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I have followed Araki’s work over the years. These “paintings” are a feeble, transparent attempt, it seems, to extract the last yen from a body of work whose puerile motivations should have been exhausted decades ago.

These are awful.

Transparent is an understatement. Let me slap some paint on a B flat,contrived pic.

These are far worse than awful they are an amateurish mess…

nice photos…. to bad they are ruined with haphazard strokes of mediocrity.

another schlockmeister on the scene

High school imagery with grade school skills. Did this guy have to pay to exhibit these things? Disappointing.

I find them interesting. Sue me.

Nobuyoshi Araki probably is the most talented erotic photographer of Japan and has absolutely nothing to prove to the Internet infantile whining machine.

Great work!

is a photo of a woman with her legs open that is over painted
with some haphazard strokes really internet infantile whining ?
(read what De Walt said)

If I did have a shred of confidence that Artkrush was going to let us know what was going on in the world of art, I now don’t. This is beyond amateur. It is nothing short of ridiculous that anyone versed in art even entertained the idea of sharing this with us as newsworthy. OFF WITH THEIR HEADS!

Embarrassingly awful. This is a joke and it is so typical of what many artists are trying to and getting away with these days. I’m so glad the other comments expressed the same sentiment. I’m an artist and this is giving us a bad name. There’s no excuse for producing crap like this and even less for displaying it. What were they thinking? my website link is to a photobucket page and the rest of the gallery can be seen there. I linked to this body of work to show I’m not just closed-minded. This stuff by Araki is really dreadful and he should be ashamed of himself.

ho hum…

Not exactly a Shunga master.

Agree with the majority here. Ho hum. Amateur. Boring. Lacks any depth. No art involved. Really awful.

Now all the idiots have a voice and it does us no good. Araki is a proven master of photography and art. Shunga is a separate craft he utilizes in photography, it is not his specialization or even his goal. Images of woman in bondage have far greater depth than you might be willing to recognize. Clearly this is about a power struggle between the artist, his desire and the power that the women he desires have over him. That power extends until after the photographic process where he tries to violate the images which he has created and which still haunt him. Open your minds, but not so far open that your brains fall out.

Effortless ;(

Do any of these detractors have an opinion on Gerhard Richter

if these are “paintings” i’m egon schiele.

Simply put – They are kind of boring……and I like bondage and photography.

You say “schlockmeister”; I say “SHOCKmeister”. Provocation is one of the possible intents of any art. No doubt “NOb” has some serious emotional issues.
My one question would be (should a journalist interview him):
“Would YOU be willing to exchange places with, devote as much time and self-degradation in these poses as these models collectively have?”
Balk a smile in their muse.

See Baldessari’s work before you judge these.

mmmmm,:/ think i agree with M.
i also prefer (woodblock) shunga

look at William Klein’s painted contact sheet series. seems Araki too, is just attempting to jazz up good photography because he’s bored with his own work. Peter Beard does painting/writing on photo well though.

Can’t recall the last time I saw an artist make such a lame attempt at taking something beautiful (naked Japanese girls) and something vaguely interesting (kinbaku) and making it so profoundly boring and banal. The only power struggle going on here is between the desperately bored viewer and the even more desperately untalented, contrived, and unskillful art work. I too would love to see a series of the artist bound in the manner of his models. This amateurish flotsam is nowhere near G. Richter, or Schiele for that matter. Blaaaah…

Well I am a fan of bondage art and specifically on Asian women, but I must agree that these look like stills from a low quality Asian porn. If that was the message I could insinuate some underground meaning that was “deep” great. But even my overly liberal “anything is art” professor would have marked me down for my lack of effort and simplistic meaning…