Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave (British Museum)

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This five-star exhibition showcased a collection of rare drawings by Katsushika Hokusai – one of Japan's most celebrated artists, best known for his iconic print, Under the Wave off Kanagawa, popularly called The Great Wave. From the age of six, I had a passion for copying the form of things and since the age of fifty I have published many drawings, yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking into account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvellous and divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of its own. [27]

Thompson, Sarah E. (2019). Hokusai's landscapes: the complete series (Firsted.). Boston: MFA publications Museum of fine arts. pp.151–165. ISBN 978-0-87846-866-9. Feltens adds, “Especially in the early-19th century, that longing for the exotic and the unknown became incredibly pronounced in intellectual circles.”This image is a particularly impressive example of the erotic genre known as 'shunga,' which translates literally to the euphemistic 'pictures of spring,' which was particularly popular in the nineteenth century. The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife was and continues to be popular primarily due to Hokusai's skill in capturing female pleasure, with the open position of the woman's body, her reclining head, closed eyes and open mouth evoking her sense of abandon and inspiring viewers' own flights of fantasy.

Set alongside his prints, Hokusai’s rarely exhibited late paintings – large hanging scrolls on silk and paper – strike a different note. The subjects are often fantastical: a great dragon writhes in a rain cloud rising above Mount Fuji; a seven-headed dragon deity flies in the sky above the monk Nichiren (Hokusai was a devout follower), sitting on a mountain top reading from a sutra scroll. Hokusai created a lot of various series, and I find them incredibly interesting as a phenomenon. The series could be quite simple and decorative (just nature, flowers, still-life pictures), they could be extremely beautiful and represent the world in all its brightness, they could be about people and their different activities, they could be very funny or scary, they could be deeply philosophical and illustrate some cultural or historical aspects and/or required a whole story for each of the picture. They are endlessly interesting and beautiful. It is very difficult to believe that one person could have such imagination and such talent to create all those hundreds of pictures. Morse, Peter (1989). Hokusai: One Hundred Poets. George Braziller, New York. ISBN 978-0-8076-1213-2. Depicting scenes from Buddhist India, ancient China and the natural world, the brush drawings not only showcased Hokusai's inimitable style and skill, but also revealed a version of 19th-century Japan much more intrigued by the wider world than previously thought. The next period saw Hokusai's association with the Tawaraya School and the adoption of the name "Tawaraya Sōri". He produced many privately commissioned prints for special occasions ( surimono), and illustrations for books of humorous poems ( kyōka ehon) during this time. In 1798, Hokusai passed his name on to a pupil and set out as an independent artist, free from ties to a school for the first time, adopting the name Hokusai Tomisa.The earliest contemporary record of Hokusai dates from the year 1778, when, at the age of 18, he became a pupil of the leading ukiyo-e master, Katsukawa Shunshō. The young Hokusai’s first published works appeared the following year—actor prints of the kabuki theatre, the genre that Shunshō and the Katsukawa school practically dominated. Kadar, Endre E.; Effken, Judith A. (5 November 2008). "Paintings as Architectural Space: "Guided Tours" by Cézanne and Hokusai". Ecological Psychology. 20 (4): 299–327. doi: 10.1080/10407410802421874. Believed to have been born on October 30, 1760 (even he wasn’t completely sure), Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter, and printmaker Katsushika Hokusai went by more than 30 names throughout his career. Although changing names was common practice among Japanese artists at the time, Hokusai took the tradition even further by giving himself a new pseudonym every few years. His adopted names included Shunro, Sori, Kako, Taito, Gakyojin, Manji, and of course (as he’s most well-known), Katsushika Hokusai—a name he kept for half a century. “Katsushika” refers to the part of Edo (the former name of Tokyo until 1868) where he was born, while “Hokusai” means “north studio.” Browse the Arthur and Charlotte Vershbow Collection of Japanese illustrated books at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Old Tiger in the Snow is one of Hokusai's last works and can be read as autobiographical, expressing Hokusai's feelings on his own age and the process of aging. The red seal in the lower right corner reads '100,' a detail which some critics have suggested could mean Hokusai was willing himself to live longer. The tiger, too, can be seen as a representation of the artist's energy and ambition, at an advanced age or as he moves into the afterlife. The tiger holds its head high and has a satisfied expression on its face as he moves forward with no sign of slowing down, suggesting contentment and fearlessness. Mark Williams and Danny Penman (2011). Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, pp. 249, 250–251. The poem is also at Hokusai Says – Gratefulness.org.The Asahi Shimbun Company is a longstanding corporate sponsor of the British Museum. The Asahi Shimbun is a Japanese leading newspaper and the company also provides a substantial information service via the internet. The company has a century-long tradition of philanthropic support, notably staging key exhibitions in Japan on art, culture and history from around the world. In addition to supporting Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything, The Asahi Shimbun Company also supports The Asahi Shimbun Displays in Room 3 and is a committed supporter of the British Museum touring exhibition programme in Japan. They are the funder of The Asahi Shimbun Gallery of Amaravati sculpture in Room 33a of the British Museum, and a supporter of the iconic Great Court. The newly digitized drawings depict religious, mythological, historical and literary figures, as well as animals, flowers, landscapes and other natural phenomena, according to the statement. Subjects span ancient Southeast and Central Asia, with a particular emphasis on China and India. Hokusai signed his Thirty-Six Views with the name Iitsu, adding for clarification that he was “the former Hokusai”. It was common in Japan, as in China, for artists to adopt different names throughout their careers, marking different stages of life, and perhaps also as a way of refreshing the brand. He adopted the name Hokusai (“North Studio”) in his late 40s, when he became an independent artist, leaving his teaching job and striking out on his own. Despite his appeals to heaven for “yet another decade—nay, even another five years,” on the 18th day of the fourth month of the Japanese calendar “the old man mad with painting,” as he called himself, breathed his last. He was 89 but still insatiably seeking for an ultimate truth in art—as he had written 15 years earlier: