Artwork Title: Untitled,  (drawing for Das Kamasutra der Frösche, The Joy of Frogs)

Untitled, (drawing for Das Kamasutra der Frösche, The Joy of Frogs), 1982

Tomi Ungerer

Collection Musée Tomi Ungerer, Centre international de l’Illustration, Strasbourg. © Tomi Ungerer/Diogenes Verlag AG, Zürich. Photo courtesy Musées de la Ville de Strasbourg. Now, at 83 years old, Ungerer lives with his wife in a remote region of Ireland near Cork. He began his career in New York in the mid-1950s, living there until the ‘70s when he moved to a farm in Nova Scotia as a form of self-imposed exile. Over the years, he’s accomplished a lot. “I’ve done over 150 books, I write as much as I draw, and I have my sculptures and my architectural designs. I have my fingers in so many behinds,” he told Art News. If you detect a hint of bawdiness in Ungerer’s tone, you’re not off base. The artist has long dabbled in erotic drawings, including an illustrated Kama Sutra starring frogs, titled “Joy of Frogs.” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/23/tomi-ungerer_n_6518750.html) A collection of humorous cartoons featuring frogs in positions that the Karma Sutra has never even thought of. (https://books.google.com/books/about/Joy_of_Frogs.html) Ungerer, author/illustrator of Far Out Is Not Far Enough, here creates an amphibian Joy of Sex. His watercolors sketch frogs in all manner of compromising positions, obviously enjoying themselves. The book depicts frogs as kinky, sensual, erotic creatures, performing sexual acrobatics and being affectionate with each other. The watercolors are breezy and funny, but their explicitness will surely offend some, as is Ungerer's wont. This is a gift book one might be wise to present in plain brown wrapping. (http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-394-54922-4) NF I am fascinated by your images of sex, especially in Fornicon. Can you speak about your depictions of sexuality, women, and power? TU In Fornicon, I was showing the clinical aspect of lovemaking nowadays, which is being mechanized. I was struck at the time—it was the ’60s—by how in America one book came out after the other about how to do it. So I did The Joy of Frogs, which is a satire. It’s the Kama Sutra of Frogs, showing all the different positions—as if people didn’t have enough imagination for how to do it. The Fornicon was just an extension of the same thing—do people need gadgets and instruments? It was a rebellion against a mechanization of our lives, not only of sex. We live in a world that’s completely ruled by machines. I don’t have a computer. I don’t have a cell phone. I believe in my freedom. I don’t want to be tied up by everything that is imposed upon me. The drawings in Fornicon are medical. If you want to see some of my erotic works, look at the big album that is called Totempole, for instance. (http://bombmagazine.org/article/2359112/tomi-ungerer)
Uploaded on Apr 21, 2017 by Suzan Hamer

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