Ukiyo-e - Kunsthandel Klefisch

I attempted a partly new approach to shunga as an erotic art genre strongly connected
to chonin bunka, but enlarging its significance to the implications of Western erotic
literature, with reference to Bataille’s Larmes d’Eros, in my last book, Le stampe
erotiche giapponesi, Florence, 2004, in which I followed the path opened by Yukio
Mishima and Nagisa Oshima, perhaps the only valid one for us Europeans.
The Brussels exhibition might have been transferred to Florence, but this project was
not completed because of a certain resistance of the Florentine Catholic clerical authorities.
These were the reserves with which shunga were still considered only twenty
years ago - and now?
Now, undoubtedly, though the number of publications on this subject has considerably
increased, and though several public museums in the world have started purchasing
shunga, there still prevail some reserves. Now that Richard Lane - whose knowledge
of the subject was immense - has passed away, I do not feel that I can see
other great scholars on the horizon, and the standards of the books and catalogues
on the subjects often show the consequences of this. Let us hope, therefore, that
the event and catalogue of this auction-exhibition, generously promoted by Trudel
Klefisch, may be useful in reopening research and critical debate about this major
genre of ukiyo-e xylography.
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