[HN Gopher] Ten Things to Know about the Great Wave
___________________________________________________________________
Ten Things to Know about the Great Wave
Author : msephton
Score : 147 points
Date : 2024-09-07 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.artic.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.artic.edu)
| kaycebasques wrote:
| Wow! Never thought about it like this before:
|
| > Because Japanese text is read from right to left, the earliest
| viewers of The Great Wave would have likely read the print that
| way too, first encountering the boaters and then meeting the
| great claw of water about to swallow them. So instead of riding
| along with the gargantuan wave as you might in a left-to-right
| reading, they would face right into the massive wall of ocean.
|
| Reversed image from the article to demonstrate: https://artic-
| web.imgix.net/5c05c38c-1c80-446f-a3db-4b95b42e...
| AnonHP wrote:
| Historical Japanese text, written vertically, is read top to
| bottom and right to left (like in those prints). On the other
| hand, more modern text (including what's more common now) is
| read left to right when written horizontally. There are some
| more variations on directionality.
|
| Nevertheless, the picture does look and convey a different
| impression when flipped.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This is true of documents, text messages, social media etc.,
| but most books, magazines and other printed matter are still
| done vertically and R-L.
| cubefox wrote:
| Wow, I didn't know that! I thought vertical text was a
| thing of the past. Interesting.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I'm probably lower-intermediate at Japanese, so take this
| with a grain of salt.
|
| I find that reading vertical text feels better, even
| though I first learned to read horizontal text. I don't
| know if this is all in my mind, or it really does have
| some appeal to it, though.
| bdowling wrote:
| It's rare in modern times, but sometimes you may encounter a
| sign board written horizontally right-to-left, as in this
| sign above the front entrance to the Nippon Budokan:
|
| https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nippon_Budokan_-_2.
| ..
| ginko wrote:
| I think that's just the natural direction to draw a wave as a
| right handed person.
| jasonjamerson wrote:
| Interesting. It's a woodblock print, so I think it would have
| been created backwards from the final product?
| litenboll wrote:
| I feel really dumb, but I have never even noticed the boats. In
| the reversed I see them very clearly, but in the original the
| wave is completely dominating the view (now I see the boats of
| course, but my focus is completely on the wave by default).
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Me too! I'd only ever noticed the waves
| bloopernova wrote:
| I have several versions of this, I just enjoy looking at them. I
| have a desk mat, Lego set, and my favourite:
|
| https://shop.kozyndan.com/products/uprisings-poster
|
| Would the original be considered impressionist?
| benkuykendall wrote:
| No. Hokusai pre-dated Impressionism by a couple of decades, but
| his work was known in Paris and almost certainly influenced the
| movement. Also worth noting this particular work's influence on
| Impressionist music: see the cover of Debussy's La Mer.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Thank you for a great answer :)
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| The Lego set is gorgeous. I was impressed that the finished
| design has built-in hardware in case you want to hang it on a
| wall!
| parpfish wrote:
| I've been seeing this print my entire life, but last year was the
| first time I realized that there were boats and Mount Fuji. I was
| always so captivated by the claws on the wave that i never looked
| away from them
| Loughla wrote:
| And here I am never even noticing the claws.
| adrianN wrote:
| There is a very good multi part video about creating a facsimile
| of the print on YouTube https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jAhiMCSvtCc
| adamgordonbell wrote:
| I first encountered it in a class where we looked at the whole
| series. It gives this sense of Japan being very diverse of
| setting, but always in the shadows of Fuji.
|
| I've not been to Japan, and not sure of the accuracy of the size
| of Fuji but it does make it feel like wherever you are, Fuji is
| there watching.
| norir wrote:
| It is really awe inspiring to be in the presence of a great
| mountain like that. I was once driving up to Bend, Oregon
| (where I'd never been) at night with a friend and didn't notice
| Mt. Shasta on the horizon as we approached. At some point I
| looked over to my right and it was looming directly above us.
| It was almost scary. I had a visceral reaction to its presence.
| Not dissimilar to the experience of seeing the grand canyon for
| the first time in person.
| rachofsunshine wrote:
| Posters who have been to Seattle on a sunny day in summer may
| have a point of reference.
|
| Mount Rainier, at a bit over 14,000 feet, is just a bit taller
| than Mt. Fuji (a bit over 12,000), and both are similarly-
| shaped stratovolcanoes. Kanagawa Prefecture (the "Kanagawa" in
| the print's name) is part of the greater Tokyo area, so a wave
| "off Kanagawa" is either in Tokyo Bay or in the Pacific just
| outside of it. Wikipedia's analysis suggests the perspective is
| from southern Tokyo Bay, around 60 miles from the peak of Mount
| Fuji. And downtown Seattle is, as it happens, about 60 miles
| from the peak of Mount Rainier.
|
| So the view of Rainier from Seattle is quite similar to the
| view from of Fuji in the print. The view from Tokyo proper
| would place Fuji slightly smaller than Rainier, since Tokyo is
| slightly more distant from Fuji than Seattle is from Rainier,
| and since Fuji is the slightly smaller of the two mountains.
| xxr wrote:
| This is another great introduction to the piece that provides an
| economic background to the subject: https://youtu.be/hGxIS6Vj0cM.
| In a way it's similar to a lot of the WPA posters in the US or
| socialist realist labor posters from the USSR.
| bazzargh wrote:
| My own toots-worth of code version for the bbcmicrobot
| https://mastodon.me.uk/@bbcmicrobot/111846600975531195
|
| Mandelbrot wrote about the Great Wave having fractal like
| properties (eg here in an interview
| https://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/obrist10/obrist10_index.htm...)
| but I hadn't seen an attempt to use a fractal to draw it; good
| subjects for the bbcmicrobot use repetition to help fit the code
| in so it suggested itself.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I've always loved this piece of art, and other similar works. One
| of my favorite contemporary Japanese artists borrows from that
| tradition, and I never get a chance to plug her work so I'll link
| to it here. Her name is Asuka Ohsawa:
| https://www.asukaohsawa.com/drawings-2#/archive/
| teo_zero wrote:
| > If not the most famous artwork in the world
|
| Wait, what?? Am I the only one who thinks this sentence is off by
| an order of magnitude? I'd bet that the Great Wave is not even
| one of the 10 most famous. Unfortunately I have no evidence to
| support my statement...
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| Its certainly one of the most influential. The style still
| echoes in modern anime Japanese animation.
| gus_massa wrote:
| In https://www.google.com/search?q=famous+artwork I got it at
| the 26th position.
|
| The search gives a few lists, but all of them feel western-
| biased.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| The results are almost all ranking paintings, and the Great
| Wave is not a painting.
| zwayhowder wrote:
| One thing that I fully internalised only recently - despite
| learning Asian languages for literally decades. The things
| western people take for granted as ubiquitous in our culture
| are often unknown to Asian cultures.
|
| As an example recently talking to a Japanese friend who is the
| same age as me we realised she had seen less than 10% of the
| movies that "everyone born in the early 80's has seen". She
| didn't know who OJ Simpson was, nor is she familiar with Henry
| VIII and his 6 wives. She knew the Backstreet Boys & One
| Direction, but not Take That nor East 17.
|
| Traveling in China a few years ago I was surprised to see many
| Hokusai images used on clothing and shop decorations.
|
| The Mona Lisa might be the western world's most famous artwork,
| but you rarely see it on a T-shirt unless you're meeting a
| tourist near the Louvre. I suspect that if both were in still
| trademarked that Hokusai would be making orders of magnitude
| more on royalties than Da Vinci...
| seszett wrote:
| > _She didn 't know who OJ Simpson was, nor is she familiar
| with Henry VIII and his 6 wives. She knew the Backstreet Boys
| & One Direction, but not Take That nor East 17._
|
| Well, I'm French and it's the same for me. I think what
| Americans (and the British? I know Henry VIII is a king if
| England, even if I have no idea how many wives he could have
| had) greatly overestimate how shared their culture is in the
| western world.
|
| Though living in Belgium I've noticed the Flemish are much
| more aware of such American things than we are, so maybe it's
| just the French who aren't well integrated into the "global
| western" culture.
| tptacek wrote:
| Well, both the Met and the Art Institute of Chicago disagree
| with you on that. One thing that'll throw you off, mentioned in
| the article: the Wave isn't a painting, and if you look for
| artwork rankings (it's the Internet, of course these exist)
| they tend to rank paintings.
|
| The Waves at the Art Institute aren't their most iconic,
| popular pieces; that honor probably goes to Seurat's Sunday
| Afternoon.
|
| I should get back over there soon. It's been forever.
| smitty1e wrote:
| My claim to fame in life is having hauled a highland bagpipe up
| Mt. Fuji and blown "Amazing Grace" at the summit.
|
| Which is a terrible idea. The air pressure at that altitude does
| not support driving four reeds, especially through a splitting
| headache.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" Japanese woodblock prints are particularly affected by
| exposure to light that can fade their colors and damage the paper
| they're printed on. "It's always a balancing act between wanting
| to show works like The Great Wave so that our visitors have a
| chance to experience them and preserving these works for the
| future," Katz says. "We work closely with our conservators to set
| the parameters for the display of works on paper.""_
|
| Imagine if there were quantum-mechanical minds that were able to
| appreciate quantum-mechanical art, but, the very _act_ of
| contemplating, comprehending the art irreversibly degraded it.
| What a beautifully sad thought! A stark finiteness, like NFT 's
| for conscious experiences.
|
| Dyes are destroyed by the very light that illuminates them to
| visibility. Observation is destructive.
| kragen wrote:
| they can be, especially textile dyes, but in this case i think
| it's more the paper and binders that are damaged. prussian blue
| is quite light-stable despite containing iron ions, and there
| are plenty of black and white pigments that are light-stable
| over even geological time
| radpanda wrote:
| I'd imagine somewhere there's an engineer-artist putting such a
| print in a brightly lit locked box, which is programmed not to
| open until the interior light has shined long enough to
| eradicate the image on the print. (No idea if we have circuitry
| and LEDs that last long enough to make such a thing feasible).
| layer8 wrote:
| That's how food works.
| layer8 wrote:
| Another thing to know is that the prints aren't all the same:
| https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/great-wave-spot-differenc...
|
| Also, here's a nice Lego version:
| https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/12/jumpei-mitsui-great-w...
| somishere wrote:
| I remember reading that many of the prints attributed to Hokusai
| are likely imitations of what was a fairly well known style at
| the time. Not sure how much truth there is to it? Can't find
| anything saying as much in a quick google.
|
| As an aside, I have a large print of the great wave by my front
| door. It's such a powerful image. I was also surprised how easy
| it is to find quality, quite old woodblock prints in Japan at
| very reasonable prices (tho not by masters!).
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-09-07 23:00 UTC)