of 2017

Nature in proportion.

 

 

 

The Giants, 1939, duco (an industrial lacquer) on masonite.  

Alfred Siqueiros, 1896-1974, Mexican.  Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Nature in proportion.

 

 

 

 

Little Men #86 and #99, 1967, acrylic on paper.

Vivian Browne, 1929-1993, American. MOMA, NY

 

The artist, a Black feminist working in New York in the 1960s, created a series of drawings of primarily white men behaving petulantly. The reactions to her drawing were of shock.