Sotheby’s exhibition, art and censorship clashes again.

I went to the Sotheby’s exhibition last week, and will rush to see it again before it closes.
It’s an amazing collection of japanese Edo period (1603 – 1868) “spring pictures” woodprints (including the mythic Hokusai-“The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife”-octopuss-y).

It’s more than impressive: the wood prints techniques are just plain amazing (how on earth did they manage to multi-color print with such radian effect????)

As it was a no picture-allowed zone (and as I was probably the only one to respect that), I only could do a few rough sketches, from the more “graphics” drawings on the whole exhibition. Please do understand, I didn’t want to simply-sketch the erotic scenes, but I was really trying to respect the whole line-drawing composition; and most of the artwork were really, really difficult to recreate as a whole.

That is my “happy-mooded” part of this post.

Now comes the “angry-mooded” part.

Because of Hong kong authority and censorship “genitals-are-evil-let-no-porn-ruin-our-children’s-innocence” thingy, there was a big, expected “This exhibition contains explicit depictions of sexual acts and nudity. Only suitable for 18 and above.” display, and the internet page of the exhibition as well as the catalog/flyer you can get at the exhibition, the pictures of the displayed artwork were… cropped.

Just simply cropped,

So, with no genitals, it is now “acceptable” for HK censorship, no matter how the original artwork look like.

Even Hokusai’s masterpiece is just f*cked-up. But, as it’s a 2-pages-wide wood print on paper, they cleverly displayed the first page only, OK, I *can* admit that -_-‘

My dear Hong kong, I really hate you for doing this.

Anyway, if you are around hong kong, go see the exhibition before it ends:
Sotheby’s Hong Kong Gallery, 5/F One Pacific Place, 88 Queensway, (Admiralty) Hong Kong

Monday – Friday: 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM, until July, 31
closed on Weekend and Public Holiday