Masuo Ikeda's polymath abilities in the arts — ranging from printmaking to writing and ceramics — is mirrored in his diverse depictions of feminine eroticism. Posed provocatively in Ikeda's works are his versions of Venus, virgins, brides, generic types and femme fatales, the Madonna of the Annunciation and Yang Guifei, the renowned Chinese beauty who led the Tang Dynasty emperor Xuanzong to neglect his affairs of state.
All this is laid bare in the exhibition "Masuo Ikeda's Prints: Recent Acquisitions — The M&Y Collection" at The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, which is until Dec. 24 displaying around 350 of the 800 or so works bequeathed to the museum by Ikeda's partner, Yoko Sato.
Soft porn was a mainstay of Ikeda's printmaking oeuvre, and it formed part of his literary one too — for which he won Japan's esteemed Akutagawa Prize in 1977 for the novel "Offering in the Aegean." In 1979, he branched out further, directing the film adaptation of his novel with a bit-part given to Italian porn-star La Cicciolina, former wife of the contemporary art-star Jeff Koons. For the film's showing in Japan, censorship required Ikeda to scratch out pubic hair from the celluloid, which appears to have bolstered his desire to portray it in print. In "Homage du" (1980), one subject's pubic hair looks more like full-grown foliage, perplexing her male companion.