When I was in London last year visiting the British Museum, I remembered being disappointed in not being able to see The Great Wave on display there due to construction.
I was thus quite pleasantly surprised when I read a road sign, that there was a Hokusai exhibit in Boston.
I quickly stole a glance at google translate and exclaimed IKU ZE to my wife - let's go!
I. The price is right
My company sponsors the Museum of Fine Arts, so we waltz in here for free!
II. The Phoenix
This rich and colorful painting was showcased at the entrance and in the original on a folding screen
III. 36 views of Mt. Fuji
What made Hokusai world renown is this series depicting Mount Fuji from different locations and in various seasons and weather conditions.
IV. Beyond Fuji
Hokusai's artistic range is breathtaking
From paintings on cloth that drapes royal gifts .....
.... to fans and screens
.... to natural life
.... to live action
V. Japanese Manga
Japanese style comics called Manga are quite popular these days. In fact, my son read several Shakespeare stories in Manga style comics. Hokusai devoted time to develop a series of such sketch books that were on display at the exhibit.
VI. The Great Wave of Kanagawa
The signature painting is a modest affair in terms of presentation. But justifiably famous.
Review: Mount Fuji does not dominate the frame, rather the wave does. So taken by the gigantic wave, it was easy to miss the three fishing boats depicted in the painting! Mt. Fuji, made tiny by the use of perspective, appears as if it too will be swallowed up by the wave.
The spray from top of the crashing wave looks like snow falling on the mountain. This was a good reference I picked up, that I did not notice while actually looking at the painting in the museum.
Also, there is one boat on top of the wave on the right, which if placed slightly to the left in the picture would block the view of the mountain.
I will admit that I was thinking of the gigantic wave on Miller's planet depicted in the movie Interstellar, while taking in this painting.
WSJ Review: http://www.wsj.com/articles/hokusai-review-a-masters-true-range-1434403505
5 comments:
Yes . Indeed he is a great painter
Another fascinating post by you! — I’d like to see this next time in Boston.
The Wave also looks like a bunch of hands/talons about to devour both mountain and boats. Sinister.
Hakusai and others of his ilk, as you know, were very influential on Western painters, particularly Impressionists, e.g., Gauguin.
Thanks for this. It was a wonderful (as in the true meaning of the word) way to start the morning after the night before. It brought back a bit of order to my neuronal chaos.
Speaking of which, it was always interesting to see the many ways Hokusai’s paintings were used as graphic metaphors for the various disciplines in complexity science… from fractal phenomena in nature as we see in the waves of the Wave painting:
a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.
And the notion of the process philosophy perspective in which substance becomes an illusion due to the particular time framework the perceiver brings to the observation. Such as a cloud looking ephemeral to us while a creature does not because the latter persists so long in our time frame… but which would seem as ephemeral as a momentary cloud formation to a perceiver with a 1,000-year time perspective. As also demonstrated by Hokusai’s graphic on the cloth cover for royal gifts depicting a dragon-like creature with cloud-like features.
Terrific stuff…
Thanks Tim! It was a pleasure visiting this exhibit. In an almost rosebud sort of a way I had a small box with Hokusai cards in my bedroom as a kid - something my dad had bought on one of his trips.
So I had a childhood recall to add to my emotional experience of these paintings!
Thanks for sharing, I had seen the picture "Great wave" virtually every where in Japan. I did not know the origin. The paintings are really great !
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