by Tim Pilcher
Another society that didn’t regard sex as taboo, but rather as a spiritual act to be celebrated, was that of ancient India. The earliest Vedic texts hinted that sex was considered a mutual duty between a married couple, where husband and wife pleasured each other equally, but sex was still considered a private affair.
Sometime between the 1st and 6th centuries, the most famous book ever written about sex—the Kama Sutra—was created. Originally known as Vatsyayana Kamasutram (Vatsyayana’s Aphorisms on Love), this philosophical work was intended as both an exploration of human desire (including seduction and infidelity), and a technical guide to pleasing a sexual partner within marriage. And, of course, it has been profusely illustrated throughout the centuries, revealing the precise sexual positions for partners to engage in.
This detail, from the Rajput School in India (1790), demonstrates one of the complex poses of the Kama Sutra.
The Romans displayed erotic mosaics and frescos throughout their cities. This mural dates from 1st century Pompeii.
The Warren Cup was bought by The British Museum in 1999 for £1.8 million. The silver chalice shows the Roman idealization of Ancient Greece.
EARLY JAPANESE SHUNGA WOODBLOCK PRINTS
The Japanese approach to sex was as liberated as that of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Indians. Influenced by the Chinese scrolls and erotic art of the great 8th century T’ang Dynasty painter Zhou Fang, the Japanese took the concept of visualizing various sex acts (often with highly exaggerated genitalia) and made the genre their own.
Erotic art was widely circulated as a subgenre of the ukiyo-e, or “floating world” woodblock prints during the Edo period (1603–1898). These prints were known as shunga, or ”picture of spring”—a euphemism for sex.
Nearly all the ukiyo-e artists made shunga at some point in their careers, and their status as fine artists was unaffected by the association with sex. The prints were enjoyed by rich and poor, men and women, and initially carried very little stigma. It was considered a lucky charm against death for a samurai to carry shunga, and widely believed that they protected warehouses and homes against fire. It’s likely that these superstitions arose as a justification for owning the erotic prints, but, whatever the reason, the prints were as ubiquitous then as manga is today. They had the same diverse readership and it was traditional to buy shunga prints as a wedding present. Even women would acquire them directly from book lenders.
Shunga prints were produced and sold either as single sheets or, more frequently, in book form, known as an enpon. These books normally contained 12 images, but the more expensive, hand-painted scroll formats (called kakemono-e), were also popular. Shunga varied greatly in quality and price, but ukiyo-e artists could live for about six months on the profit made from creating a single shunga for a wealthy client. Yet while some works were highly elaborate, others had a limited color palette (full-color printing wasn’t invented until 1765); these were widely circulated and inexpensive.
Edo period shunga artists sought to express a varied world of sexual possibilities, creating an idealized, eroticized, and fantastical parallel to contemporary urban life. Men seduced women, women seduced men, men and women cheated on each other, and all ages—from virginal teenagers to old married couples—were depicted in sexual acts. While most shunga was heterosexual, some depicted gay trysts; lesbian artwork was rarer, but not unknown. Female masturbation was also depicted, with octopi featuring with alarming regularity.
Possibly the most common character in shunga was the courtesan. Shunga artist Utamaro was revered for his depictions of these celebrities of their day, and Yoshiwara —Edo’s pleasure district—is often compared to Hollywood. Men saw these ladies as highly eroticized due to their profession, while being unattainable except to the wealthiest, most cultured men. Women saw the courtesans as distant, glamorous idols, and Japan’s fashions were inspired by these ancient working girls. Male kabuki actors were also depicted in shunga, as many worked as gigolos, and were often depicted with samurai.
While shunga prints were not sequential as such, they often had back-stories that were revealed through text or dialogue in the picture itself. The merging of text and images makes them some of the earliest erotic proto-comics. Symbolism was also concealed throughout the works, with plum blossoms signifying virginity or tissues symbolizing impending ejaculation, for example. Yet most shunga characters remained clothed, because nudity was not inherently erotic in Japan; people were used to fully naked, mixed-sex, communal baths.
Shunga couples were often shown in unrealistic positions with exaggerated genitalia— allowing greater visibility of the sexually explicit content, increasing artistic license, and delivering greater psychological impact.
A shunga scroll from around 1870, depicting an orgy with two men and 11 women.
In Japan, the genitals are often regarded as a “second face,” expressing passions that the “everyday face” is obliged to hide by strict social codes. This meant the penis was often drawn the same size as the man’s head and placed unnaturally close to it by the awkward position.
Throughout history there have been attempts to suppress erotic material, and 17th century Japan was no exception. In 1661, the Tokugawa shogunate banned, among other things, erotic books known as kōshokubon. Shunga still managed to be produced with little censorship, but a new edict in 1722 was far stricter, banning the production of all new books without the city commissioner’s permission. Shunga was forced underground, with sales continuing in secret and most artists no longer signing their shunga works for fear of prosecution. However, between 1761 and 1786 the printing regulations were relaxed and artists started signing their work again, often concealing their names in the pictures themselves.
As in the west, the decline in erotic drawings in Japan coincided with the invention of photography, and shunga finally succumbed at the start of the Meiji period (1868—1912).
In recent years shunga has influenced many manga (meaning “irresponsible pictures”) and anime (Japanese animation) artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, inspiring them to create a variety of erotic comics with niche subjects such as yaoi (gay comics) and hentai (literally, “18-restricted” or “adult-only”).
This detail of a humorous phallic contest has four well-endowed men running toward their “prize” of two women (off page).
Making Love in Winter by Katsukawa Shuncho was painted between 1770 and 1790. This moment of ejaculation would set the tone for Japan’s hentai manga 200 years later.
The two central focal points in this picture—as with most shunga—are the faces and genitalia.
HOGARTH, ROWLANDSON, AND BAWDY CARTOONISTS
In England, the pioneer of early sequential art—William Hogarth—was developing a body of work that would influence the development of comics forever. A painter, printmaker, and editorial cartoonist, Hogarth completed one of his most famous moralistic works, A Harlot’s Progress, in 1731. Inspired after painting a prostitute’s portrait in her boudoir in London’s Drury Lane, Hogarth decided to create a series of six paintings depicting scenes from her earlier and later life.
The story told the miserable tale of a country girl, Moll Hackabout, who arrives in London from the country and becomes a prostitute. Her degradation and ultimate death from venereal disease exposed the seedy underworld of London in the 18th century. Hogarth made a limited edition of 1,240 engraving sets of the scenes in 1732 and charged a guinea per set. But the prints were so popular that pirate copies started circulating, and to prevent this, Hogarth had to secure the Engraving Copyright Act of Parliament in 1734.
The following year he created a sequel, A Rake’s Progress, which recounted the wayward tale of Tom Rakewell, the son of a merchant who wastes all his money on gambling and prostitutes and ends up in the Bedlam lunatic asylum. Sadly the original paintings were destroyed in a fire at Fonthill Abbey in 1755.
Hogarth inspired a whole subsequent generation of illustrators, including Thomas Rowlandson, a former art student at the prestigio
us Royal Academy. Rowlandson lived and studied for a time in Paris, and made frequent trips to the Continent to fill his portfolios with life and character observations. He was thought to be a promising student, but when he inherited £7,000 from a dead aunt he fell prey to sexual excess and was known to gamble for 36 hours at a time. Much like Hogarth’s Rake, Rowlandson soon became acquainted with poverty, and his contemporaries James Gillray and Henry William Bunbury suggested caricature as a means of earning money. Rowlandson excelled, but while many of his works were fêted and exhibited at the RA, it was his secret income from a vast body of erotic prints and woodcuts that truly made him his money between 1808 and 1817.
Examined today, Rowlandson’s couples—engaging in various sexual acts—reveal just how extreme erotic illustration was, even as early as the 1800s, and many of his works would be considered pornographic by today’s standards. Rowlandson’s erotic imagery featured naval officers, farmers, and other notable members of society, and the prints served as a satire on contemporary life, as well as objects for arousal.
The mixture of politics and sex has always been a dangerous one, but it was something the Victorian establishment was keen to clamp down on at the end of the 19th century.
William Hogarth’s Moll, from A Harlot’s Progress, with her old, syphilitic maid. The witch’s hat and birch rods hint at black magic or role-playing and sadomasochism. The magistrate, Sir John Gonson, is coming through the door on the right side of the frame with his bailiffs, to arrest Moll for prostitution.
The Farmer and the Milkmaid, etched by Thomas Rowlandson sometime between 1808 and 1817. Many of his couples were depicted semi-clothed, as was the style of Japan’s shunga prints, hinting at a furtive liason.
Thomas Rowlandson’s The Country Squire New Mounted. The saucy poem reads: “…The lovely lass her charms displays/ She lifts the hood and he obeys/Within the tavern view the fair/Each leg supported on a chair/Her buttocks on the table seated/ By which the Squire’s joys completed.”
Rowlandson satirically attacked all aspects of British life, including the priesthood—as shown in this cartoon, The Clergyman Quenched.
VICTORIAN VALUES
While erotica is as old as art, the concept of pornography did not exist until the Victorian era. Although some sex acts (such as buggery) were illegal, looking at objects or images depicting the acts was not. In some cases, certain books, engravings, or image collections were outlawed, but the trend to compose laws that restricted the viewing of sexually explicit artifacts was a Victorian construct.
The world’s first law criminalizing pornography was the UK’s Obscene Publications Act of 1857. The bill received strong opposition from both Parliament and the Lords. However, it was passed on the assurance by the Lord Chief Justice that it was “intended to apply exclusively to works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth and of a nature calculated to shock the common feelings of decency in any well-regulated mind.”
The Victorian attitude that pornography was for a select few could be seen in the wording of the Hicklin test, stemming from a court case in 1868. It asked “whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences.” This altered the Act’s definition of obscenity—the test was now whether the material could affect someone prone to corruption, rather than whether the material was intended to corrupt or offend.
Despite all this, erotic imagery was commonplace throughout the Victorian age—with a tall, unusual-looking young man called Aubrey Beardsley becoming the most influential erotic cartoonist of the time.
This engraving by Victorian illustrator Franz Von Bayros, from The Boudoir of Mme CC (1912), shows how sadomasochisim was a popular, if concealed, pleasure.
Rub a Dub Dub (1835) by Peter Fendi (1796–1842) illustrated the classic Victorian erotic confessional, My Secret Life by “Walter” (possibly Henry Spencer Ashbee).
This cheeky double entendre postcard (circa 1902) states, “I always wash my pussy with scented soap.”
AUBREY BEARDSLEY
Born in Brighton in 1872 to a working class family, Aubrey Beardsley suffered from recurrent bouts of tuberculosis as a child. Working at an insurance company in London and drawing in his spare time, Beardsley showed his work to the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones, who told Beardsley, “I seldom or never advise anyone to take up art as a profession, but in your case I can do nothing else.”
Beardsley soon became the most controversial artist of the Art Nouveau movement, renowned for his dark and perverse erotica. “I have one aim—the grotesque,” he said. “If I am not grotesque, I am nothing.”
Most of his images were simple, black and white, pen and ink drawings, in which large, dark, detailed areas contrasted with blank, empty shapes. His most famous illustrations were on the themes of history and mythology, including those for the Greek comedy Lysistrata and Salomé, Oscar Wilde’s infamous play, which was published in 1893.
Although Beardsley was aligned with the gay clique that included Wilde, his sexuality remains in doubt, and he was rumored to have had an incestuous relationship with his elder sister, Mabel, who may have miscarried his child.
A public character as well as a private eccentric, Beardsley produced extensive illustrations for books and magazines including The Savoy and The Studio. He also turned his hand to writing, penning Under the Hill, an unfinished erotic tale based loosely on the 15th century legend of Tannhäuser—a knight who discovers the subterranean home of Venus, the Goddess of Love.
Beardsley eventually succumbed to his childhood nemesis—tuberculosis—and died in Menton, France at the tender age of 25. But his work lived on, reflecting the decadence of the era and influencing erotic Art Nouveau artists like Marquis Franz von Bayros.
Beardsley also became a major inspiration to many comic creators: the U.S. underground comix movement and comic artists like Mike Kaluta; Steve Yeowell’s art on the Vertigo miniseries, Sebastian O; and Melinda Gebbie’s work on Lost Girls, the erotic masterpiece she created alongside Alan Moore. Even Leo Baxendale, creator of The Beano’s Bash Street Kids and Minnie the Minx was a fan: “I have been an admirer of Aubrey Beardsley’s work for over half a century… It was because of my admiration for his work that, during the later reaches of my I Love You Baby Basil! newspaper strip for The Guardian in the early 1990s, I began to incorporate Aubrey Beardsley’s drawing into a few of my strips. I found this particularly satisfying.”
Aubrey Beardsley’s humorous take on penis envy, from The Lacedaemon (1896).
A lesbian scene by Franz Von Bayros from La Grenouillère (1912). Note the phallic fountain and the oblivious minstrel. The child’s ball hints at a certain lost innocence, while the pupil-less eyes suggest detachment.
Lysistrata Haranguing the Athenian Woman (1896) by Beardsley.
The Ecstasy, also from La Grenouillère. Von Bayros’s work is resplendent with detail, from the baroque furnishings and ornate dildo to the voyeuristic cat and phallic symbols hidden throughout the work.
SAUCY POSTCARDS AND CHEEKY HUMOR
After the perceived repression of erotic art under the prudish Victorian intelligentsia, it took the Edwardians a while to let their hair down, and the man to help them do it was Donald McGill. Born in south-east London in 1875, McGill was a naval draughtsman who moved into postcards with the encouragement of an in-law who had seen a get-well card he had made for a sick nephew. A year later, McGill was drawing cartoons full time.
Between 1904 and 1962 McGill produced a staggering 12,000 postcard designs, coming up with six or seven new gags each week. Thankfully his father-in-law ran a music hall, which meant McGill had a constant source of new material.
The reserved Londoner’s postcards were available in stores across the country—in particular those in seaside towns—and soon became known as McGill’s Comics. Despite the misnomer, McGill did experiment with sequential storytelling in a series of six postcards in 1906, but the id
ea failed to grab the public’s imagination.
McGill’s distinctive color-washed drawings were ranked as “mild, medium, and strong” by the artist, according to their vulgarity, with “strong” being the best sellers. Despite his dubious career, his family remained steadfastly respectable, and said of his two daughters: “They ran like stags whenever they passed a comic postcard shop.”
When the First World War broke out McGill produced lots of humorous anti-German propaganda postcards, but the British government turned on him and puritanical censorship committees brought him to trial in Lincoln on July 15, 1954.
Author George Orwell was a huge fan of McGill’s and wrote an extensive essay on him, some 13 years earlier. “At least half of McGill’s postcards are sex jokes,” wrote Orwell, “and a proportion, perhaps ten per cent, are far more obscene than anything else that is now printed in England. Newsagents are occasionally prosecuted for selling them, and there would be many more prosecutions if the broadest jokes were not protected by double meanings…”
Sadly the double entendre defence didn’t stand up in court. McGill was found guilty under the Obscene Publications Act and forced to pay a £50 fine and £25 costs. The saucy postcard industry was dealt a devastating blow and many postcards were destroyed. Retailers cancelled orders and several companies went bankrupt. In the late 1950s the censorship eased off and the market slowly recovered, so much so that McGill gave evidence before a House Select Committee in 1957, set up to amend the flawed 1857 Act.
Yet despite their popularity (one of McGill’s postcards holds a world record for selling over 6 million copies), the artist earned no royalties from his designs, and when he died in 1962 his estate was valued at a mere £735. Today, McGill is regarded as a British national treasure, responsible for influencing everything from the British Carry On… movies to adult comics such as Viz.
