Man with Flowers

While undated, this portrait of a seminude male figure is consistent in style and tone with a large number of figural works Araki created over the course of around ten months, from late summer 1977 and to spring 1978. The figures in this series are commonly defaced by blots and smears of ink, but this portrait shows a near complete erasure of the man’s face with swaths of dark, wet ink, that partially represent his hair and beard but also conceal all but his mouth. Apart from this disfiguring, the seduction of the man’s pose—perhaps an invitation to a lover— is further amplified by the great attention the artist paid to his bulging crotch, which, owing to the bleeding of the pigments, also seems to emanate sexual energy. Araki added so much watery blue pigment to this area that it degraded the paper surface.