Read on Twitter
A few days ago I wrote a series of tweets expressing frustration with this @nytimes essay. Now, I wish I had written first in thanks for featuring Hokusai. For those that would like to know more about this print, here's a thread: 1/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/08/07/arts/design/hokusai-fuji.html?searchResultPosition=1
The featured impression shows how popular the image, and the set, by extension, was. This impression is not very crisp (note line breakage) and comparisons to other impressions shows a lot of variation. We can imagine lots and lots of prints taken from these blocks.
It was issued ca. 1831-32, during the Tenpō era (1830-1844), a period marked by famine, unrest, and more. Not quite yet the "waning days" yet--the end was a ways off--not until the Meiji Restoration of 1868. It could hardly have seemed so at the time. . . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration
The writer says “if you told the grandees of 19th-century Edo that Hokusai would become the most famous artist in the country’s history, they’d never believe you.” Perhaps. But Hokusai was in his time a rock star, renowned and widely published, with students all over the country.
Hokusai remained famous in the Meiji; studied in Japan, widely imitated by colleagues and followers, still a start. He was promoted abroad as a genius (see Goncourt and Fenollosa), and Freer build much of his collection around Hokusai. Check out https://asia.si.edu/exhibition/hokusai-mad-about-painting/
It's a myth that ukiyo-e was not appreciated at home and in its time. The genre included books and paintings and was not widely dismissed as “vulgar.” Many were produced for sale; while others were privately commissioned. By 1790s, samurai Ōta Nanpo started writing its history.
And that history became the Ukiyo-e ruikō, more or less the canon of Ukiyo-e, which was what the later dealers and others used to promote the genre. The position held by Hokusai today derives from his period appreciation and subsequent acclaim.
The photo essay has us start looking at the lower left: to do so is to misread it. Let’s use the “period eye." When we do, we start on the upper right, following the conventions of writing/looking in the East Asian tradition, upper right, down and across, finishing at lower left.
Now we start with the hat and papers flying away, move across and down, ending with the woman losing her papers. The cartouche and signature are at the upper left, balancing the composition. We see these last, perhaps. Now we see the effect before the cause. Fun, right?
Note Hokusai’s sense of geometry, the way the road and mountain are played off as curves, the way the trees break the image, how circles are repeated. See the design of three commas in a circle topped by a roof shape on the blue bag the man is carrying?
That’s the crest of publisher Nishimuraya, who sponsored and advertised this set. He was one of the leading publishers of the time and would have commissioned Hokusai with the project, hiring the carvers and printers.
The great Roger Keyes explains how these were produced. https://www.latehokusai.org/dating-hokusais-prints-of-the-1830s
Ejiri, the tenth print, was printed in shades of blue with one additional color block, for the earliest impressions. Now look at the print illustrated here. How many blocks? Now look at this impressions, or others on http://ukiyo-e.org https://ukiyo-e.org/image/mfa/sc227234
What we learn through this comparison of impressions is that the image was very very popular. Probably issued in the thousands, maybe even ten thousand, sold at low prices. All hand printed. Changes were made by the publisher, who controlled the project, likely not by Hokusai.
This group of prints often featured Fuji tucked in the distance, but many images also included Fuji as their main subject. See the images here: https://ukiyo-e.org/search?q=hokusai+thirty-six+views+of+mt+fuji or here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-six_Views_of_Mount_Fuji
Linear perspective appears in prints as early as the 1730s. See: https://tinyurl.com/y267hyzt As Tim Screech argued, it was regarded as an “invention,” not a “discovery.” By Hokusai's time, fully absorbed into artistic practice. And may have come via China, & also with Dutch trade.
Ukiyo-e had been circulating in Europe well before 1867. Bracquemond famously claimed to have “discovered” Hokusai a decade earlier. But the Dutch had been trading in it for a long time, and von Seibold even commissioned Hokusai himself with some paintings.
Cassatt, Vuillard, Degas, Van Gogh and others adored ukiyo-e. But how much were they influenced by dealers Hayashi Tadamasa and Siegfried Bing who were promoting Japanese art. Promoting Japanese art was also an effective soft power strategy.
I agree completely with the idea that “Japonisme” was part of a fantasy world for Parisians and others. And with the way that Meiji prints promoted a new Japan. Wall’s photo as a part and parcel of this global exchange is also a good and fair point.
To learn more about ukiyo-e, check out the Hotei Encyclopedia of Japanese Woodblock Prints, books by Christine Guth, Matthi Forrer, Roger Keyes, Tim Clark, and many others, including me. The Met, AIC, British Museum, Freer, MFA Boston, have robust collections & exhibitions.
To close, thanks again to @nytimes and @jsf for sharing this vibrant work with the world. It's great to see Hokusai get the star treatment.
