Hokusai to Jeff Wall: how images circulate (NYT)

[lynnb]

There's an interesting (to me, anyway) article in the NYT about how images circulate in a cosmopolitan world; about how ideas in one culture at one point in time (Hokusai's woodblock print "Ejiri in Suruga Province", c.1830) are picked up and developed in other cultures and then re-exported, and so it goes on... in this case ending in Jeff Wall's 1993 A Sudden Gust of Wind (after Hokusai), a photographic homage to Hokusai's woodblock print - which in itself was influenced by both Western and Asian rendering of perspective.

If you like Ukiyo-e and have an interest in how art influences art and photography, you might enjoy this article. The NYT is paywalled but I think you can access a few articles each month for free.

 

[Bmoze]

I read that today. Very interesting and well done art history, with an excellent use of graphics. Learned a lot.

 

[peterm1]

Thank you for this, I will read it with interest.

I have been fascinated in the past with how the great ukiyo-e woodblock artists like Hokusai and Hiroshige could capture such transient moments given how time consuming the process of making wood block prints is. Especially considering that every color has to have its own separate block made - each of which must register precisely with every other block. Wonderful stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=40&v=vhbSt_EVb7I&feature=emb_logo

I am also deeply impressed by some of the early 20th century work of Kawase Hasui (1883 -1957) which draws on this aesthetic and technique. Though he also used watercolor a lot too.

Much of his work is just sublime and I find it very accessible given its slightly more contemporary subjects and the fact that he was a prominent member of what in Japan was called the "new print" movement who studied and was trained in Western style painting. (I guess the influencing goes both ways.) Also I am not quite sure about how he does it (it must be something to do with the subjects chosen) but his images seem to evoke the early Showa period, at least for me. That is to say they just "feel" different to the work of the earlier masters of this artform.

More Pinterest links for Hasui.

https://www.pinterest.com.au/search...se hasui&eq=kawase hasui&etslf=6763&term_meta[]=kawase%7Cautocomplete%7C0&term_meta[]=hasui%7Cautocomplete%7C0