I came for the Prussian blue and wistful impressions of the floating world, I stayed - for three hours, actually running out of time to see the last few sections when the gallery closed - for the much wider palette (colour-literal and emotionally figurative) across this large and wonderful exhibition.
The ones from the 'Thirty-six views of Mt Fuji' were the highlight, each different in perspective and making space for the natural and the human world (the idea of them existing in harmony is a bit of a theme). One of the unexpected delights is the way that Hokusai's eye extends to a sympathetic and often joyful depiction of the people, tiny, who appear in his landscapes, like in this one, showing a group of travellers awed by an enormous tree:
The waterfalls weren't quite as dynamic but I did like this one, another that experiments a bit with perspective:
The bridges were also attractive, taking in a wide variety - different types of bridges, close up and more distant. And there's something inherently captivating about a bridge - the span and yearn, the point of passage and transition, and connection.
And my fancy was tickled by the story behind this illustration: a Chinese poet who was sent to Japan to subdue the country with his poetry, meets the Japanese god of poetry disguised as a fisherman, engages in a poetry and dancing contest, and is duly impressed by being told that in Japan the frogs and nightingales also write poetry.
(w/ Yee Fui)
The ones from the 'Thirty-six views of Mt Fuji' were the highlight, each different in perspective and making space for the natural and the human world (the idea of them existing in harmony is a bit of a theme). One of the unexpected delights is the way that Hokusai's eye extends to a sympathetic and often joyful depiction of the people, tiny, who appear in his landscapes, like in this one, showing a group of travellers awed by an enormous tree:
This one, "Reflection in Lake Misaka in Kai Province", is a bit of an outlier in how it explicitly plays with representation, depicting a winter reflection in a summer scene, with the reflection itself off-set from where it ought naturalistically to appear.
The waterfalls weren't quite as dynamic but I did like this one, another that experiments a bit with perspective:
The bridges were also attractive, taking in a wide variety - different types of bridges, close up and more distant. And there's something inherently captivating about a bridge - the span and yearn, the point of passage and transition, and connection.
And my fancy was tickled by the story behind this illustration: a Chinese poet who was sent to Japan to subdue the country with his poetry, meets the Japanese god of poetry disguised as a fisherman, engages in a poetry and dancing contest, and is duly impressed by being told that in Japan the frogs and nightingales also write poetry.
(w/ Yee Fui)
