Great Wave

ボストン美術館の北斎展の世界巡回が終わったのか、地元ボストンで北斎展が開かれているようです。



この北斎展については去年ブログで取り上げています。

北斎展を一足先に

今週のEconomistでボストン美術館の北斎展が取り上げられています。

Japanese printmaking
Riding the crest
Hokusai is known for one image. That narrow view should be revised
Jun 6th 2015 | BOSTON

KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI, a Japanese printmaker who died in 1849 aged nearly 90, is one of those artists whose long, impressive career has come to be known for a single iconic work. During his lifetime his images of Mt Fuji and his floral prints were widely imitated in the West. But “Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave”—pictured)” is so famous, and has been reproduced in such a wide variety of contexts and formats, that it has swamped his other achievements. It is a testament to the complexity of Hokusai’s oeuvre and to the depth of the collection at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston that in wandering through its new exhibition dedicated to the great Japanese printmaker, one could easily overlook this familiar image among the many riches on display. Surrounded by a host of equally inventive and beautifully crafted prints, paintings and drawings, “The Great Wave” appears as an exemplary, but not exceptional, representative of a versatile master’s work.

昨年のブログでも触れた点ですが、北斎の版画が当時のヨーロッパ芸術に影響を与えたのと同じく北斎自身もヨーロッパの透視画法に影響を受けていた点をEconomistも言及しています。

One irony highlighted by this show is that whereas Hokusai’s prints were prized in Europe for their “exotic” Japonisme, he himself was unusually receptive to Western influences. He often adopts a version of vanishing-point perspective, learned from studying the few European artworks that found their way into Japan’s closed society through the port of Nagasaki.

『大英博物館展―100のモノが語る世界の歴史』の展示会では北斎漫画の方が展示されていましたが、BBCの番組ではGreat Waveの方が取り上げられていました。The British Museum has three impressions of 'The Great Wave'.とあるので、大英博物館が３つも所蔵しているにもかかわらずなぜ北斎漫画の方を展示したのでしょうね。

Hokusai's The Great Wave
A History of the World in 100 Objects,
Mass Production, Mass Persuasion (1780 - 1914 AD) Episode 3 of 5

以下の部分は、顔料のPersian Blueはヨーロッパ産でオランダか、中国経由で手に入れたものではとしています。鎖国をしていてもそのような交流はあったのです。

'The Great Wave', like the other images in the series, was printed in about five thousand - maybe as many as eight thousand - impressions, and we know that in 1842 the price of a single sheet was fixed officially at 16 mon, the equivalent of a double helping of noodles. This was cheap and popular art, but when printed in such quantities to exquisite technical standards like this, it could be highly profitable. The British Museum has three impressions of 'The Great Wave'. This is an early one, taken when the woodblock was still crisp, which means it has sharp lines and clear, well-integrated colours. An impression like this one lets you see very clearly that Hokusai took far more than just Prussian Blue from Europe - he has also borrowed the conventions of European perspective to push Mount Fuji far into the distance. He must have studied European prints, which the Dutch had imported in modest quantities but which circulated among a small number of collectors, scholars and artists inside Japan. It is no wonder that this image has been so loved in Europe. It can be seen, not as a complete stranger, but as an exotic relative.

さらに、Economistの指摘と同じく、ヨーロッパの版画を研究し、透視画法で富士を描いているはずだと述べています。ヨーロッパの芸術家たちがすぐに熱狂的に受け入れたのもヨーロッパ的要素があったからかもしれません。

An impression like this one lets you see very clearly that Hokusai took far more than just Prussian Blue from Europe - he has also borrowed the conventions of European perspective to push Mount Fuji far into the distance. He must have studied European prints, which the Dutch had imported in modest quantities but which circulated among a small number of collectors, scholars and artists inside Japan. It is no wonder that this image has been so loved in Europe. It can be seen, not as a complete stranger, but as an exotic relative.

鎖国下でもこのような交流があったこと、安易に日本流ということの危険も感じます。前回のブログでも取り上げましたが、英語学習を続けるものとしては、以下を取り上げないわけにはいきません。



特に有名なものは、北斎が75歳の時に出版された絵手本『富嶽百景』初編の最後にある跋文です。6歳の頃から絵を描いてきた北斎は、70歳以前までに描いた絵は取るに足らないもので、73歳にしてようやく動植物の骨格や出生を悟ることができたと述べています。そして、80歳ではさらに成長し、90歳で絵の奥意を極め、100歳で神妙の域に到達し、百何十歳になれば１点１格が生きているようになるだろうと、100歳を超えてもなお絵師として向上しようとする気概を語っています。