130-454: Shunga ( 春画 ) is a type of Japanese erotic art typically executed as a kind of ukiyo-e , often in woodblock print format. While rare, there are also extant erotic painted handscrolls which predate ukiyo-e. Translated literally, the Japanese word shunga means picture of spring ; "spring" is a common euphemism for sex. Shunga, as a subset of ukiyo-e, was enjoyed by all social groups in
260-450: A Chinese set of twelve scrolls depicting the twelve sexual acts that the crown prince would perform as an expression of yin yang . The Japanese influences of shunga date back to the Heian period (794 to 1185). At this point, it was found among the courtier class. Through the medium of narrative handscrolls , sexual scandals from the imperial court or the monasteries were depicted, and
390-565: A blank hidden page. Later the sewn bindings were preferred rather than pasted bindings. Only relatively small volumes ( juan 卷 ) were bound up, and several of these would be enclosed in a cover called a tao , with wooden boards at front and back, and loops and pegs to close up the book when not in use. For example, one complete Tripitaka had over 6,400 juan in 595 tao . Despite the productive effect of woodblock printing, historian Endymion Wilkinson notes that it never supplanted handwritten manuscripts. Indeed, manuscripts remained dominant until
520-424: A consequence the idea of printing and its advantages in replicating texts quickly became apparent to Buddhists, who by the 7th century, were using woodblocks to create apotropaic documents. These Buddhist texts were printed specifically as ritual items and were not widely circulated or meant for public consumption. Instead they were buried in consecrated ground. The earliest extant example of this type of printed matter
650-414: A fan held by a courtesan) or allusions in the work itself (such as Utamaro 's empon entitled Utamakura ). Edo period shunga sought to express a varied world of contemporary sexual possibilities. Some writers on the subject refer to this as the creation of a world parallel to contemporary urban life, but idealised, eroticised and fantastical. By far the majority of shunga depict the sexual relations of
780-423: A fundamental repositioning over the course of the 20th century. Early 20th century movements in art such as cubism , futurism , and German expressionism explored the erotic through manipulating the nude to explore multiple viewpoints, colour experimentation, and the simplification of the figure into geometrical components. In the mid 20th century, realism and surrealism offered new modes of representation of
910-530: A local governor. Eventually he was dealt with by the governor's successor, who presumably executed Gong. Timothy Hugh Barrett postulates that Gong's magical jade block was actually a printing device, and Gong was one of the first, if not the first printer. The semi-mythical record of him therefore describes his usage of the printing process to deliberately bewilder onlookers and create an image of mysticism around himself. However, woodblock print flower patterns applied to silk in three colours have been found dated from
1040-417: A new dimension of cultural reverence. Those who considered themselves real scholars and true connoisseurs of the book did not consider imprints to be real books. Under the elitist attitudes of the time, "printed books were for those who did not truly care about books". However, copyists and manuscripts only continued to remain competitive with printed editions by dramatically reducing their price. According to
1170-452: A single block for a whole page, appeared in Europe in the mid-15th century. As they were almost always undated, and without statement of printer or place of printing, determining their dates of printing has been an extremely difficult task. Allan H. Stevenson , by comparing the watermarks in the paper used in block books with watermarks in dated documents, concluded that the "heyday" of block books
1300-520: A specific date of printing was discovered in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang in 1907 by Aurel Stein . This copy of the Diamond Sutra is 14 feet long and contains a colophon at the inner end, which reads: "Reverently [caused to be] made for universal free distribution by Wang Jie on behalf of his two parents on the 13th of the 4th moon of the 9th year of Xiantong [i.e. 11 May, AD 868 ]". It is considered
1430-415: A structured narrative. A whole variety of possibilities are shown—men seduce women, women seduce men; men and women cheat on each other; all ages from virginal teenagers to old married couples; even octopuses were occasionally featured. While most shunga were heterosexual , many depicted male-on-male trysts. Woman-on-woman images were less common but there are extant works depicting this. Masturbation
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#17328451383771560-469: A tradition with its roots in Chinese shunkyu higa. Shunga was also produced in hand scroll format, called kakemono-e (掛け物絵). This format was also popular, though more expensive as the scrolls had to be individually painted. The quality of shunga art varies, and few ukiyo-e painters remained aloof from the genre. Experienced artists found it to their advantage to concentrate on their production. This led to
1690-657: Is a fragment of a dhāraṇī (Buddhist spell) miniature scroll written in Sanskrit unearthed in a tomb in Xi'an . It is called the Great spell of unsullied pure light ( Wugou jingguang da tuoluoni jing 無垢淨光大陀羅尼經) and was printed using woodblock during the Tang dynasty, c. 650 –670 AD. A similar piece, the Saddharma pundarika sutra, was also discovered and dated to 690 to 699. This coincides with
1820-594: Is a long tradition of erotic art in Eastern cultures. In Japan, for example, shunga appeared in the 13th century and continued to grow in popularity until the late 19th century when photography was invented. In Japan during the Edo period (1600–1869), Shunga, translated to "spring pictures", was a series of sexually explicit paintings created with ink or woodblock works that became printed onto paper scrolls as an introduction to sexual education. Shunga, embraced by individuals as part of
1950-452: Is a technique for printing text, images or patterns used widely throughout East Asia and originating in China in antiquity as a method of printing on textiles and later on paper . Each page or image is created by carving a wooden block to leave only some areas and lines at the original level; it is these that are inked and show in the print, in a relief printing process. Carving the blocks
2080-601: Is considered the most accurate of Buddhist canons written in Classical Chinese as well as a standard edition for East Asian Buddhist scholarship. In the Kamakura period from the 12th century to the 13th century, many books were printed and published by woodblock printing at Buddhist temples in Kyoto and Kamakura . The mass production of woodblock prints in the Edo period was due to
2210-402: Is dependent on context, as perceptions of what is erotic and what is art vary. A sculpture of a phallus in some cultures may be considered a traditional symbol of potency rather than overtly erotic. Material that is produced to illustrate sex education may be perceived by others as inappropriately erotic. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines erotic art as "art that is made with
2340-523: Is skilled and laborious work, but a large number of impressions can then be printed. As a method of printing on cloth , the earliest surviving examples from China date to before 220 AD. Woodblock printing existed in Tang China by the 7th century AD and remained the most common East Asian method of printing books and other texts, as well as images, until the 19th century. Ukiyo-e is the best-known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of
2470-416: Is sustained by male erotic energy. This is why many 'seminal' works of the period are nudes." Artists such as Sylvia Sleigh is an example of this reversal of the male gaze as her work depicts male sitters presented in traditional erotic reclining poses that usually were reserved for the female nude as part of the ' odalisque ' tradition. The rise of feminism , the sexual revolution and conceptual art in
2600-529: Is the collection of twenty-nine Kaempfer Prints ( British Museum , London), brought in 1693 by a German physician from China to Europe, which includes flowers, fruits, birds, insects and ornamental motifs reminiscent of the style of Kangxi ceramics. Equally famous is the compilation Manual of the Mustard Seed Garden , published in two parts between 1679 and 1701. It was initiated by the scholar and landscape painter Wáng Gài and expanded and prefaced by
2730-409: The renmen-tai ( ja ), in which several characters are written in succession with smooth brush strokes. As a result, a single typeface was sometimes created by combining two to four semi-cursive and cursive kanji or hiragana characters. In one book, 2,100 characters were created, but 16% of them were used only once. Despite the appeal of moveable type, however, craftsmen soon decided that
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#17328451383772860-486: The sankin-kōtai system and the merchants' need to travel to obtain and sell goods. It is therefore argued that this ownership of shunga was not superstitious, but libidinous. Records of women obtaining shunga themselves from booklenders show that they were consumers of it. Though not shunga, it was traditional to present a bride with ukiyo-e depicting scenes from the Tale of Genji . Shunga may have served as sexual guidance for
2990-667: The Byzantine Empire . However printing onto cloth only became common in Europe by 1300. "In the 13th century the Chinese technique of blockprinting was transmitted to Europe", soon after paper became available in Europe. From 932 to 955 the Twelve Classics and an assortment of other texts were printed. During the Song dynasty , the Directorate of education and other agencies used these block print disseminate their standardized versions of
3120-664: The Classics . Other disseminated works include the Histories , philosophical works, encyclopedias, collections, and books on medicine and the art of war. In 971 work began on the complete Tripiṭaka Buddhist Canon ( Kaibao zangshu 開寶藏書) in Chengdu . It took 10 years to finish the 130,000 blocks needed to print the text. The finished product, the Sichuan edition of the Kaibao Canon , also known as
3250-474: The Edo period , despite being out of favor with the shogunate . The ukiyo-e movement sought to idealize contemporary urban living and appeal to the new chōnin class. Shunga followed the aesthetics of everyday life and widely varied in its depictions of sexuality. Most ukiyo-e artists made shunga at some point in their careers. Shunga was heavily influenced by illustrations in Chinese medicine manuals beginning in
3380-554: The English cottager cannot buy anything like the amount of printed matter for his penny that the Chinaman can for even less. A penny Prayer-book, admittedly sold at a loss, cannot compete in mass of matter with many of the books to be bought for a few cash in China. When it is considered, too, that a block has been laboriously cut for each leaf, the cheapness of the result is only accounted for by
3510-612: The Han dynasty (before AD 220). Inscribed seals made of metal or stone, especially jade, and inscribed stone tablets probably provided inspiration for the invention of printing. Copies of classical texts on tablets were erected in a public place in Luoyang during the Han dynasty for scholars and students to copy. The Suishu jingjizhi , the blibography of the official history of the Sui dynasty , includes several ink-squeeze rubbings, believed to have led to
3640-583: The Kaibao Tripitaka , was printed in 983. Prior to the introduction of printing, the size of private collections in China had already seen an increase since the invention of paper. Fan Ping (215–84) had in his collection 7,000 rolls ( juan ), or a few hundred titles. Two centuries later, Zhang Mian owned 10,000 juan , Shen Yue (441–513) 20,000 juan , and Xiao Tong and his cousin Xiao Mai both had collections of 30,000 juan . Emperor Yuan of Liang (508–555)
3770-451: The Ming dynasty author Hu Yinglin , "if no printed edition were available on the market, the hand-copied manuscript of a book would cost ten times as much as the printed work", and also, "once a printed edition appeared, the transcribed copy could no longer be sold and would be discarded". The result is that despite the mutual co-existence of hand-copied manuscripts and printed texts, the cost of
3900-559: The Mongol invasion of 1232. King Gojong ordered another set to be created and work began in 1237, this time only taking 12 years to complete. In 1248 the complete Goryeo Daejanggyeong numbered 81,258 printing blocks, 52,330,152 characters, 1496 titles, and 6568 volumes. Due to the stringent editing process that went into the Goryeo Daejanggyeong and its surprisingly enduring nature, having survived completely intact over 760 years, it
4030-517: The Muromachi era (1336 to 1573). Zhou Fang , a notable Tang-dynasty Chinese painter, is also thought to have been influential. He, like many artists of his time, tended to draw genital organs in an oversized manner, similar to a common shunga topos . Besides " shunga " literally meaning a picture of spring (sex), the word is also a contraction of shunkyū-higi-ga (春宮秘戯画), the Japanese pronunciation for
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4160-838: The Northern Song dynasty around the year 1041 by the commoner Bi Sheng . Metal movable type also appeared in the Southern Song dynasty . The earliest extant book printed using movable type is the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union , printed in Western Xia c. 1139–1193. Metal movable type was used in the Song, Jin , and Yuan dynasties for printing banknotes. The invention of movable type did not have an immediate effect on woodblock printing and it never supplanted it in East Asia . Only during
4290-561: The Shōwa (1926–1989) and Heisei (1989–2019) art in Japanese video games , anime and manga known in the Western world as hentai and known formally in Japan as jū hachi kin (adult-only, literally "18-restricted"). Like shunga, hentai is sexually explicit in its imagery. Shunga was probably enjoyed by both men and women of all classes. Superstitions and customs surrounding shunga suggest as much; in
4420-635: The Sumerian Early Dynastic Period frequently shows scenes of frontal sex in the missionary position . In Mesopotamian votive plaques from the early second millennium BC, the man is usually shown entering the woman from behind while she bends over, drinking beer through a straw. Middle Assyrian lead votive figurines often represent the man standing and penetrating the woman as she rests on top of an altar. Scholars have traditionally interpreted all these depictions as scenes of ritual sex , but they are more likely to be associated with
4550-581: The Wakashū age range were considered erotically attractive and often performed the female parts in kabuki productions. Many of them worked as gigolos . These carried the same fetish of the sex worker, with the added quality of often being quite young. They are often depicted with samurai, since wakashū and older samurai often formed couples with the elder acting as a mentor for the younger. Both painted handscrolls and illustrated erotic books (empon) often presented an unrelated sequence of sexual tableaux, rather than
4680-456: The kamigata region preferred a more muted, understated style. This also translates into a greater amount of background detail in Edo Shunga. After 1722 most artists refrained from signing shunga works. However, between 1761 and 1786 the implementation of printing regulations became more relaxed, and many artists took to concealing their name as a feature of the picture (such as calligraphy on
4810-496: The 11th century, central government offices were saving tenfold by substituting earlier manuscripts with printed versions. The impact of woodblock printing on Song society is illustrated in the following exchange between Emperor Zhenzong and Xing Bing in the year 1005: The emperor went to the Directorate of Education to inspect the Publications Office. He asked Xing Bing how many woodblocks were kept there. Bing replied, "At
4940-598: The 20th century still underpin much of the prevailing erotic art and artistic intent. Whether or not an instance of erotic art is obscene depends on the standards of the jurisdiction and community in which it is displayed. In the United States, the 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in Miller v. California established a three-tiered test to determine what was obscene—and thus not protected, versus what
5070-488: The 39 year old Su Shi remarked upon the unforeseen effect an abundance of books had on examination candidates: I can recall meeting older scholars, long ago, who said that when they were young they had a hard time getting their hands on a copy of Shiji or Han shu . If they were lucky enough to get one, they thought nothing of copying the entire text out by hand, so they could recite it day and night. In recent years merchants engrave and print all manner of books belonging to
5200-487: The Ming and Qing dynasties did wooden and metal movable types see any considerable use, but the preferred method remained woodblock. Usage of movable type in China never exceeded 10 percent of all printed materials while 90 percent of printed books used the older woodblock technology. In one case an entire set of wooden type numbering 250,000 pieces was used for firewood. Woodblocks remained the dominant printing method in China until
5330-548: The Shinto religion, focused on liberating the innate sexual beings that are within all humans, including women and homosexual sexuality. Couples engaging in sexual acts were shown laughing and enjoying the sexual encounter with their partner; this focused on the positivity of sex. Around 1700, shunga was met with opposition and banned in Japan, but the circulation of this prominent Erotic Art continued. Shunga could be found in local libraries and homes of many Japanese citizens. Similarly,
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5460-650: The Warren Cup, a Greco-Roman drinking cup which features scenes of anal sex between males. Many of Warren's eclectic pieces collected over the years are in the Boston Museum of Fine Art. Caliph Al-Walid II , who ruled the Umayyad Caliphate in the 8th century, was a great patron of erotic art. Among the depictions of the Qusayr Amra , which were built by him, is the abundance of naked females and love scenes. There
5590-464: The appearance of shunga by renowned artists, such as the ukiyo-e painter perhaps best known in the Western world, Hokusai (see The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife from the series Kinoe no Komatsu ). Ukiyo-e artists owed a stable livelihood to such customs, and producing a piece of shunga for a high-ranking client could bring them sufficient funds to live on for about six months. Among others,
5720-543: The applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. As this is still much vaguer than other judicial tests within U.S. jurisprudence, it has not reduced the conflicts that often result, especially from the ambiguities concerning what the "contemporary community standards" are. Similar difficulties in distinguishing between erotica and obscenity have been found in other legal systems. Woodblock printing Woodblock printing or block printing
5850-401: The art critic Li Yu and the landscape painter Wáng Niè. It was noted for the quality of its polychrome and drawings, which influenced Qing painting. In 989 Seongjong of Goryeo sent the monk Yeoga to request from the Song a copy of the complete Buddhist canon. The request was granted in 991 when Seongjong's official Han Eongong visited the Song court. In 1011, Hyeonjong of Goryeo issued
5980-450: The authorities for offending contemporary mores with his depictions of nude girls. By the 20th century, photography became the most common medium for erotic art. Publishers like Taschen mass-produced erotic illustrations and erotic photography . Many erotic artists worked in the 2010s. Much of the genre is still not as well accepted as the more standard genres of art such as portraiture and landscape. Erotic depictions in art went through
6110-468: The background. Symbolism also featured widely, such as the use of plum blossoms to represent virginity or tissues to symbolise impending ejaculation . In many of the shunga the characters are fully clothed. This is primarily because nudity was not inherently erotic in Tokugawa Japan – people were used to seeing the opposite sex naked in communal baths. It also served an artistic purpose; it helped
6240-459: The blurred boundaries between pornography and art. Artists such as Carolee Schneemann , and Hannah Wilke were using these new mediums to interrogate the constructs of gender roles and sexuality. Wilke's photographs, for instance, satirised the mass objectification of the female body in pornography and advertising. Performance art since the 1960s has flourished and is considered as a direct response and challenge to traditional types of media and
6370-606: The book had declined by about 90 percent by the end of the 16th century. As a result, literacy increased. In 1488, the Korean Choe Bu observed during his trip to China that "even village children, ferrymen, and sailors" could read, although this applied mainly to the south, while northern China remained largely illiterate. In modern times, Chinese printing continued the tradition begun in medieval times. Black-and-white woodcuts were generally replaced by colored ones, achieved by printing successive runs with different inks. Between
6500-519: The carving of their own set of the Buddhist canon, which would come to be known as the Goryeo Daejanggyeong . The project was suspended in 1031 after Heyongjong's death, but work resumed again in 1046 after Munjong 's accession to the throne. The completed work, amounting to some 6,000 volumes, was finished in 1087. Unfortunately the original set of woodblocks was destroyed in a conflagration during
6630-412: The celebrities of their day, and Edo's pleasure district, Yoshiwara , is often compared to Hollywood. Men saw them as highly eroticised due to their profession, but at the same time unattainable, since only the wealthiest, most cultured men would have any chance of sexual relations with one. Women saw them as distant, glamorous idols, and the fashions for the whole of Japan were inspired by the fashions of
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#17328451383776760-544: The characters tended to be limited to courtiers and monks . The style reached its height in the Edo period (1603 to 1867). Thanks to woodblock printing techniques, the quantity and quality increased dramatically. There were repeated governmental attempts to suppress shunga, the first of which was an edict issued by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1661 banning, among other things, erotic books known as kōshokubon ( 好色本 ) (literally "lewdness books"). While other genres covered by
6890-498: The common people and were mass-produced. ukiyo-e is based on kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, beautiful women, landscapes of sightseeing spots, historical tales, and so on, and Hokusai and Hiroshige are the most famous artists. In the 18th century, Suzuki Harunobu established the technique of multicolor woodblock printing called nishiki-e and greatly developed Japanese woodblock printing culture such as ukiyo-e . Ukiyo-e influenced European Japonisme and Impressionism . In
7020-409: The common stereotype that this art was pornographic by offering an alternative view of oneself. Her works paved the way for women to openly express sexual desires. Painting nude male subjects were uncommon in the 1970s; her Art turned the tables and allowed for women to be at the forefront of this fem expression revolution that occurred in the 70s. The acceptance and popularity of erotic art has pushed
7150-516: The courtesan. For these reasons, the fetish of the courtesan appealed to many. Works depicting courtesans have since been criticised for painting an idealised picture of life in the pleasure quarters. It has been argued that they masked the situation of virtual slavery under which sex workers lived. However, Utamaro is just one example of an artist who was sensitive to the inner life of the courtesan, for example showing them wistfully dreaming of escape from Yoshiwara through marriage. Similarly, boys of
7280-501: The creation of artistic books, and in preceding mass production for general consumption, were Honami Kōetsu and Suminokura Soan. At their studio in Saga, Kyoto, the pair created a number of woodblock versions of the Japanese classics, both text and images, essentially converting emaki (handscrolls) to printed books, and reproducing them for wider consumption. These books, now known as Kōetsu Books, Suminokura Books, or Saga Books, are considered
7410-409: The cult of Inanna , the goddess of sex and prostitution. Many sexually explicit images were found in the temple of Inanna at Assur , which also contained models of male and female sexual organs, including stone phalli , which may have been worn around the neck as an amulet or used to decorate cult statues , and clay models of the female vulva . Depictions of sexual intercourse were not part of
7540-561: The distinction was intuitive, saying about hard-core pornography which would not be legally protected as erotic art, "I know it when I see it". Others, including philosophers Matthew Kieran and Hans Maes, have argued that no strict distinction can be made between erotic art and pornography. Among the oldest surviving examples of erotic depictions are Paleolithic cave paintings and carvings, but many cultures have created erotic art. Artifacts have been discovered from ancient Mesopotamia depicting explicit heterosexual sex. Glyptic art from
7670-430: The earliest known works of art include erotic themes, which have recurred with varying prominence in different societies throughout history. However, it has also been widely considered taboo, with either social norms or laws restricting its creation, distribution, and possession. This is particularly the case when it is deemed pornographic , immoral , or obscene . The definition of erotic art can be subjective because it
7800-653: The early 20th century, shin-hanga that fused the tradition of ukiyo-e with the techniques of Western paintings became popular, and the works of Hasui Kawase and Hiroshi Yoshida gained international popularity. A few specimen of wood block printing, possibly called tarsh in Arabic , have been excavated from a 10th-century context in Arabic Egypt . They were mostly used for prayers and amulets. The technique may have spread from China or been an independent invention, but had very little impact and virtually disappeared at
7930-580: The early duplication of texts that inspired printing. A stone inscription cut in reverse dating from the first half of the 6th century implies that it may have been a large printing block. The rise of printing was greatly influenced by Mahayana Buddhism . According to Mahayana beliefs, religious texts hold intrinsic value for carrying the Buddha's word and act as talismanic objects containing sacred power capable of warding off evil spirits. By copying and preserving these texts, Buddhists could accrue personal merit. As
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#17328451383778060-591: The edict, such as works criticising daimyōs or samurai , were driven underground by this edict, shunga continued to be produced with little difficulty. The Kyōhō Reforms , a 1722 edict, were much more strict, banning the production of all new books unless the city commissioner gave permission. After this edict, shunga went underground. However, since for several decades following this edict, publishing guilds saw fit to send their members repeated reminders not to sell erotica , it seems probable that production and sales continued to flourish. Further attempts to prevent
8190-408: The end of the 14th century. In India the main importance of the technique has always been as a method of printing textiles, which has been a large industry since at least the 10th century. Nowadays wooden block printing is commonly used for creating beautiful textiles, such as block print saree, kurta, curtains, kurtis, dress, shirts, cotton sarees. Block books, where both text and images are cut on
8320-561: The end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th century, three—and five—color prints appeared. The oldest surviving print is the Ten Bamboo Studio Manual of Calligraphy and Paintings (1644) by Hu Zhengyan , of which there are several copies in various museums and collections. It is still commonly reproduced in China today and its images are very popular: it includes landscapes, flowers, animals, reproductions of jades, bronzes, porcelain and other objects. Another outstanding series
8450-594: The end of the empire it remained cheaper to pay a copyist than to buy a printed book. Seven hundred and fifty years after the first imperially sponsored printed works in the Northern Song, the greatest book project of the eighteenth century, the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (四庫全書), was produced as a manuscript, not as a printed collection. About 4 percent of it was printed in movable type in 1773, but it
8580-505: The engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin ( Conquests of the Emperor of China , 1767–1773). The emperor himself commissioned the Jesuits to instruct Chinese artisans in the intaglio technique, but they did not obtain good results. Already in the 19th century, the growing xenophobia against Europeans was progressively relegating the use of engraving in China. In the 20th century, the genre was revived by
8710-601: The era of Later Silla . The document is printed on a 8 cm × 630 cm (3.1 in × 248.0 in) mulberry paper scroll. A dhāraṇī sutra was printed in Japan around AD 770. One million copies of the sutra, along with other prayers, were ordered to be produced by Empress Shōtoku . As each copy was then stored in a tiny wooden pagoda, the copies are together known as the Hyakumantō Darani (百万塔陀羅尼, "1,000,000 towers/pagodas Darani"). Woodblock printing spread across Eurasia by 1000 AD and could be found in
8840-559: The erotic art of China (known as Chungongtu ) reached its popular peak during the latter part of the Ming dynasty . In India, the famous Kama Sutra is an ancient sex manual that is still popularly read throughout the world. In Europe, starting with the Renaissance , there was a tradition of producing erotica for the amusement of the aristocracy. I Modi was an erotic book with engravings of sexual scenes by Marcantonio Raimondi that were based on designs by Giulio Romano . I Modi
8970-447: The expense of producing more than 200,000 individual pieces of type. Even woodblock printing was not as cost productive as simply paying a copyist to write out a book by hand if there was no intention of producing more than a few copies. Although Sejong the Great introduced Hangeul, an alphabetic system, in the 15th century, Hangeul only replaced Hanja in the 20th century. And unlike China,
9100-443: The female subject. The questioning and interrogation of the overarching male gaze within the historical art narrative, manifested in both critical writing and artistic practice, came to define much of the mid to late 20th century art and erotic art. American Art Historian Carol Duncan summarises the male gaze and its relationship to erotic art, writing "More than any other theme, the nude could demonstrate that art originates in and
9230-581: The first and finest printed reproductions of many of these classic tales; the Saga Book of the Tales of Ise ( Ise monogatari ), printed in 1608, is especially renowned. Saga Books were printed on expensive paper, and used various embellishments, being printed specifically for a small circle of literary connoisseurs. For aesthetic reasons, the typeface of the Saga-bon , like that of traditional handwritten books, adopted
9360-713: The form of a leishu (類書), a type of encyclopedic reference book used to help examination candidates. Imperial establishments such as the Three Institutes: Zhaowen Institute, History Institute, and Jixian Institute also followed suit. At the start of the dynasty the Three Institutes' holdings numbered 13,000 juan , by the year 1023 39,142 juan , by 1068 47,588 juan , and by 1127 73,877 juan . The Three Institutes were one of several imperial libraries, with eight other major palace libraries, not including imperial academies. According to Weng Tongwen, by
9490-632: The furniture and the walls were covered in erotic art. The rooms and the furniture were seen in 1941 by two Wehrmacht-officers but they seem to have vanished since then. A documentary by Peter Woditsch suggests that the cabinet was in the Peterhof Palace and not in Gatchina. The tradition was continued by other, more modern painters, such as Fragonard , Courbet , Millet , Balthus , Picasso , Edgar Degas , Toulouse-Lautrec and Egon Schiele . Schiele served time in jail and had several works destroyed by
9620-510: The general repertory of ancient Egyptian formal art, but rudimentary sketches of heterosexual intercourse have been found on pottery fragments and in graffiti. The Turin Erotic Papyrus (Papyrus 55001) is an 8.5 feet (2.6 m) by 10 inches (25 cm) Egyptian papyrus scroll discovered at Deir el-Medina , the last two-thirds of which consist of a series of twelve vignettes showing men and women in various sexual positions . The men in
9750-577: The genitalia are interpreted as a "second face", expressing the primal passions that the everyday face is obligated by giri to conceal, and are therefore the same size as the head and placed unnaturally close to it by the awkward positioning. Erotic art Erotic art is a broad field of the visual arts that includes any artistic work intended to evoke arousal . It usually depicts human nudity or sexual activity , and has included works in various visual mediums, including drawings, engravings, films, paintings, photographs, and sculptures. Some of
9880-410: The genre into mainstream pop-culture and has created many famous icons. Frank Frazetta , Luis Royo , Boris Vallejo , Chris Achilleos , and Clyde Caldwell are among the artists whose work has been widely distributed. The Guild of Erotic Artists was formed in 2002 to bring together a body of like-minded individuals whose sole purpose was to express themselves and promote the sensual art of erotica for
10010-477: The half-literate, [...] which anyway had to be very brief because of the laborious process of cutting the letters". John Man's The Gutenberg Revolution makes a similar case: "wood-blocks were even more demanding than manuscript pages to make, and they wore out and broke, and then you had to carve another one – a whole page at a time". Commentaries on printing in China from the 1990s on, which cite contemporary European observers with first-hand knowledge, complicate
10140-644: The high literacy rate of Japanese people. The literacy rate of the Japanese by 1800 was almost 100% for the samurai class and 50% to 60% for the chōnin and nōmin (farmer) class due to the spread of private schools terakoya . There were more than 600 rental bookstores in Edo , and people lent woodblock-printed illustrated books of various genres. The content of these books varied widely, including travel guides, gardening books, cookbooks, kibyōshi (satirical novels), sharebon (books on urban culture), kokkeibon (comical books), ninjōbon (romance novel), yomihon , kusazōshi , art books, play scripts for
10270-504: The human figure in Britain, with naked self-portraits of himself and his second wife in erotic settings This is explicitly evident in his work Double nude portrait, 1937. The naked portrait was arguably becoming a category of erotic art that was dominating the 20th century, just as the academic nude had dominated the 19th century. Critical writings on the 'nude' and in particular the female 'nude', meant fundamental shifts in how depictions of
10400-429: The hundred schools, and produce ten thousand pages a day. With books so readily available, you would think that students' writing and scholarship would be many times better than what they were in earlier generations. Yet, to the contrary, young men and examination candidates leave their books tied shut and never look at them, preferring to amuse themselves with baseless chatter. Why is this? Woodblock printing also changed
10530-476: The illustrations are "scruffy, balding, short, and paunchy" with exaggeratedly large genitalia and do not conform to Egyptian standards of physical attractiveness . The women are nubile , and they are shown with objects from traditional erotic iconography , such as convolvulus leaves. In some scenes, they hold items traditionally associated with Hathor , the goddess of love, such as lotus flowers , monkeys, and sacred instruments called sistra . The scroll
10660-467: The importance of the sexual revolution upon art. The 1960s and 1970s were a time of social and political change across the United States and Europe. Movements included the fight for equality for women with a focus on sexuality, reproductive rights, the family, and the workplace. Artists and historians began to investigate how images in Western art and the media, were often produced within a male narrative and particularly how it perpetuated idealisations of
10790-647: The industry began to decline, with stereotyped images. This coincided with the arrival of European missionaries who introduced Western engraving techniques. The Jesuit Matteo Ripa edited in 1714–1715 a series of poems by Emperor Kangxi, which he illustrated with landscapes of the imperial summer residence at Jehol . During the reign of Emperor Qianlong the one hundred and four maps of the Chinese Empire made by Jesuit missionaries were printed, as well as illustrations of his military victories, which he commissioned in Paris from
10920-596: The intention to stimulate its target audience sexually, and that succeeds to some extent in doing so". A distinction is often made between erotic art and pornography , which also depicts scenes of sexual activity and is intended to evoke erotic arousal. Pornography is not usually considered fine art . People may draw a distinction based on the work's intent and message: erotic art would be works intended for purposes in addition to arousal, which could be appreciated as art by someone uninterested in their erotic content. US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote in 1964 that
11050-481: The introduction of lithography in the late 19th century. Traditionally it has been assumed that the prevalence of woodblock printing in East Asia as a result of Chinese characters led to the stagnation of printing culture and enterprise in that region. S. H. Steinberg describes woodblock printing in his Five Hundred Years of Printing as having "outlived their usefulness" and their printed material as "cheap tracts for
11180-405: The introduction of the mechanical printing press in the mid fifteenth century. Reliable figures of the number of imprints of each edition are as hard to find in Europe as they are in China, but one result of the spread of printing in Europe was that public and private libraries were able to build up their collections and for the first time in over a thousand years they began to match and then overtake
11310-416: The kabuki and jōruri (puppet) theatre, etc. The best-selling books of this period were Kōshoku Ichidai Otoko (Life of an Amorous Man) by Ihara Saikaku , Nansō Satomi Hakkenden by Takizawa Bakin , and Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige by Jippensha Ikku , and these books were reprinted many times. From the 17th century to the 19th century, ukiyo-e depicting secular subjects became very popular among
11440-519: The largest libraries in China. During the 16th and 17th centuries, printmaking enjoyed great popularity, especially in the illustration of books such as Buddhist texts, poems, novels, biographies, medical treatises, music, etc. The major center of production was initially in Kien-ngan ( Fujian ) and, from the 17th century, in Sin-ngan ( Anhui ) and Nanjing ( Jiangsu ). On the other hand, in the 18th century,
11570-501: The lending libraries, or kashi-honya , that travelled in rural areas. This tells us that shunga reached all classes of society—peasant, chōnin , samurai and daimyōs . Shunga were produced between the sixteenth century and the nineteenth century by ukiyo-e artists, since they sold more easily and at a higher price than their ordinary work. Shunga prints were produced and sold either as single sheets or—more frequently—in book form, called enpon . These customarily contained twelve images,
11700-518: The mid 20th century meant that the interaction between the image and audience, and the artist and audience, were beginning to be questioned and redefined, opening up new possible areas of practice. Artists began to use their own nude bodies and began to depict an alternative narrative of the erotic, through new lenses. New media was beginning to be used to portray the nude and the erotic, with performance and photography being used by women artists, to draw attention to issues of gender power relations and
11830-531: The modern age. Between 2010 and 2015 sexologist and gallerist Laura Henkel, curator of the Erotic Heritage Museum and the Sin City Gallery, organised 12 Inches of Sin, an exhibition focussing on art that expresses a diverse view of sexuality and challenging ideas of high and low art. The erotic continues to be explored and employed in new types of art work today and the profound developments of
11960-471: The movable type system was kept mainly within the confines of a highly stratified elite Korean society: Korean printing with movable metallic type developed mainly within the royal foundry of the Yi dynasty. Royalty kept a monopoly of this new technique and by royal mandate suppressed all non-official printing activities and any budding attempts at commercialization of printing. Thus, printing in early Korea served only
12090-417: The nude and the portrayal of sexuality were being considered. Seminal texts such as British Art historian Kenneth Clark 's The nude: a study of ideal art in 1956 and Art Critic John Berger in 1972 in his book Ways of Seeing, were re-examining the notion of the naked and the nude within art. This period in art was defined by an acute engagement with the political. It marked a historical moment that stressed
12220-550: The nude. For surrealist artists, the erotic became a way of exploring ideas of fantasy, the unconscious and the dream state. Artist's such as Paul Delvaux , Giorgio de Chirico and Max Ernst are well-known surrealist artist's that dealt with the erotic directly. In the aftermath of the First World War , a shift away from abstracted human figures of the 1920s and 1930s towards realism took place. Artists such as British Artist Stanley Spencer led this re-appropriated approach to
12350-590: The number of all the preceding centuries combined. Private libraries of 10–20,000 juan became commonplace while six individuals owned collections of over 30,000 juan . The earliest extant private Song library catalogue lists 1,937 titles in 24,501 juan . Zhou Mi's collection numbered 42,000 juan , Chen Zhensun's collection lists 3,096 titles in 51,180 juan , and Ye Mengde (1077–1148) as well as one other individual owned libraries of 6,000 titles in 100,000 juan . The majority of which were secular in nature. Texts contained material such as medicinal instruction or came in
12480-400: The ordinary people, the chōnin , the townsmen, women, merchant class, artisans and farmers. Occasionally there also appear Dutch or Portuguese foreigners. Courtesans also form the subject of many shunga. Utamaro was particularly revered for his depictions of courtesans, which offered an unmatched level of sensitivity and psychological nuance. Tokugawa courtesans could be described as
12610-621: The present. The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type is the Jikji of 1377. This form of metal movable type was described by the French scholar Henri-Jean Martin as "extremely similar to Gutenberg's". Movable type never replaced woodblock printing in Korea. Indeed, even the promulgation of Hangeul was done through woodblock prints. The general assumption is that movable type did not replace block printing in places that used Chinese characters due to
12740-582: The prevailing wood-based technology extremely disturbing, even dangerous". Matteo Ricci made note of "the exceedingly large numbers of books in circulation here and the ridiculously low prices at which they are sold". Two hundred years later the Englishman John Barrow, by way of the Macartney mission to Qing China, also remarked with some amazement that the printing industry was "as free as in England, and
12870-427: The production of prints of limited colours. Even after 1765 many shunga prints were produced using older methods. In some cases this was to keep the cost low, but in many cases this was a matter of taste. Shunga produced in Edo tended to be more richly coloured than those produced in Kyoto and Osaka , mainly owing to a difference in aesthetic taste between these regions—Edo has a taste for novelty and luxury, while
13000-561: The production of shunga were made with the Kansei Reforms under Emperor Kōkaku in the 1790s. According to Monta Hayakawa and C. Andrew Gerstle, westerners during the nineteenth century were less appreciative of shunga because of its erotic nature. In the journal of Francis Hall , an American businessperson who arrived in Yokohama in 1859, he described shunga as "vile pictures executed in the best style Japanese art." Hayakawa stated that Hall
13130-477: The profession of printing open to everyone". The commercial success and profitability of woodblock printing was attested to by one British observer at the end of the nineteenth century, who noted that even before the arrival of western printing methods, the price of books and printed materials in China had already reached an astoundingly low price compared to what could be found in his home country. Of this, he said: We have an extensive penny literature at home, but
13260-662: The public" and had not been catalogued. In 2014 he revisited the museum, which had an exhibition entirely of shunga "proudly displayed". The introduction of Western culture and technologies at the beginning of the Meiji era (1868–1912), particularly the importation of photo-reproduction techniques, had serious consequences for shunga. For a time, woodblock printing continued to be used, but figures began to appear in prints wearing Western clothing and hairstyles. Eventually, shunga could no longer compete with erotic photography, leading to its decline. The art of shunga provided an inspiration for
13390-405: The reader identify courtesans and foreigners, the prints often contained symbolic meaning, and it drew attention to the parts of the body that were revealed, i.e., the genitalia. Shunga couples are often shown in nonrealistic positions with exaggerated genitalia. Explanations for this include increased visibility of the sexually explicit content, artistic interest and psychological impact: that is,
13520-572: The reign of Wu Zetian , under which the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra , which advocates the practice of printing apotropaic and merit making texts and images, was translated by Chinese monks. The oldest extant evidence of woodblock prints created for the purpose of reading are portions of the Lotus Sutra discovered at Turpan in 1906. They have been dated to the reign of Wu Zetian using character form recognition. The oldest text containing
13650-817: The same time as the printing press from Europe. An edition of the Confucian Analects was printed in 1598, using a Korean moveable type printing press, at the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei . Tokugawa Ieyasu established a printing school at Enko-ji in Kyoto and started publishing books using domestic wooden movable type printing-press instead of metal from 1599. Ieyasu supervised the production of 100,000 types, which were used to print many political and historical books. In 1605, books using domestic copper movable type printing-press began to be published, but copper type did not become mainstream after Ieyasu died in 1616. The great pioneers in applying movable type printing press to
13780-421: The same way that it was considered a lucky charm against death for a samurai to carry shunga, it was considered a protection against fire in merchant warehouses and the home. From this we can deduce that samurai, chonin, and housewives all owned shunga. All three of these groups would suffer separation from the opposite sex; the samurai lived in barracks for months at a time, and conjugal separation resulted from
13910-498: The semi-cursive and cursive script style of Japanese writings was better reproduced using woodblocks. By 1640 woodblocks were once again used for nearly all purposes. After the 1640s, movable type printing declined, and books were mass-produced by conventional woodblock printing during most of the Edo period . It was after the 1870s, during the Meiji period , when Japan opened the country to the West and began to modernize, that this technique
14040-426: The shape and structure of books. Scrolls were gradually replaced by concertina binding (經摺裝) from the Tang period onward. The advantage was that it was now possible to flip to a reference without unfolding the entire document. The next development known as whirlwind binding ( xuanfeng zhuang 旋風裝) was to secure the first and last leaves to a single large sheet, so that the book could be opened like an accordion. Around
14170-458: The small, noble groups of the highly stratified society. Western style movable type printing-press was brought to Japan by Tenshō embassy in 1590, and was first printed in Kazusa, Nagasaki in 1591. However, western printing-press were discontinued after the ban on Christianity in 1614. The moveable type printing-press seized from Korea by Toyotomi Hideyoshi 's forces in 1593 was also in use at
14300-529: The sons and daughters of wealthy families. The instructional purpose has been questioned since the instructional value of shunga is limited by the impossible positions and lack of description of technique, and there were sexual manuals in circulation that offered clearer guidance, including advice on hygiene. Shunga varied greatly in quality and price. Some were highly elaborate, commissioned by wealthy merchants and daimyōs , while some were limited in colour, widely available, and cheap. Empon were available through
14430-600: The start of our dynasty, there were fewer than four thousand. Today, there are more than one hundred thousand. The classics and histories, together with standard commentaries, are all fully represented. When I was young and devoted myself to learning, there were only one or two scholars in every hundred who possessed copies of all the classics and commentaries. There was no way to copy so many works. Today, printed editions of these works are abundant, and officials and commoners alike have them in their homes. Scholars are fortunate indeed to have been born in such an era as ours! In 1076,
14560-436: The subject of many famous Erotic Art pieces which catered to men. Edelheit was criticized for being a female artist who created erotic artwork during a time where men were main contributors in this art. Edelheit was a pioneer in the feminist art movement because she was a woman who created erotic art and also depicted herself in many of her works, which paved the way for women's equality in sexual expression. Edelheit confronted
14690-551: The technique for printing images on paper are covered by the art term woodcut , except for the block books produced mainly in the 15th century. According to the Book of Southern Qi , in the 480s, a man named Gong Xuanyi (龔玄宜) styled himself Gong the Sage and "said that a supernatural being had given him a 'jade seal jade block writing,' which did not require a brush: one blew on the paper and characters formed." He then used his powers to mystify
14820-474: The traditional narrative. T. H. Barrett points out that only Europeans who had never seen Chinese woodblock printing in action tended to dismiss it, perhaps due to the almost instantaneous arrival of both xylography and movable type in Europe. The early Jesuit missionaries of late-16th-century China, for instance, had a similar distaste for wood-based printing for very different reasons. These Jesuits found that "the cheapness and omnipresence of printing in China made
14950-425: The very end of Imperial China: As a result of block-printing technology, it became easier and cheaper to produce multiple copies of books quickly. By the eleventh century, the price of books had fallen by about one tenth what they had been before and as a result they were more widely disseminated. Nevertheless, even in the fifteenth century most books in major libraries were still in manuscript, not in print. Almost to
15080-580: The walls of ruined Roman buildings in Pompeii . The Moche of Peru are another ancient people who sculpted explicit scenes of sex into their pottery. There is an entire gallery devoted to pre-Columbian erotic ceramics ( Moche culture ) in Lima at the Larco Museum . Edward Perry Warren adapted a love for Greek Art during college and collected Greek erotic art pieces that often represented gay sexual relationships, such as
15210-411: The wideness of sale. Other modern scholars such as Endymion Wilkinson hold a more conservative and skeptical view. While Wilkinson does not deny "China's dominance in book production from the fourth to the fifteenth century," he also insists that arguments for the Chinese advantage "should not be extended either forwards or backwards in time." European book production began to catch up with China after
15340-510: The world's oldest securely dated woodblock scroll. The Diamond sutra was closely followed by the earliest extant printed almanac, the Qianfu sinian lishu (乾符四年曆書), dated to 877. Evidence of woodblock printing appeared in Korea and Japan soon afterward. The Great Dharani Sutra ( Korean : 무구정광대다라니경/無垢淨光大陀羅尼經 , romanized : Muggujeonggwang Dadharanigyeong ) was discovered at Bulguksa , South Korea in 1966 and dated between 704 and 751 in
15470-458: The world-famous Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama uses his special hand brush painting technique and hanko stamp signature method in the late 20th and early 21st centuries to create modern day shunga art in the same tradition of the past artists like Hokusai. Full-colour printing, or nishiki-e , developed around 1765, but many shunga prints predate this. Prior to this, colour was added to monochrome prints by hand, and from 1744 benizuri-e allowed
15600-620: The writer Lou Siun, who founded a woodcut school in Shanghai in 1930. Influenced by contemporary Russian engraving, this school dealt especially with popular, agricultural and military subjects for propaganda purposes, as is evident in the work of P'an Jeng and Huang Yong-yu. In 1234, cast metal movable type was used in Goryeo (Korea) to print the 50-volume Prescribed Texts for Rites of the Past and Present , compiled by Ch'oe Yun-ŭi , but no copies survived to
15730-435: The year 1000, butterfly binding was developed. Woodblock prints allowed two mirror images to be easily replicated on a single sheet. Thus two pages were printed on a sheet, which was then folded inwards. The sheets were then pasted together at the fold to make a codex with alternate openings of printed and blank pairs of pages. In the 14th century the folding was reversed outwards to give continuous printed pages, each backed by
15860-418: Was also depicted. The perception of sexuality differed in Tokugawa Japan from that in the modern Western world , and people were less likely to associate with one particular sexual preference. For this reason the many sexual pairings depicted were a matter of providing as much variety as possible. The backstory to shunga prints can be found in accompanying text or dialogue in the picture itself, and in props in
15990-477: Was associated with the dematerialization of the artwork or object. As performance that dealt with the erotic flourished in the 1980s and 1990s both male and female artists were exploring new strategies of representation of the erotic. Martha Edelheit was a female artist known for her contributions to erotic art as a rebellious stance against typical gender roles, which excluded women artists from participating in free sexual expression. This limited women to often be
16120-410: Was hand-carved movable wooden type. Indeed, the entire collection was only printed for the first time in the 1980s. Access to books, especially large works, such as the Histories , remained difficult right into the twentieth century. Not only did manuscripts remain competitive with imprints, they were even preferred by elite scholars and collectors. The age of printing gave the act of copying by hand
16250-515: Was merely erotic and thus protected by the First Amendment . Delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote, The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether 'the average person, applying contemporary community standards' would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by
16380-458: Was probably painted in the Ramesside period (1292–1075 BC) and its high artistic quality indicates that was produced for a wealthy audience. No other similar scrolls have been discovered. The ancient Greeks painted sexual scenes on their ceramics, many of them famous for being some of the earliest depictions of same-sex relations and pederasty , and there are many sexually explicit paintings on
16510-464: Was said to have had a collection of 80,000 juan . The combined total of all known private book collectors prior to the Song dynasty number around 200, with the Tang alone accounting for 60 of them. Following the maturation of woodblock printing, official, commercial, and private publishing businesses emerged while the size and number of collections grew exponentially. The Song dynasty alone accounts for some 700 known private collections, more than triple
16640-507: Was shocked and disgusted when on two occasions his Japanese acquaintances and their wives showed him shunga at their homes. Shunga also faced problems in Western museums in the twentieth century; Peter Webb reported that while engaged in research for a 1975 publication, he was initially informed that no relevant material existed in the British Museum , and when finally allowed access to it, he was told that it "could not possibly be exhibited to
16770-402: Was the 1460s, but that at least one dated from about 1451. Block books printed in the 1470s were often of cheaper quality, as a cheaper alternative to books printed by printing press . Block books continued to be printed sporadically up through the end of the 15th century. The method was also used extensively for printing playing cards . Ceramic and wooden movable type were invented in
16900-589: Was thought to be created in around 1524 to 1527. In 1601, Caravaggio painted the Amor Vincit Omnia for the collection of the Marquis Vincenzo Giustiniani. An erotic cabinet, ordered by Catherine the Great , seems to have been adjacent to her suite of rooms in the Gatchina Palace . The furniture was eccentric, with tables that had large penises for legs. Penises and vaginas were carved on
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