[HN Gopher] The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for genera...
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The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for generations (2019)
Author : Tomte
Score : 82 points
Date : 2021-04-30 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (edition.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (edition.cnn.com)
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I've seen original printings of this at the Chicago Art Museum.
| To be honest I think the concept of the great wave influences a
| great deal of Hayao Miyazaki's films when either water or a
| miasma is portrayed.
| xrd wrote:
| Hokusai is also the father of modern day comic books, and manga.
|
| https://blog.britishmuseum.org/hokusai-the-father-of-manga/
|
| A prolific artist.
| Cerium wrote:
| You may find David Bull's youtube content interesting. He is a
| Japanese woodblock printer living in Asakusa, Tokyo, where he
| runs a print shop. In 2015 he did a reproduction of the Great
| Wave and documented the progress online:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhiMCSvtCc&list=PLK-Wicsj5r...
| secondcoming wrote:
| I bought one of these. I've yet to actually display it.
|
| Beware the import charges!
|
| I like the technique of wood block printing, but I'm not hugely
| taken with the cartoony nature of some of his prints.
| gennarro wrote:
| Love that series. Totally worth the time to watch it. I bought
| a small print of his after watching it and it's so cool.
| rwmj wrote:
| I finally managed to buy one of the prints of his Great Wave
| last year and it's a very beautiful thing.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Everything I know about Japanese wood carving is from David
| Bull's channel. Great content.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I knew I've seen this style before. The Great Wave has definitely
| been reproduced all over the place.
|
| The most recent "reproduction" is the "Water Breathing" from
| Demon Slayer. Every water attack from the water-users is depicted
| with a "Great Wave-like" painting.
|
| https://static3.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2...
|
| What's interesting about Demon Slayer's artstyle is their ability
| to animate this style. Which is shown pretty well throughout the
| Demon Slayer's opening. It really looks great in motion.
|
| https://youtu.be/jiJu4K2jems?t=59
|
| ---------
|
| Glad to know the name of this classic woodblock painting that's
| inspired so many others.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| No mystery, it's just an example of really good poster art. I've
| always liked 'The Lucky Tea Kettle of Morin Temple'.
|
| Now....Color Field artists and the fact that people pay the big
| bucks for some of them, that's the kind of thing that can mystify
| you.
| aeontech wrote:
| This is a great print and a great story, thanks for that :)
|
| Link for those who are also curious like me:
| https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cyw/id/314/
| blt wrote:
| If you have only seen color field paintings in books, seeing
| them in person at a museum might help resolve some of the
| mystery. They can have a powerful physical presence. Maybe
| still overpriced, but not worthless.
| kingsuper20 wrote:
| The better color field paintings strike me as good quality
| industrial graphics art, perfect for a textbook/album cover
| or a corporate HQ lobby. Time will tell on whether Rothko is
| a scam or has lasting value. I fully appreciate the self-
| belief and self-marketing that goes into this stuff, a form
| of visual John Cage.
|
| My favorite ones, and I wish I could find an example as my
| Google-Fu is failing me, are the guys that simply paint a
| whole canvas a solid color. Basically metastasized paint
| chips.
| blt wrote:
| Ellsworth Kelly?
| munificent wrote:
| I respect people who have differing opinions but standing
| in front of a Rothko close enough to have it fill my entire
| field of vision is still one of my favorite experiences
| with art.
|
| Even in reproductions, I find his paintings to be evocative
| and emotive.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| You can see a recent CCP parody of the "Great Wave", with dumping
| of the Fukushima nuclear waste into the ocean:
|
| https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1386635238986510341
|
| (The Chinese government is not happy with waste being dumped into
| the S. China Sea, or any interference into their ghost fishing
| fleet.)
| minikites wrote:
| I really liked this older blog post about visually mirroring the
| Great Wave so you see the boatmen first: https://diamantia-kai-
| skouria.blogspot.com/2011/03/looking-a...
|
| >Your initial focus was no longer on the overwhelming wave.
| Instead, your automatic visual scanning habits focused you first
| on the struggling boatmen and their descent into the wave as it
| begins to tumble over them.
| the_af wrote:
| Interesting! I was aware the Japanese (and other cultures) read
| from right to left, but it never occurred to me that this was
| also how they visually scanned paintings and images.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I wonder if this also explains something with TikTok.
|
| If you want to respond to video, you can use a feature called
| Duet, and this places the original video and your video side
| by side. But, to my surprise, it places the original video on
| the right and the response video on the left.
|
| TikTok was apparently launched in China before going
| international. Maybe to a Chinese audience, this layout is
| more natural?
| twirlock wrote:
| I hit the back button when I realized it was CNN i.e. when I
| realized there's no telling what kind of propaganda they're
| trying to sneak in.
| blt wrote:
| I don't understand where "mystified" in the title is coming from.
| This is a great work of art but what is mysterious about it?
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Yeah, I feel like any of "fascinated", "intrigued", or
| "captivated" would have been better.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| It's from Japan
| TchoBeer wrote:
| The most mysterious of countries
| genericone wrote:
| America: "Japanese culture is just so weird! ...Here are
| the top 9 weirdest Japan things!"
|
| I think its become a meme at this point, perpetuated by
| blogs that lack original content.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| Japan itself has a homegrown industry of claiming it is
| utterly different from all other nations. This has led
| Japanese academics to e.g. claim that the Japanese cannot
| eat imported rice because only local rice is compatible
| with their anatomy. Or another example (common through
| the 1970s, less found today with the larger amount of
| immigrant labour): foreigners should be taught only a
| simplified and artificial form of Japanese, because no
| way could foreign brains ever grasp the real Japanese
| language.
|
| So, when foreigners speak of Japan as weird, this only
| plays into Japanese own attitude.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah the weirdness of Japan thing is very much a meme
| sort of thing that I think can be pushed by folks on the
| inside, but the nature of Japanese society (not
| necessarily all individuals) still seems somewhat closed
| / walled off and that IMO is probably the origin / feeds
| / fed the meme.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| > Japan itself has a homegrown industry of claiming it is
| utterly different from all other nations.
|
| Pretty much all countries have this sort of narrative
| about themselves, at least among each country's patriots.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| The same kind of folks who didn't/wouldn't care to know a
| thing about anything outside of America before the
| "information" age now have the luxury of getting the most
| simplistic representation piped into their heads via
| clickbait and mass media.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Perhaps the editor was using some poetic license; since "
| _Myst_ ified" sounds like _mist_ , it could be a play on the
| spray coming from the wave.
|
| That's probably being generous though.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Discussion from a year ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025618
| newdude116 wrote:
| I love the "Great Wave" and it reminds me of fractals:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal
|
| I think the painting has great similarities to fractals, before
| fractals were "discovered".
|
| Another one of his works (Not save for work!)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s...
| [deleted]
| ianai wrote:
| Love these two quotes by Hokusai (source:
| http://hokusai.us.com/quotes_en ):
|
| "From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the shapes of
| things. When I was fifty I had published a universe of designs.
| But all I have done before the age of seventy is not worth
| bothering with. At seventy-five I'll have learned something of
| the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds,
| fish and insects. When I am eighty you will see real progress. At
| ninety I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life
| itself. At one hundred, I shall be a marvellous artist. At 110,
| everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never
| before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I
| promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used
| to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign myself The Old Man Mad
| About Drawing."
|
| "If heaven had granted me five more years, I could have become a
| real painter."
| tootie wrote:
| My favorite Hokusai fact is that he is also credited with
| inventing tentacle porn.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dream_of_the_Fisherman%27s...
| aidenn0 wrote:
| TIL it's only 3 clicks from "The Great Wave" to "La Blue
| Girl" on wikipedia...
| ianai wrote:
| He also apparently never lived in the same place long. He'd
| move instead of cleaning anything.
| freetime2 wrote:
| > That Hokusai employed the hue as the principal actor in his
| oceanic drama suggests that he was depicting Japan on the cusp of
| change. As much as the wave portends instability and danger, it
| also suggests possibility and adventure.
|
| Does the author have any real evidence to believe the wave was
| intended to be a metaphor of change coming to Japan? Or that the
| choice of blue pigment was anything more than using the best
| technology available at the time?
| lubujackson wrote:
| As the article mentions, the use of the new blue pigment was a
| critical part of the image's immediate success and ubiquity.
| Obviously the image needed to be great to maintain it's
| popularity, but many hugely popular historic art pieces have some
| "shiny new" element that gives them that initial boost.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| How does that explain it's enduring _modern_ appeal?
| DylanDmitri wrote:
| There's maybe ten woodblocks with the potential for enduring
| modern appeal. But only one had an initial popularity spike
| that let it break through and claim enough cultural real
| estate to become self sufficient.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > There's maybe ten woodblocks with the potential for
| enduring modern appeal.
|
| Do you have links to any of them? Is love to see others
| that are considered great.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The article talks about how it influenced many artists from
| later generations, especially with impressionists.
| Impressionism was popular enough that researchers understood
| this through line pretty well. This image continues to
| influence artists today. Check out the cover of this Debussy
| composition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_mer_(Debussy).
| There aren't such homages on this scale to others like
| Yoshitoshi or Sharaku.
|
| There were also a lot of prints of this thing, which means
| many museums can have a print and display it, so it reaches a
| larger audience that way, too. Visitors to LA, NY, Chicago,
| London, Brussels, and more have always been able to see a
| print.
|
| From there, the image of the Great Wave exists in
| merchandising, which the article also mentions. Uniqlo made a
| shirt with the image printed all over it.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It's mysterious but familiar enough to be easy to read and
| has a strong narrative. It has also become iconic. So it's
| reproduced more often than other Fu Shi Hui prints, and the
| public is more aware of it than of other art in the
| tradition.
| ghaff wrote:
| It may also be worth observing that a lot of Japanese
| woodblock art is of very traditional subjects, e.g.
| somewhat stereotypical geisha scenes, upper-class women,
| etc.
|
| A lot of Hokusai's work branched out as did some mode
| modern woodblock artists.
|
| This is hardly unique to Japan. Look how many Madonna and
| Child or Crucifixion scenes there were in Renaissance
| paintings.
| pradn wrote:
| Ultramarine was a huge success in Renaissance art. The blue is
| still mesmerizing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarine
|
| See Sassoferrato's Madonna:
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sassoferrato_-_Jungf...
|
| Turner and Van Gogh used this special Indian Yellow, imported
| from India, and made from the urine of cows fed mango leaves.
|
| https://hinduaesthetic.medium.com/the-mystery-of-the-origin-...
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Ultramarine wasn't just more expensive than gold, it was also
| ordered by area.
|
| A painter's commission would say "...And such an such an area
| of ultramarine", the better to show off the buyer's wealth
| and status.
| dominicjj wrote:
| It's a pity lead is so poisonous over time because white
| pigment made from lead is just superior for oil painting.
| Skin tones in particular glow in a way that just doesn't
| happen with other kinds of white. I bought a small quantity
| once from a local madman who claimed he made it from lead
| weights and horse manure and it was stunning stuff. Not worth
| the exposure risk in my opinion but the quality of the
| pigment was undeniable.
| tablespoon wrote:
| IIRC, the use of perspective to depict Mount Fuji as a small
| thing in the background was also an innovative thing in
| Japanese art at the time.
| opsy2 wrote:
| I very much recommend this interactive piece from NYT (potential
| paywall) on another of Hokusai's prints:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/07/arts/design/h...
|
| It gives an appreciation of the detail in some of these pieces as
| well as the medium's history and western consumption.
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