A hilarious, elegant and naughty send-up of Shunga, the once taboo art of Japanese erotica. In a series of 24 full-colour drawings, satirical cartoonist Matthew Martin, captures of the essence of Modern Shunga, and updates it with witty - and often unlikely - cultural and artistic references. Discreetly packaged in a postcard-sized fold-out accordion format, Modern Shunga is perfect gift for lovers of, well, high-class dirty pictures. Martin's Shunga works have been exhibited at a distinguished Sydney gallery to rave reviews and the development of a cult following.
Art is continuously subjected to insidious forms of censorship. This may be by the Church to guard against moral degeneration, by the State to promote a specific political agenda or by the art market, to elevate one artist above another. Now, and in the last century, artwork that touches on ethnic, religious, sexual, national or institutional sensitivities is liable to be destroyed or hidden away, ignored or side-lined. Drawing from new research into historical and contemporary case-studies, Censoring Art: Silencing the Artwork provides diverse ways of understanding the purpose and mechanisms of art censorship across distinct geopolitical and cultural contexts from Iran, Japan, and Uzbekistan to Britain, Ireland, Canada, Macedonia, Soviet Russia, and Cyprus. Its contributions uncover the impact of this silent control of the production and exhibition of art and consider how censorship has affected art practice and public perceptions of artworks.
Discover Japanese art like no other. Originally created by the artists of the ukiyo-e school of the floating world to advertise brothels in 17th-century Yoshiwara, these popular spring pictures (shunga) transcended class and gender in Japan for almost 300 years. These tender, humorous and brightly coloured pieces celebrate sexual pleasure in all its forms, culminating in the beautiful, yet graphic, work of iconic artists Utamaro, Hokusai and Kunisada. This catalogue of a major international exhibition aims to answer some key questions about what shunga is and why was it produced. Erotic Japanese art was heavily suppressed in Japan from the 1870s onwards as part of a process of cultural modernisation that imported many contemporary western moral values. Only in the last twenty years or so has it been possible to publish unexpurgated examples in Japan and this ground-breaking publication presents this fascinating art in its historical and cultural context for the first time. Within Japan, shunga has continued to influence modern forms of art, including manga, anime and Japanese tattoo art. Drawing on the latest scholarship and featuring over 400 images of works from major public and private collections, this landmark book sheds new light on this unique art form within Japanese social and cultural history. Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art is published to accompany an exhibition at the British Museum from October 2013 to January 2014.
Japanese erotic art, shunga, has a long history, with thousands of paintings, prints, and illustrated books produced, mostly from the seventeenth to late nineteenth centuries. Shunga literally means picture of spring spring being a common Japanese euphemism for sex and the works celebrate all facets of human sexuality with great candor. Unlike earlier books that have tended to focus on individual artists, this new publication has a thematic structure, covering the whole spectrum of sexual practice and expression, including adultery and jealousy, voyeurism, orgasm, and violent sex and death. Using images from his own unparalleled collection, Ofer Shagan brings the rich and vast world of shunga to modern view, highlighting the messages, symbols, and humor that often appear in the background but are fundamentally significant for understanding the messages in the art.
This sumptous guide explains the cultural forces behind Shunga images and why the Japanese find them so erotic. It also reveals the influence of Shunga on great Western art movements such as Impressionism. Exquisitely and abundantly illustrated, this is the most comprehensively informative book ever to be written on the subject - truly a 'masterclass'.
The Tokyo region of Japan is, in terms of population, the largest urban area on earth. Its centre comprises the 23 wards of Tokyo itself but the urban sprawl has long since extended to include the other major cities of Kawasaki and Yokohama. From the early 16th century, when the Tokugawa rulers of Japan established their administrative headquarters there, Edo, as it was known, developed quickly into one of the largest cities in the world. It was renamed Tokyo, or 'Eastern Capital', when the Emperor moved there in 1868. In the 20th century most of Tokyo was destroyed first by the Kanto earthquake of 1923 and then by the American bombing of 1945. Nonetheless, it was rapidly rebuilt, and is now, along with London and New York, one of the major control centres of the global economy. Yet behind the ultramodern facade of the main commercial areas, Tokyo remains largely a city of narrow streets and small, intimate neighbourhoods. However, the threat of serious earthquakes remains and the relocation of the capital is being increasingly discussed. This is the first annotated, critical survey of the English-language literature on Tokyo and its region.
In this, the first collection in English of feminist-oriented research on Japanese art and visual culture, an international group of scholars examines representations of women in a wide range of visual work. The volume begins with Chino Kaori's now-classic essay Gender in Japanese Art, which introduced feminist theory to Japanese art. This is followed by a closer look at a famous thirteenth-century battle scroll and the production of bijin (beautiful women) prints within the world of Edoperiod advertising. A rare homoerotic picture-book is used to extrapolate the grammar of desire as represented in late seventeenth-century Edo. In the modern period, contributors consider the introduction to Meiji Japan of the Western nude and oil-painting and examine Nihonga (Japanese-style painting) and the role of one of its famous artists. The book then shifts its focus to an examination of paintings produced for the Japanese-sponsored annual salons held in colonial Korea. The post-war period comes under scrutiny in a study of the novel Woman in the Dunes and its film adaptation. The critical discourse that surrounded women artists of the late twentieth-century - the Super Girls of Art - i
A gorgeous presentation devoted to the art of Japanese eroticism, drawn from the Honolulu Museum of Art’s rare and distinguished collection. The Japanese paintings and prints called shunga (literally "spring pictures") reflected the thriving sexual culture of early modern Japan and depicted with sensitivity and nuance the private lives of various social types, from courtesans and Kabuki actors to ordinary townspeople. Organized around a series of exhibitions at the Honolulu Museum of Art, this sumptuous volume presents art from the museum’s vast holdings of ukiyo-e prints, woodblock-printed books, and paintings, particularly those originating from the collections of scholar Richard D. Lane and famed author James A. Michener. These fascinating works, dating from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, explore Japan’s sexual culture (including issues of gender and the country’s ever-evolving sex industry) with humor as well as a surprisingly sophisticated literary and art-historical approach. Sure to become a collector’s item, this gorgeously designed publication offers stunning color plates showcasing numerous and unusual examples of exquisite Japanese erotica. Texts by leading scholars of shunga and ukiyo-e complete this treasure album of a book.
Gender, Sexuality and Performativity in Japanese Culture
Author: Ayelet Zohar
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Pub
ISBN:
Category: Social Science
Page: 285
View: 205
Postgender: Gender, Sexuality and Performativity in Japanese Culture is a collection of articles by leading researchers in the fields of gender studies, visual culture and performance studies in Japan. Articles in this volume discuss fundamental issues in relation to the body, sexuality, gender, and their respective representations in the visual field. The volume contains texts considering gender and temporality in Takashi Murakami's superflat dimension; gender issues in relation to male pregnancy, motherhood and the family as represented in Hiroko Okada, Mako Idemitsu, Miwako Ishiuchi and Yasumasa Morimura's works; sexual identity of the otaku, and sexual representations in manga and anime; sexual organ depictions in the contemporary Japanese art and photography of Yayoi Kusama, Ryudai Takano, Yurie Nagashima, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Makoto Saito's advertisements; literary representations of hermaphrodites in Tokuda Shusei's Arakure and fictional genders in Kachikujin Yap; the history of prostitution and Bubu de la Madeliene and Yoshiko Shimada's performance art; a Buddhist reading of Yoko Ono's Cut Piece; gender passing and masquerade in Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh; and gender issues in Duras / Rennais' Hiroshima mon amour. The contributors include leading researchers and curators such as Jennifer Robertson, Michiko Kasahara, Tamaki Saito, Maki Isaka, Bracha Ettinger and others.