Identify a form of Japanese traditional art that resonates with you

Blog Task

From the images on the following slides, identify a form of Japanese traditional art that resonates with you and your practice

Write about the art form and include pictures

Refereed to in Japan as Shunga, is a term used to describe Japanese erotic art during the early 1700s and early 1800s. Shunga was heavily influenced by illustrations in Chinese medicine manuals beginning in 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. While the literal meaning of the word "shunga" is significant, it is in fact a contraction of shunkyū-higi-ga (春宮秘戯画), the Japanese pronunciation for Chinese sets of twelve scrolls depicting the twelve sexual acts that the crown prince had to carry out as an expression of yin yang. Shunga arts often created a series of images leading up to the main sexual encounter, each image or panel in the polyptch

 growing in sexual intensity. This image created by Kitagawa Utamato was most likely created in a series of works centered around this particular couple and their escalating sexual encounter. This particular image in the series titled Lovers in an upper room, depicts to lovers engaging in an intimate moment. One thing That I thought was interesting about this particular artwork and other Shunga artworks is the way the figures with the prints are portrayed. Often in European art if their is a nude women or a women engaged with her lover her gaze is always facing towards the viewer, in Shunga the gazes of the women are always fixated on their male (or female) lovers within the scene, for example in Lovers in an upper room we don't even see any of the lovers faces, their passion and desire for each other outweighing the lust of the viewer.

my art has always been oil paintings or Digital painting, while I have experimented with  some printmaking in the past it isn't my primary focus as an artist so the medium used to create this artwork doesn't really fit into what I do, either does the style but what does is the use of nudity. In Japanese art nudity was often normalized with artwork showing the communal bathes many women and men would visit on the weekly, along with the erotic art of Shunga showing sex as more passionate and intimate rather than something disgusting and vulgar. In my work I have made sure to put elements of nudity each time to normalize it, especially the female body as I believe that its the biggest victim in comparison to men.