Text/Jonathan Jones, Compiler/Lu Linhan
Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849), one of Japan's most important painters and printmakers of the 19th century, painted 103 drawings for the Illustrated Book of All Things, but the picture book was never published, and these unpublished drawings survived for a long time, becoming works of art for people to see, and in 2020 became the collection of the British Museum.
On 30 September 2021, the British Museum's special exhibition "Hokusai: The Complete Picture Book of All Things" opened, presenting a wide range of "everything" depicted by Katsushika Hokusai, from religious, mythological, historical, and literary figures to animals, birds, and flowers, as well as other natural phenomena and landscapes. For art critic Jonathan Jones, Hokusai's ink paintings have a strong vibrancy and Borgesian imagination.
Like me, you might think of the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, whose long and glorious life ended in 1849. During his seventy-year career, Hokusai created numerous outstanding works, most of which were created in his later years. He is best known for his masterpiece Kanagawa Oki Langri (also known as "The Great Wave"). The sensual colours in his woodcuts, those delicate tones of the sea and the sky, are the traces of their legacy. But recently, the British Museum's new exhibition has stripped away those seductive colors and showed Hokusai in black and white. It's a bold thing to do.
Great Picture Book of Everything
As a story of rediscovery and research, this exhibition is a sensational event. In June 2019, a group of 103 paintings was mistaken for the work of another artist and appeared at an auction in Paris. Dealer Israel Goldman believes it is Katsushika Hokusai's lost work, while Timothy Clark, an expert at the British Museum, agrees. Therefore, the British Museum bought the works. At this challenging time, this exhibition is undoubtedly good news. If you're looking forward to a feast, you might be amazed by the dimly lit setting of the museum's painting gallery. Keep watching and you'll get a huge reward.
Hokusai created these ink drawings for the Illustrated Book of All Things in the late 1820s, intending to literally show "everything." It's a book that encompasses the whole of the earth, full of wonderful Borgesian ideas. More interestingly, Edo-era Japan was severely limited in its contact with the outside world, and Hokusai's imagination of China and India was unreliable, but it seemed pleasant. The book was never finished. This is why these ink masterpieces on paper survived, because if these paintings were transferred to woodblocks for printing, the original could be destroyed.
In The Illustrated Book of All Things, Katsushika Hokusai portrays Korean, Chinese, and Indian characters
"The Complete Book of All Things" Katsushika Hokusai painting manuscript
Since the Renaissance, painting has been preserved as the purest product in the hands of the artist. The same is true in China. This was not the case with the early 19th-century Edo woodblock printmakers, who were "pop artists" who worked for the market. That's why this batch of Katsushika Hokusai's original manuscripts are so precious. It gives us a glimpse of Katsushika Hokusai as a painter, not a color printmaker. It also allows his work to engage in a dialogue with traditional European painting in the British Museum. The exhibition is adjacent to some of the world's preeminent collections of prints and drawings, including Michelangelo's sketches of the Sistine Chapel dome and albrecht Dürer's original sketches of rhinos.
All of Hokusai's paintings include a cute Indian elephant, which may be his answer to Dürer's Rhinoceros. Like Dürer, a German artist, Hokusai was drawn to an exotic beast. In Hokusai's pen, the elephant bows its head wearily, as if tired of its tusks and the weight of its body. Its skin was wrinkled and its body was so huge that its entourage looked like a dwarf. The difference is that Dürer's Rhino is aimed at science, while Hokusai's work is light-hearted and vibrant. His work is free and rapid.
The Illustrated Book of All Things, an elephant depicted by Katsushika Hokusai
These drawings are undoubtedly the climax of ink paintings. Although hokusai's ink paintings rarely survived, he was proud of them. He copied them into a book he called Hokusai Manga. In the exhibition hall, the curators could not resist the reference to modern comics: the evil emperor was killed by lightning, and dazzling ink lines emanated from the explosion. But this is not a manga, Hokusai has created a strong vitality. What's even more amazing is that he, like Rubens and Caravaggio, leaves a still white dot of light in the ink-colored center to make you feel the bright and scorching light. The difference is that these two artists in the West need to use color to achieve such an illusion, while Hokusai does not need to use color.
The Complete Book of All Things, the king of Ryūri, who was struck by lightning, depicted by Katsushika Hokusai
The Complete Picture Book of All Things, bears and waterfalls depicted by Katsushika Hokusai
After reading this, you will understand that Hokusai is doing something that no one else has done. Think of the way he painted water, repeatedly with very few abstract curly lines. Here's an interesting image depicting a bear under a waterfall whose face is being overwhelmed by these rippled lines. European artists of the 1820s never even thought of distilling nature in this stylized shorthand. Hokusai depicts traditional landscapes in a semi-abstract, stylized way. This approach can be traced back to medieval China. But in Hokusai's eyes, he broke with tradition for something suddenly new.
The Illustrated Book of All Things, the Indians depicted by Katsushika Hokusai running through a sandstorm
The Complete Book of All Things, the Buddhist monk Funako Tokusei depicted by Katsushika Hokusai
In the Indian landscape he depicts, people run through sandstorms, with their heads bowed and their legs jumping in the air. In this scenario, nature and society are unstable spheres. In another work, it tells the story of the eighth-century Buddhist monk Chuanzi Decheng. Boatman Tokusei is a boatman who teaches Dharma on board. In the picture, he pushes another monk into the water, and the unfortunate drowner is trying to solve an answer. Hokusai depicts a scene of a Zenkai monk flying in the air with his feet flying in the air when he falls into the water. It is said that the monks of the Society of Good Society were inspired in the water. (Note: Chuanzi Decheng, also known as Chuanzi Monk, was a native of Suizhou (present-day Suining, Sichuan) in the late Tang Dynasty.) The monks would learn the Dharma from him. After finding The Boat Decheng, the Zenkai was hit into the water three times by him, and suddenly realized between the ups and downs. There is no two, there is no rise and fall, all opposites, all are so. Boat Zi Decheng said to him, you go up the river, cultivate in the mountains, wait for something to teach, find a half inheritance, do not break it. ）
Hokusai's art inspires us in a similar way. He urges us to accept the flow of life, to enjoy its comedy, to endure its tragedy. Is this a Buddhist view? The Buddhist sages and Buddhist stories depicted by Hokusai are simple and touchingly immediacy.
The British Museum's collection of "Kanagawa Oki Lang li"
This also gives a new philosophical depth to his blue-and-white foam work that devours the boat, "Kanagawa Oki Naori". Thinking about flow and change, Hokusai created the first art we thought could capture the modern situation. "Everything that is solid is gone." Karl Marx said this when he spoke of modern life, but Hokusai drew these before him.
The exhibition will be on view until January 30, 2022.
(This article is compiled from The Guardian and written by Jonathan Jones, an art critic.) ）
Editor-in-Charge: Lu Linhan