Customer Reviews

Sorayama Pin-Up

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Of all the contemporary pin-up artists, Hajime Sorayama stands above the rest. His paintings capture the playfulness of the classic pin-up artists (Petty, Elvgren, Vargas), but are much more risque than his predecessors would have ever dared--or could have gotten away with. These are the types of women and poses you find in Playboy, and even Hustler, but without any of the distractions; his paintings are hyper-realistic, and yet gone is every pretense of reality: a couch, a bed, a phone, a car. These are beautiful women in sexy poses in front of completely monochromatic backgrounds. There are no props to distract our eyes. Sorayama thus allows the viewer to focus on the lines of the women's bodies, heightening the erotic effect, yet we are not to forget how fantastical the illusion: these are not real women, no matter how real our pleasure.

Much more traditional and classical than most of his other stuff, this is an example of Sorayama's earlier work from the 80's. It doesn't have much of the futuristic hign tech surrealism of his other early works from that period like Sexy Robots and Gynoids. It does not have the outrageous hardcore sadomasochistic surrealism of his more recent works like Torquere and Naga. It actually has very little of the surrealism one has come to expect from Sorayama. In fact, it would be among the blandest of Sorayama's works if not for the fact it is less sanitized than Sexy Robots (i.e. depictions of pubic hair were left untouched). But it does have generous depictions of incredibly beautiful lush females. A lot of the stuff is from commercial advertising work that Sorayama had done. The paper quality is not glossy, and it actually rather poor. Overall, it's classic pinup art but with a more modern sensibility. It's still worth having in your Sorayama collection if you are Sorayama fanatic like me.