18 ASIAN ART Japanese Art


Te waterfall where Yoshitsune washed his horse in Yoshino, Yamato province from Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces, colour woodblock, 1833. Bequeathed by Charles Shannon RA. © Te Trustees of the British Museum. On display from 7 July to 13 August


E


ver since the age of six I have had a mania for drawing the forms of objects. Towards the age


of fifty I published a very large number of drawings, but I am dissatisfied with everything which I produced before the age of seventy. It was at the age of seventy-three I nearly mastered the real nature and form of birds, fish, plants etcetera. Consequently, at the age of eighty, I shall have got to the bottom of things; at one hundred I shall have attained a decidedly higher level which I cannot define, and at the age of one-hundred-and-ten every dot and every line from my brush will be alive. I call on those who may live as long as I to see if I keep my word’ - signed, formerly Hokusai, now the Painting- Crazy Old Man. From One Hundred views of Fuji. - translated by Harold P Stern


In fact Katsushika Hokusai (1760-


1849) lived until he was 90, in an era of Japanese society when the average life expectancy was forty-five. Clearly he fervently believed that his art and accumulated life experiences were constantly burnishing his technical skill, as well as the more indefinable transcendent aspects of his work, and would improve with age. He was always so exacting in his demands on the block cutters for his prints, with ever more intricate details, since he wanted his drawn lines to be reproduced as faithfully as possible, that there were complaints from publishers, since inevitably – fees were perceived as exorbitant for such detail and expertise. Hokusai was told: ‘Your pictures are too detailed. Tey are not pictures any more. Do something about it!’ Hokusai’s response was: ‘If your technique is clumsy to begin with, as you grow older, it will very quickly get worse … Day by day in my old age, I am developing my technique by building on my past failures. Even though I am nearly eighty, my eyesight and the strength of my brush are no different from when I was young. Let me live to be a hundred and I will be without equal.’ In 1848, the year before his death and the publication of his final painting manual, Picture Book:


Essence of


Colouring the signature on one of his last prints – Pine Trees and Full Moon, includes:


And indeed the textures of the tree bark and the individual pine needles are incredibly intricately drawn. Te British Museum’s seminal exhibition this summer is Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave, focusing on the last 30 years of his life from around 1820 to 1849, when not only was he prodigiously productive,


but also ‘eye glasses not needed’.


Self-portrait, aged eighty-three. Drawing in a letter, ink on paper, 1842. National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden. On display from to 13 August.


Boys’ Festival attributed to Hokusai, ink and colour on old Dutch paper, 1824-1826. National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden. On display from 7 July to 13 August.


HOKUSAI BEYOND


THE GREAT WAVE by Juliet Highet


created his greatest works of art. He is not only widely acclaimed as Japan’s greatest artist, but his iconic print Te Great Wave, circa 1831, is as world famous as Botticelli’s Te Birth of Venus or Andy Warhol’s prints of Marilyn Monroe. As the Hokusai scholar Roger S Keyes points out: ‘Te Great Wave, though compelling as it is, is only one of (some) 3,000 colour prints that Hokusai designed during a 70-year career … In addition he drew illustrations for over 200 books, frequently in sets of many volumes. Hundreds of drawings and nearly 1,000 paintings also survive. Paintings were a major focus of the artist’s work in his final years,


ASIAN ART SUMMER QUARTER 2017


particularly in his last decade, the 1840’s.’ Hokusai was also a highly literate man, associating closely with writers and poets, illustrating many of their books. Furthermore, he was a prolific writer, fiction,


light verse, educated prose,


‘producing stylish riddles and


including brush


drawing manuals and a treatise on colour’. In particular, the paintings rather than the prints of these last 30 years are awe-inspiring, the apogee of his genius as an artist, transmitting his personal beliefs. As the Director of the British Museum, Hartwig Fischer points out, the exhibition takes us literally and metaphorically ‘beyond


the Great Wave, to explore Hokusai’s artistic and spiritual journey during his last three inspiring and innovative decades. Te British Museum purchased its first Hokusai print in 1860,’ and in 2008 rounded out its collection of other Hokusai works by the


acquisition of ‘a fine early


impression of the Great Wave print’. Hokusai:


Beyond the Great Wave


presents the fascinating story of an artist constantly innovating, overcoming the challenges of old age and often precarious life circumstances to produce sublime art. ‘Te exhibition demonstrates how his vision evolved from the more commonplace images of his early work to an increasing


Dragon rising above Mt Fuji, hanging scroll, ink and slight colour on silk, 1849, Hokusaikan, Obuse. On display to 2 July


emphasis on the spiritual significance of this and other worlds in his later work.


He used deep perspective and


imported Prussian blue pigment in Te Great Wave adapting and experimenting with European artistic style. A rare group of paintings in the exhibition, lent by the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, show considerable European influence. Tey were commissioned by employees of the Dutch East East India Company around 1824-1826. Whether the adoption of aspects of European style indicates Hokusai’s acumen as a commercial artist, or genuine inspiration, is a moot point. One of the European techniques he adopted was the use of shading, animating his subjects, in particular – still lives, plants, birds and animals. Hokusai’s


life and work are


characterised by his generous, all- embracing view of humanity. He celebrates people from all walks of life, exemplified by his last great print series, begun when he was 76, titled One Hundred Poems by One Hundred Poets, Explained by the Nurse. She is an uneducated woman whose wisdom and knowledge of life are apparent in the


prints, along with her comic


misunderstanding of some of the puns in the poems, with hilarious and sometimes bawdy results. Te Nurse’s


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