(No title) from Sadao Hasegawa 01 (1990).
It’s good to be able to finish the year with another artistic discovery. I’d not come across Sadao Hasegawa’s work before but this page has an extensive (complete?) selection of his paintings and drawings. This is gay erotica with a twist, being Japanese in origin yet incorporating figures and symbolism derived from Indian or Thai mythology, detailed psychotropic invention and the kind of angular motifs common in much illustration and design of the 1980s. A heady brew, in other words, and quite unique as a result, which makes it all the more tragic that he committed suicide in 1999. At least one of his books, Paradise Visions, is still available in Japan but a decent collection of his work for a western audience is obviously long overdue.
Paradise Visions (1996).