Tale of 1000 Condoms/Geisha and Skeleton

Masami Teraoka, Tale of 1000 Condoms/Geisha and Skeleton, 1989, watercolor and sumi-e ink on canvas, 133 x 83 in. (337.9 x 210.9 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment, 1996.105, © 1989, Masami Teraoka

Artwork Details

Title: Tale of 1000 Condoms/Geisha and Skeleton
Artist: Masami Teraoka
Date: 1989
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 133 x 83 in. (337.9 x 210.9 cm.)
Copyright: © 1989, Masami Teraoka
Credit Line: Museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment
Mediums: watercolor
Mediums Description: watercolor and sumi-e ink on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: State of being — illness — AIDS
Dress — Japanese dress
Figure — fragment — skeleton
Occupation — other — prostitute
Japanese
Figure female — full length
Object Number: 1996.105
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1996.105

Artwork Description

Masami Teraoka came to California from Japan when he was twenty-five years old. His works reflect the Japanese ukiyo-e, or floating world, block prints of the nineteenth century and the American appetite for "painting big." He came of age in the free-love culture of the 1960s, but by the 1980s he was creating dark, satirical images of sexuality in the age of AIDS. He began painting these works after a friend's baby contracted the disease, and Teraoka understood for the first time the isolation and fear that govern its victims.

A geisha preparing for a night of love tears open a pack of condoms as a former client—now reduced to a fleshless cadaver—crawls through her door. He complains that he took a subway to get there and says, "I felt bad on the train because everybody was afraid of me." Teraoka makes no judgments about sex and death. Instead, he focuses on the moment when his viewers' disinterestedness gives way to feeling "shock and naked."

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006