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Edutainment > Articles on Art > Western Artists in Japan > Utamaro No Shunga & Ura Hannya

Paul Binnie

Utamaro No Shunga
woodblock print, 2005

February 19, 2005: Paul Binnie announced two new woodblock prints - 'Utamaro No Shunga', another design in his tattoo series, and 'Ura Hannya', a large-format print on Japanese washi paper in a kind of sosaku hanga style.

Here is the original text of the announcement by Paul Binnie:

Utamaro No Shunga & Ura Hannya

The newest print in my series Edo Sumi Hyaku Shoku (A Hundred Shades of Ink of Edo) will be on sale shortly: entitled 'Utamaro No Shunga', it is an image of a young girl tattooed with an erotic design by Utamaro, the great late-18th century artist of beauties, derived from his album 'Ehon Komachi Biki', while the cartouche design comes from his famous 'Utamakura' album. The art of tattooing in Japan has evolved, some might say declined, a great deal since the Edo period, and as many people have rightly pointed out, young ladies would be highly unlikely today to decide to have a large design placed on their backs like this, but this whole series is a work of the imagination, and plodding reality must be replaced with the romanticism of the image, and I hope we can suspend our disbelief long enough to appreciate the idea of the lovely young woman tattooed with a great master's work.

As before in this series, the edition will be 100, and the image size is 38 x 26cm, on paper approximately 42 x 29cm, and will be the same price as other prints in this series. I have used metallic pigments and lacquer detailing in the hair, and this time the seal, which spells 'Paul Binnie' in stylised form, is in the shape of a butterfly, recalling Puccini's beautiful heroine. Certain collectors will know that the blocks were used for a small edition of this design without tattoo, which is being distributed exclusively by my Dutch dealer, Eric van den Ing of Saru Gallery, in quite a different colour scheme, and called 'Engawa', after the veranda upon which she is sitting. In the future there will be a second female design in this series, 'Harunobu No Furo', with a young woman bathing, and showing a tattoo of a mid-18th century beauty doing the same in a bathtub while 'Hokusai No Taki' will be based on Hokusai's famous Waterfalls series, and will be a male tattoo subject appearing later this year.

I am also taking this opportunity to present my largest-ever woodblock, done in a more sosaku-hanga (creative print) style; 'Ura Hannya', or Behind the Hannya Mask. I have employed a full sheet of washi paper, so the print is approximately 97 x 67cm, and is a jigsaw print, where the large colour areas are cut from one block of wood rather than multiple blocks. It has hand-colouring in the tattoo, and is against a gold mica ground to simulate gold leaf. I needed a great deal of help from Hara Takayuki, my assistant, to print such a large piece, and in recognition of this, I asked him to title the prints in the bottom margin, while I signed and numbered them from an edition of only 20. While the standard print shows the subject nude, I have also made a version with fundoshi (traditional underwear) in chine colle, for those who don't want the figure to be quite so exposed!

For fans of landscape prints, I have two designs in the pipeline, one of which will be the long-awaited snow-scene of Sankeien Gardens in Yokohama, and the other a brand-new version of my oldest, and now sold out, landscape of the Yamadara Mountain Temple in Yamagata, while my fourth and final bijin-ga from the series 'Shiki', Four Seasons, will be released in the spring.

As always, I hope to hear reactions to the new designs, and will be delighted to answer any further questions you may have either at my website, www.paulbinnie.co.uk or by email on paul@paulbinnie.freeserve.co.uk.

Paul Binnie
February 2005

More about Japanese Tattoos

Edo Sumi Hyaku Shoku
Gallery of Japanese Tattoos
Hokusai no Taki
Japanese Tattoos
Kunisada no Danjuro
Utamaro no Shunga

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Western Artists in Japan