Art, sex, and institutions: defining, collecting, and displaying Shunga

Boyd, Louise Anne (2016) Art, sex, and institutions: defining, collecting, and displaying Shunga. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

In Edo-Japan (c.1603 – 1868) shunga, sexually explicit prints, paintings and illustrated books, were widely produced and disseminated. However, from the 1850s onwards, shunga was suppressed by the government and it has largely been omitted from art history, excluded from exhibitions and censored in publications. Although changes have taken place, cultural institutions continue to be cautious about what they collect and exhibit, with shunga largely remaining a prohibited subject in Japan. Since the 1970s there has been a gradual increase in the acceptance of shunga outside Japan, as evidenced in the growing number of exhibitions and publications. The initial impetus behind this thesis was: Why and how did shunga become increasingly acceptable in Europe and North America in the twentieth century, whilst conversely becoming unacceptable in post-Edo Japan?

I discuss how and why attitudes to shunga in the UK and Japan have changed from the Edo period to the present day, and consider how definitions can affect this. My research examines how shunga has been dealt with in relation to private and institutional collecting and exhibitions. In order to gauge modern responses, the 2013 Shunga: Sex and Pleasure in Japanese Art exhibition at the British Museum is used as an in-depth study – utilising mixed methods and an interdisciplinary approach to analyse curatorial and legal decisions, as well as visitor feedback. To-date there are no official or standardised guidelines for the acquisition, cataloguing, or display of sexually explicit artefacts. It is intended that institutions will benefit from my analysis of the changing perceptions of shunga and of previous shunga collections and exhibitions when dealing with shunga or other sexually explicit items in the future.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Keywords: Japanese art, shunga, sex art, ukiyo-e, art, museum studies, history of art, exhibitions, collecting, collections, display, erotic art, institutional censorship.
• Subjects: A General Works > AM Museums (General). Collectors and collecting (General); N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > History of Art; College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Information Studies
• Funder's Name: James McNeill Whistler, Beatrix Whistler Scholarship
• Supervisor's Name: Stuart, Dr. Susan and Hancock, Mrs Liz
• Date of Award: 2016
• Depositing User: Louise Boyd
• Unique ID: glathesis:2016-7546
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 31 Aug 2016 08:47
• Last Modified: 12 Jul 2024 10:30
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/7546