| Summary: | 碩士 === 東海大學 === 美術學系 === 95 === Due to the fact that most of the domestic studies of pornography paintings focus on pornography woodblock prints instead of album leaves and scrolls, this paper entitled “merchant’s interest with literati appearance and sexual fantasies” intends to explore the iconological thoughts and features of erotic color prints in the 17th and 18th centuries. The illustrations and styles of the manual pornography album leaves and scrolls will be studied thoroughly in the hopes of expanding further studies of pornography paintings.
The intention of this paper is neither to de-stigmatize these works, nor to embody them a higher art position. The researcher attempts to analyze the styles from the images presented in the pornography album leaves which prospered in the 17th and 18th centuries. Moreover, the researcher will further generalize the features from the visualization and how it was formed in order to conduct studies in relation to erotic visual arts in the future. Since there is very few related information, this study mainly emphasizes on the element of images and styles by adopting iconology and the methods of stylistic analysis. In addition, the social and cultural backgrounds of these pornography paintings will also be taken into account, combining with male’s viewpoints and experience to interpret the works.
As John Berger mentioned in one of his books, Ways of seeing, images enable us to understand “it then showed how something or somebody had once looked- and thus by implication how the subject had once been seen by other people” (Berger 1972:10). Therefore, the images of manual pornography paintings record the modes of how people view sex and they are closely related to the socio-cultural milieu of that period. In chapter two, it is going to trace back to the 16th century, a developing period for manual pornography paintings, and address the transition of social economic structure as well as the changes of literati thoughts. This paper is going to demonstrate the development of industrial cities and the rise of businessmen brought by prosperous economy during 17th and 18th centuries. In addition, it is also going to address a number of phenomena, including the prevalence of Xin-xue, the wave of indulgence, the increasing interaction between literati and merchants, pursuit of luxury, the rise of brothels, and the soar of arts which are resulted by the corruption of politics, intelligentsia ambition, and the failure of official career, in order to describe the flourishing sociocultural network as the basis to understand the image of erotic color prints.
In chapter three, it will emphasize on analyzing the elements of images in manual pornography paintings in addition to the functions of these works. It will firstly examine the space composition, tools, plants from the drawings as well as the style of images and symbolic meanings in order to comprehend the relation between features presented in the background iconography and the taste of the viewers. Secondly, in respect of the portrait of sex, it will explore the demonstration of human body, connection between figures and styles of Tang Yin and Qiu Ying, and sex positions to summarize the features of sex presented in manual pornography paintings. From the sex position, pleasurable facial expression of the figures, literati taste, and merchants as the primary consumers obtained from the paintings, the thoughts behind the images will be further explored.
The emphasis of sex positions in manual pornography paintings is consistent with the categories and details of sex positions in many sex manuals. Moreover, as the art of love prevailed in the Ming dynasty, it is more likely for people to associate the images from manual pornography paintings with the thoughts of the art of love. In chapter four, through the investigation of traditional Chinese sexuality and the art of love prevailing during Ming dynasty, it reveals the differences in terms of health preserving and practices. There is also no visual evidence to prove whether the art of love is directly connected with manual pornography paintings let alone the different emphasis between them. According to the present data, it is difficult to comprehend the thoughts behind the images of sex positions in manual pornography paintings by adopting the concept from art of love. Nevertheless, in terms of pleasurable facial expression of the figures, it seems equal to the thought, ‘cheerful and joyous for both men and women’ drawn from previous studies. As there is no other supported evidence, it can only take the statement from R.H. van GULIK into account, i.e., the long-existing Chinese art of love has certain degree of influence towards traditional culture. Furthermore, through the similarity between the characteristics from erotic color prints and the mode of thoughts revealing from ancient Chinese sex manuals, it is assumed that the demonstration of images is inspired by the thoughts of art of love.
As for the images of literati taste and female pleasurable facial expressions in manual pornography paintings, this study will firstly analyze the theory of pornography in traditional feminism to investigate the inappropriateness. Moreover, it will further adopt male’s perspectives towards pornography and combine “the mirror stage” (le state du miroir) of Jacques Lacan to interpret by applying community recognition, males’ sexual desires towards females, the connection between images and reality, and the meanings and functions of sexual mirror. According to the analysis, it is learned that manual pornography paintings provide the needs for the rich by adopting the background complying with reality to formulate the image of literati taste as well as the unreal female pleasurable facial expression. It not only presents the desire that targeted consumers have towards sex, but also reveals the primary consumers- the absence and loss in the real life and sex for those wealthy people. Since the needs from the rich towards pornography, manual pornography paintings take the commercial consideration as the first priority instead of the artistic performance. Therefore, it also degrades the value of erotic color prints.
Due to the fact that there is a lack of sources, related information, and male’s perspectives towards pornography from Chinese culture, it is beyond the scope of this study to address the influence brought by the art of love towards the creation of Chinese sex, the chronological study of manual pornography paintings, and the sexual aspects behind those images. Although the present study is only able to address the features of erotic color prints in the 17th and 18th centuries, whenever there is more related information published, a fruitful result in the future can be fully expected.
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