2016.3.3
Black Shunga
Artist
Chris Ofili
(Manchester, England, 10/10/1968 - )
Title
Black Shunga
Creation Date
2008-2015
Century
early 21st century
Dimensions
26 1/2 x 17 1/2 in. (67.3 x 44.5 cm)
Object Type
print
Creation Place
Europe, United Kingdom
Medium and Support
One from a suite of 11 etchings with gravure on specially prepared and pigmented paper
Credit Line
Museum Purchase, Barbara Cooney Porter Fund
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2016.3.3
In the Black Shunga etchings, lush azure and Prussian blue pigments swirl, pool, and bleed like water stains or cloud formations, evoking a range of settings—a nocturnal jungle, the depth of the ocean—all of which are enhanced by the underlayer of color-shifting metallic powder. Barely perceptible sinuous linework is printed over the expanse of blue. The viewer is compelled to look more closely and slowly as the silvery lines resolve into contours of figures engaged in a variety of intimate sexual acts. This imagery and the title of the suite refer to Japanese shunga-e, erotic woodblock prints made primarily in the Edo period (1615–1868). The addition of “Black” to “Shunga” in the title point to both the stereotyped exoticism of black bodies and the absence of black figures in the canon of Western art, as well as the more generalized lack of acknowledgment experienced by black populations in many of the societies in which they live.
Shelley R. Langdale
Curator & Head of Modern Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art, and President, Print Council of America