Content warning: discussion about art objects depicting male same-sex activity.
You have likely seen the highly stylized art form called shunga (literally “spring pictures”), which features graphic images of sexual activity. Books containing these images, as well as scroll paintings, were produced by the thousands during the Edo period in modern Japan (1600-1868).
Banned by the Japanese government in 1722, the production of shunga did not diminish at all. Although illegal, shunga was still readily available at libraries and bookstores… behind closed doors. After the Edo period, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, influenced strongly by colonialism and missionaries, shunga was denounced again, so much so it became taboo within Japan for a century. Much of the existing material was purged.
The same thing happened in China, on a more systematic basis and larger scale, during the turmoil of the post-Imperial era.
European collectors and artists were fascinated by shunga, and kept interest and inventories alive, as did did many people with this and other aspects of the Far Eastern cultures.
In the mid-1990s, I was buying items from an antiquities dealer in the Netherlands who also had shunga images for sale. The items were (and are) mainly the 1-2 page spreads featuring the images taken from unbound books. I got more interested in the art form of the book-making itself when I understood the carved, wood block process used in Asia during the time when Europe was starting to mass produce books using moveable type and mechanical printing presses.
Looking through the shunga more carefully than I had before, I noticed that only a small fraction of the available piece depicted anything other than heteronormative images. One of the things you think about as a collector, which I am, is the potential advantage of putting together a group of underrepresented or rare items. My instincts were abuzz with the seemingly few pieces of shunga, among hundreds of items, that featured male same-sex activity (called nanshoku). So I started to collect it and sought out other dealers who might have items for sale in this niche area.
“Instinct” moved over to “intent” in mid-2006 when I saw the exhibition of The Warren Cup at the British Museum. The curator of that exhibit made the point that the mere existence of the single everyday object provided the counter-evidence to the claims that a general culture of same-sex relationships did not exist. The supposition is that other comparable objects had been purged over the years… how important might it be if there were 10s or 100s of such objects to study?
I left that exhibit motivated to curate nanshoku. Being on speed-dial with three dealers, I have located on the order of (only) about 150 pieces over a 25-year period.
Long story short: I contributed 20 of the 100 pieces in this exhibition, including the scroll mentioned in this report/review that appeared in the Chicago Tribune.
“The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1869-1930”
October 1, 2022 through January 28, 2023
Wrightwood 659
Chicago IL
Jonathan D. Katz, Professor, U Penn, curator
From the Chicago Tribute (11/18/22)
Homosexuality has always existed. It just hasn’t always existed under a label or discrete identity.
One might know that, in broad strokes, but it’s quite another thing to see that identity coalesce before one’s eyes. “The First Homosexuals: Global Depictions of a New Identity, 1869-1930,” a new exhibit showing through Jan. 28 at Wrightwood 659 in Lincoln Park, trades the shaky imprecision of language for the more visceral realm of visual art, demonstrating how artists across various cultures conceptualized queer identity.
Many of the works on display have never been seen before by the general public — and there’s more to come in asprawling second part of the exhibition, due to premiere at Wrightwood 659 in 2025 before touring the globe.
“It’s always very difficult when dealing (with queerness) historically, because, of course, the terms are different,” says Jonathan D. Katz, a pioneering queer art historian and lead curator of the exhibit. “I’m cognizant of the special pressurethat those of us in queer studies have to deal with in terms of nomenclature, and I resent that pressure, as well.
Curated by a global 23-person team led by Katz, “The First Homosexuals” largely begins its survey in 1869, the year the Hungarian writer and activist Karl Maria Kertbeny coined the terms “homosexual” and “heterosexual.” An exception greets visitors at the entrance of the exhibit: an unattributed scroll by a Japanese artist featuring the same subject participating in various sex acts with both men and women, created circa 1850.
“It makes very clear that homo- and hetero- were part of the same erotic continuum,” Katz says.
The anonymous scroll lays the foundation for the exhibit’s more pliant, historically embracing perspective on humansexuality, positing that queerness is something one does, not something one is.
If you want to see more, you can check out the archive at the Wrightwood web site (https://wrightwood659.org/exhibitions/the-first-homosexuals-global-depictions-of-a-new-identity-1869-1930/)
