>Clarke argues that if we look at visual representations of
>lovemaking, what we moderns understand to be erotic, we'll find that
>for a Roman viewer such images have an entirely different meaning.
>He uses the example (which I've never seen) of a cut, dated 62-79
>CE, from a wall of the House of Caecilius Iucundus at Pompeii. It
>was deemed obscene and carted off to the Pornographic Collection of
>the Naples Archaeological Museum (which remains barred to the
>public, apparently). Clarke argues if we consider the location of
>the picture, the imagery it spells status, not sex.
<snip>
>The ancient Romans, Clarke argues, viewed the entire Roman house as
>a place of business - "privacy" - he notes, is a concept that does
>not exist in Roman language or thought. The picture, apparently,
>shows an image of upper-class luxury - a rich bed, gentle curves,
>delicate fingers... a woman's hesitation and a man's forward grace.
>There is a servant in the background, along with gold touches to
>highlight the fabric and the images jewels. All in all - a context
>the upper-class pretensions of the owner, luxury not lust.
The question, then, is why class power was expressed through sex.
In the case of sex and art in Edo, the class power of merchants got channeled by the Tokugawa government into expressing itself, among other things, through conspicuous expenditure in licensed and regulated pleasure quarters and luxurious private production of shunga, circumventing the limits of feudal sumptuary laws that attempted to confine them:
***** Sumie Jones, "Sex, Art, and Edo Culture: An Introduction," _Imaging/Reading Eros_, <http://www.indiana.edu/~easc/resources/edo_culture/eros.htm>
. . . By the early 18th century,signs of strain in the government's fiscal policies began to show. While the shogun's treasury became depleted due to famines and mismanagement of finances, the bourgeois classes thrived. The government's policies for frugality, which prevented wealthy citizens from enjoying luxuries at home and making real estate investments, encouraged extravagant spending of money and energy in ephemeral pleasures at the theater and brothel districts. It is these officially marginalized and enclosed sections of Edo that became sites for the imagination and production of the most lively and sumptuous part of the city's culture. . . .
Edo's ukiyoe naturally lavished its attention on the notorious places of the city. What can be called portraits in early Edo ukiyoe have as their subjects oiran, accompanied by their attendants and popular actors striking theatrical poses. Scenes of entertainment depicting the theater or the brothel made up impressively large triptychs. In later ukiyoe, ordinary women came to embody the erotic and were depicted in portraits or in intimate scenes with equally attractive men. More blatantly sexual ukiyoe constituted a separate category called "makurae," or "pillow pictures,"and sometimes "waraie," or "pictures for laughs," but the term "shunga," or "spring pictures" is most widely used currently (see Smith). The government's drive to frugality and its ban of erotic subjects pushed artists toward the transgressive. Works for public distribution, whether books or picture prints, had to be inspected and authorized. Because of restrictions on the types of colors and paper, privately commissioned work was most at&active to artists. In lavishing expensive material and production technique on commissioned shunga, one could at once bypass the laws against luxury and the erotic. This is likely to be the chief reason why works in this category display the sort of artistic quality rare in the pornographic arts outside Japan and why the majority of best-known ukiyoe artists spent so much energy on the production of shunga (see Ferrer). . . .
<http://www.indiana.edu/~ealce350/pdf/sexartedo.pdf> & <http://www.udel.edu/History/figal/Hist372/Materials/edosex.pdf>
Sumie Jones: <http://www.indiana.edu/~ealc/people/faculty/individual/joness.html> *****
What about Pompeii? -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>