BoringArt.com Are ready to become boring?? - Only Holland welcomes Japanese erotic art show

An exhibition which could only take place in the liberal Netherlands has just opened at Rotterdam’s Kunsthal, “Lust of spring: Erotic fantasies of the Edo era” (until 17 April). The show is the first-ever chronological overview of Japanese erotic art, with 17th and 18th century Shunga (“Images of spring”) woodblock prints.
Source The Art Newspaper

As director Wim Pijbes told us, “it would be unthinkable to present Shunga in a Japanese museum, because pubic hair is out of the question.” Even today it is illegal to import three-hundred year old Shunga images into Japan. Mr Pijbes added that “I can’t think of any major American museum putting it on.” Even in London, the Shunga of Hokusai and Hiroshige were “notoriously absent” in the Royal Academy’s catalogues of their 1992 and 1997 exhibitions. The Musée Guimet in Paris did consider joining the Kunsthal as a partner for the present show, but eventually decided to do a general presentation of Japanese prints at the Grand Palais (“Images of the floating world”, which closed this January). Despite its risqué subject matter, the Rotterdam exhibition has the imprimatur of the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands, which is co-publisher of the scholarly English-language catalogue. Among highlights on display are two 17th century horizontal scrolls, each six metres long, recounting an erotic tale in “comic strip” form.
Source The Art Newspaper