technique - embroidery and patches, genre – nude, bamboo framed, 2009
The most of the shunga engravings do not depict naked partners but dressed in half-open capes. The Japanese painters of the best period – from 1680 until 1880 – did not paint from nature, and they were not interested much in anatomical accuracy of details and facial expressions. That is why even the best masters present spineless elastic girls who seem not to have any bones at all: men with unimaginable genitals, in places impossible from physiological point of view. It takes some time for the eye adapted to the western art to get used to the view of a guest and a prostitute depicted in intimate unity. The point is that traditional painters in Japan do not see the things in a western manner expressed in Greek statues or the works of Titian, Rubens or Renoir. The stated artists show naked figures with rich color shades transitions and rounded realistic details which are closer to the photograph than early Japanese pictures of male and female figures – ordered and symbolized. At first they are as alien to us as sushi, a national dish made from raw fish.