Toshio Saeki FIÈVRES NOCTURNES
Human society, its violence, and its flaws are the basis for scenes whose cruelty provokes fear or laughter, pushing the mechanics of fantasy to its limits
Sadomasochism here covers no reality, drawing from dreams a form of macabre poetry. Stimulated by the censorship that prevails in Japan—it is forbidden to show the genitals—Saeki makes the forbidden an artistic constraint and deports the oldest subject in the world toward the absurd and the dreamlike. His precise style, which reminds Europeans of the famous "clear line" of Hergé and Joost Swarte, remains strange for Japanese readers as well as for Western readers, each finding in this perfectly simple line a form of unprecedented exoticism. This perception can only be explained by the absolute originality of an extravagant imagery, straight from the pen of an artist who has devoted his life to tracing as closely as possible "what happens in his head when he closes his eyes." A cult artist, Toshio Saeki is the inventor of a unique style in a field that he has totally transformed, the ero guro - which can be translated as "erotic-grotesque scenes". This genre, whose paternity is attributed to the writer Edogawa Ranpo, finds its source in the origins of classical Japanese drawing, nourishing monsters and nightmarish scenes in many prints through time. Saeki, by declining traditional motifs and mixing them with his own obsessions, echoed the anxieties of his generation, the youth of the 1970s, who believed they could free themselves from the conventions of a paternalistic society before experiencing disillusion .
This second volume of the anthology follows the work Rêve écarlate and compiles illustrations on 192 pages published between 1972 and 1974 in the magazine SM Selecto .
The book has a preface translated into three languages (French, English and Japanese).
Published by Editions Cornélius/Collection Pierre, 2022
France Import
192 full color pages
Hardcover with dustjacket
24,5 x 17cm
Human society, its violence, and its flaws are the basis for scenes whose cruelty provokes fear or laughter, pushing the mechanics of fantasy to its limits
Sadomasochism here covers no reality, drawing from dreams a form of macabre poetry. Stimulated by the censorship that prevails in Japan—it is forbidden to show the genitals—Saeki makes the forbidden an artistic constraint and deports the oldest subject in the world toward the absurd and the dreamlike. His precise style, which reminds Europeans of the famous "clear line" of Hergé and Joost Swarte, remains strange for Japanese readers as well as for Western readers, each finding in this perfectly simple line a form of unprecedented exoticism. This perception can only be explained by the absolute originality of an extravagant imagery, straight from the pen of an artist who has devoted his life to tracing as closely as possible "what happens in his head when he closes his eyes." A cult artist, Toshio Saeki is the inventor of a unique style in a field that he has totally transformed, the ero guro - which can be translated as "erotic-grotesque scenes". This genre, whose paternity is attributed to the writer Edogawa Ranpo, finds its source in the origins of classical Japanese drawing, nourishing monsters and nightmarish scenes in many prints through time. Saeki, by declining traditional motifs and mixing them with his own obsessions, echoed the anxieties of his generation, the youth of the 1970s, who believed they could free themselves from the conventions of a paternalistic society before experiencing disillusion .
This second volume of the anthology follows the work Rêve écarlate and compiles illustrations on 192 pages published between 1972 and 1974 in the magazine SM Selecto .
The book has a preface translated into three languages (French, English and Japanese).
Published by Editions Cornélius/Collection Pierre, 2022
France Import
192 full color pages
Hardcover with dustjacket
24,5 x 17cm
Human society, its violence, and its flaws are the basis for scenes whose cruelty provokes fear or laughter, pushing the mechanics of fantasy to its limits
Sadomasochism here covers no reality, drawing from dreams a form of macabre poetry. Stimulated by the censorship that prevails in Japan—it is forbidden to show the genitals—Saeki makes the forbidden an artistic constraint and deports the oldest subject in the world toward the absurd and the dreamlike. His precise style, which reminds Europeans of the famous "clear line" of Hergé and Joost Swarte, remains strange for Japanese readers as well as for Western readers, each finding in this perfectly simple line a form of unprecedented exoticism. This perception can only be explained by the absolute originality of an extravagant imagery, straight from the pen of an artist who has devoted his life to tracing as closely as possible "what happens in his head when he closes his eyes." A cult artist, Toshio Saeki is the inventor of a unique style in a field that he has totally transformed, the ero guro - which can be translated as "erotic-grotesque scenes". This genre, whose paternity is attributed to the writer Edogawa Ranpo, finds its source in the origins of classical Japanese drawing, nourishing monsters and nightmarish scenes in many prints through time. Saeki, by declining traditional motifs and mixing them with his own obsessions, echoed the anxieties of his generation, the youth of the 1970s, who believed they could free themselves from the conventions of a paternalistic society before experiencing disillusion .
This second volume of the anthology follows the work Rêve écarlate and compiles illustrations on 192 pages published between 1972 and 1974 in the magazine SM Selecto .
The book has a preface translated into three languages (French, English and Japanese).
Published by Editions Cornélius/Collection Pierre, 2022
France Import
192 full color pages
Hardcover with dustjacket
24,5 x 17cm
