Speaker 1: Happy Saturday, everybody. Uh. Not long ago, we talked about
Speaker 1: Murasaki Shikibu and in passing we mentioned Japan's Edo period
Speaker 1: and the work of Katsushika Hokusai. That episode came out
Speaker 1: way back in so it seemed like a good time
Speaker 1: to share it again, especially since it also connects to
Speaker 1: our fairly recent episode on the mysteries of the color Blue.
Speaker 1: And we kick off this episode with a talk about
Speaker 1: a trip to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts to
Speaker 1: see the contents of a time capsule that we're temporarily
Speaker 1: on display there, as well as an exhibition on Hokusi
Speaker 1: that was running at the time. Of course, that visit
Speaker 1: which Tracy made to the m f A was also
Speaker 1: back in those things you're no longer on display. Please
Speaker 1: don't go and ask to see them. They will look
Speaker 1: at you confusedly. Yeah, there's uh, there's plenty of other
Speaker 1: stuff to see at the m f A should you
Speaker 1: want to go, but not those particular things anyway, And enjoy.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class A production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry,
Speaker 1: So that's time. I went to the Museum of Fine
Speaker 1: Art Boston and saw that time capsule that had been
Speaker 1: pulled out from the cornerstone of the Old State House.
Speaker 1: I had three things on my to do list on
Speaker 1: that trip. There was that time capsule. There was Gustav
Speaker 1: Klimps Adam and Eve, which was on loan from a
Speaker 1: museum in Vienna. And there was a huge exhibition of
Speaker 1: artwork by the Japanese artist best known as Katsushika Hokusai.
Speaker 1: And in addition to that to do list, I wound
Speaker 1: up also seeing lots of Leonardo da Vinci sketches and
Speaker 1: some World War One propaganda posters, and a whole series
Speaker 1: of photos inspired by the earthquake and tsunami that struck
Speaker 1: Japan in So just to give you a sense of
Speaker 1: how many amazing things there are at the Museum of
Speaker 1: Fine Art in Boston. Uh, if you've never heard of Hokusa,
Speaker 1: you will probably still recognize his most famous work, which
Speaker 1: is Under the Wave off Kinda Gaua, which is better
Speaker 1: known as the Great Wave. This is the one that
Speaker 1: shows three little boats in the shadow of an enormous
Speaker 1: menacing frothing wave with Mount Fuji shown in the background.
Speaker 1: Hokus I lived during a time when there was not
Speaker 1: a lot of contact between Japan and the West, but
Speaker 1: even so he drew some influence from Western art, and
Speaker 1: then Western art was later greatly influenced by his own
Speaker 1: work and from others from the time period when he lived.
Speaker 1: His career was also extremely long and diverse, and his
Speaker 1: work was just prolific. This collection of work at the
Speaker 1: m f A in Boston is huge, and the temporary
Speaker 1: exhibition of it is so big that we actually had
Speaker 1: to take a break from looking at it and go
Speaker 1: eat and come back because it's enormous. Uh. The m
Speaker 1: f A actually describes its collection of Japanese art as
Speaker 1: the largest and finest outside of Japan. So hokosa is
Speaker 1: who we are going to talk about today. Hokosa I
Speaker 1: was born in Edo, which is now Tokyo, in seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty and he lived during Japan's Edo Period also called
Speaker 1: the Tokugawa period. The Edo period lasted for about two
Speaker 1: hundred fifty years starting in the early sixteen hundreds. Hoka
Speaker 1: Size work grew directly from a number of social changes
Speaker 1: that took place in Japan during this period. The period
Speaker 1: before the Tokugawa came to power was known as the
Speaker 1: Sengoku period, and it was also nicknamed the Warring States
Speaker 1: period because it was marked with war, unrest, and strife.
Speaker 1: The Tokugawa took several steps to try to secure their
Speaker 1: power and prevent a return to the state of perpetual
Speaker 1: conflict once they were in power. The first was that
Speaker 1: the Tokugawa Shoguns banned Christianity and expelled all Europeans from
Speaker 1: Japan except for the Dutch, and the Dutch were exempt
Speaker 1: because they hadn't tried to convert the Japanese, but even
Speaker 1: Dutch contact with Japan was limited it, as was Japan's
Speaker 1: contact with its nearer neighbors of China and Korea. The
Speaker 1: second was that the Tokugawa required the feudal lords, who
Speaker 1: were known as the damio who ruled Japan's provinces in
Speaker 1: their stead, to maintain two residences. One was an Edo
Speaker 1: and the other was back in their home province. The
Speaker 1: daimio were expected to travel back and forth between these
Speaker 1: residences while their families stayed in Edo full time. The
Speaker 1: residences of the daimio were expected to be lavish and opulent,
Speaker 1: and when they traveled back and forth between their home
Speaker 1: provinces and Edo, they were expected to do so at
Speaker 1: great luxury and with a large retinue of mostly unmarried samurai.
Speaker 1: There was an ulterior motive to all this. The Tokugawa
Speaker 1: and Edo always had an eye on the damio's families,
Speaker 1: which basically functioned as a tacit threat to their safety
Speaker 1: to keep the daimio in line. And in addition to
Speaker 1: all of that, uh they had to spend so much
Speaker 1: money on these multiple residences and the travel back and
Speaker 1: forth that the daimio could never afford to raise an
Speaker 1: army to challenge the Tokugawa's power. So it was sort
Speaker 1: of a way to keep everybody in line. And as
Speaker 1: a sign note, this plan was not entirely successful in
Speaker 1: a group of ronan or masterless samurai tried to orchestrate
Speaker 1: a coup against the Tokugawa. Even though the Daimio were
Speaker 1: employing quite a lot of samurai, there were many others
Speaker 1: who were effectively out of work once the Warring States
Speaker 1: period was over. However, these requirements that were placed on
Speaker 1: the daimio affected life for other people in Japan as well.
Speaker 1: Number one, people were traveling a lot. Even though Japan
Speaker 1: wasn't having much contact with the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: travel within its own borders really became its own industry.
Speaker 1: Five major highways connected Eddo to the rest of Japan,
Speaker 1: and these were aligned with places to rest, eat, arranged transportation,
Speaker 1: buy things, and make religious observances. The most famous of
Speaker 1: these was the Tokaido Road also called the Eastern Sea Road,
Speaker 1: and this connected Edo to Kyoto before going on to Osaka.
Speaker 1: And although the daimyo traveled these roads at great expense,
Speaker 1: ordinary people were also using them. Society under the Tokugawa
Speaker 1: became divided into four classes. There were warriors, farmers, artisans,
Speaker 1: and merchants. And even though the merchants were technically at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the pile since they just sold the
Speaker 1: work of other people rather than creating work of their own,
Speaker 1: a lot of the merchants became quite rich. Japan became
Speaker 1: home to a thriving middle class thanks to all of
Speaker 1: these different industries and the increased commerce that was coming
Speaker 1: with people traveling everywhere and maintaining multiple residences in Edo,
Speaker 1: visiting daimyo and their large retinues of samurai tipped the
Speaker 1: gender balance within the city, spawning another industry, one of
Speaker 1: pleasure and entertainment to cater to their interests. This whole
Speaker 1: world of fashion, luxury, and amusement became known as the
Speaker 1: floating world or okio. The newly wealthy merchants and artisans
Speaker 1: had access to the floating world as well. It also
Speaker 1: spawned a whole school of art called u k o
Speaker 1: A or Pictures of a Floating World. And these were
Speaker 1: basically pictures, paintings and wood black prints of things like
Speaker 1: pleasure districts, courtisign's, geisha tea houses, kabuki actors, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, and they were hugely popular among the growing
Speaker 1: middle class. It was in this school of art that
Speaker 1: Hokuside trained as an artist, and we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about how that training came about after a brief word
Speaker 1: from a sponsor. So to return to Hokusai specifically, we
Speaker 1: know a lot more about his professional life than about
Speaker 1: his personal life. There's a fair amount of contradiction when
Speaker 1: it comes to the details of his biography, thanks to
Speaker 1: it's a and the fact that a lot of knowledge
Speaker 1: of it that survives today is kind of glean from
Speaker 1: a wide range of sources, like introductions he wrote to
Speaker 1: his own books, and notes from other artists that were
Speaker 1: compiled well after his death. He was born Kawamura Tokitaro.
Speaker 1: He had an uncle named Nakajima isay who was a
Speaker 1: mirror polisher. This was actually a prestigious position because mirrors
Speaker 1: at the time were mainly made from bronze rather than
Speaker 1: silvered glass. Mirror polishing required a special and exact set
Speaker 1: of skills, and hokus Eye uncle had no heir to
Speaker 1: train to take over this position, so hokusis uncle adopted him,
Speaker 1: and later on reflections, refractions, lenses, and optical effects would
Speaker 1: become a huge part of hokusize work. Hokus I started
Speaker 1: writing and drawing at the age of six, and these
Speaker 1: are two skills that are really connected quite closely in
Speaker 1: Japanese culture thanks to the use of kanji in written language.
Speaker 1: Later on, hokus I would also say that anyone who
Speaker 1: could write could also draw, and he would create these
Speaker 1: paintings that were basically built up from a series of
Speaker 1: written words. It's unclear whether hokus I just didn't want
Speaker 1: to be a mirror polisher, or whether he didn't get
Speaker 1: along with his uncle, or whether he correctly concluded that
Speaker 1: bronze mirrors were going to go out of fashion, but regardless,
Speaker 1: as a teen he did not pursue his uncle's line
Speaker 1: of work. He worked instead for a publisher and a
Speaker 1: lending library, and he worked as a block carver, making
Speaker 1: blocks for woodblock prints, even though he demonstrated a talent
Speaker 1: for art at a very young age, and his uncle's
Speaker 1: position meant he could get access to the showguns official
Speaker 1: painters hocus as formal education in art didn't actually start
Speaker 1: until he was nineteen. He joined the studio of Katsukawa
Speaker 1: Centual a uk O a artist in seventeen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: Katsukawa some shows specialty was woodblock prints of kabuki actors.
Speaker 1: While working in Katsukawa is Stu to You, hokus I
Speaker 1: signed his Prince shun rule, which is a combination of
Speaker 1: a character from his teacher's name plus an additional character,
Speaker 1: and this was traditionally how art students would sign their
Speaker 1: work with like a character from their teacher's name plus
Speaker 1: another character of their own, choosing hokus I worked with
Speaker 1: the Katsukawa School until seventeen ninety four, and these years
Speaker 1: are known as hokus Chunro period. During this period, he
Speaker 1: also illustrated about fifty books, and he made woodblock prints
Speaker 1: of a lot of subjects that were common in the
Speaker 1: u k o A school. Although little of his painting
Speaker 1: work survives from this period, it's clear that he studied
Speaker 1: painting at the Katsukawa school as well. Hokus I also
Speaker 1: started experimenting with Western style vanishing point perspectives in his
Speaker 1: work during this time, and that's a theme that would
Speaker 1: resurface later on. Sun Show died in seventeen ninety two,
Speaker 1: and two years later, for reasons that aren't completely clear,
Speaker 1: hokus I left the school and stopped using the name
Speaker 1: shun Roll. He found another position now that Tawaria family
Speaker 1: hired him to train their son, whose father, an artist,
Speaker 1: had died. Hokus I was allowed to use the name Suli,
Speaker 1: which was the name of the deceased father, until his
Speaker 1: son was ready to assume his role as heir and
Speaker 1: leader of the family's school. The Tawaria family apparently had
Speaker 1: quite a bit of wealth and status, so while he
Speaker 1: was with them, hokus I had access to the best paints, inks,
Speaker 1: and other art materials, and for about four years he
Speaker 1: produced a large number of privately commissioned prints known as surimono,
Speaker 1: as well as a number of paintings. Working with privately
Speaker 1: commissioned prince gave Hokusi some artistic freedoms he didn't have before.
Speaker 1: He didn't need to worry about sticking with less expensive
Speaker 1: printing inks because the print runs themselves were much smaller
Speaker 1: and everything was being paid for by his patrons. A
Speaker 1: lot of these works were commissioned by poetry clubs as
Speaker 1: accompaniment for playful works of poetry. Because of this work
Speaker 1: in private commissions, Hokusai developed friendships with many prominent poets
Speaker 1: and other well known figures, and he seems to have
Speaker 1: been quite financially prosperous during his story period as well.
Speaker 1: It was in the spring of when the Tawaria Air
Speaker 1: assumed control of the family school that Hokosa gave up
Speaker 1: on the soul Re name and began working under the
Speaker 1: name Hokusai Tokimasa. He would continue to change his name
Speaker 1: from time to time after this point, which is a
Speaker 1: pretty common practice among artists in the Edo period, but
Speaker 1: the name Hokusai is the one that he really became
Speaker 1: recognized for He became so well known under that name
Speaker 1: that even as he used other names, he would often
Speaker 1: add Saki no Hokusai or the former Hokusai to his works.
Speaker 1: It's like the artists formerly known as Prince Um. After
Speaker 1: leaving the Tawaraia family, he also experimented with a lot
Speaker 1: of forms of art besides the standard Prince paintings and
Speaker 1: book illustrations that had made up a large portion of
Speaker 1: his work before. He made a board game depicting a
Speaker 1: journey from Edo to several pilgrimage sites and back again.
Speaker 1: He also created puzzles and a deck of playing cards
Speaker 1: based on the tail of Genji. He produced books of
Speaker 1: his own, including manuals on how to draw, and he
Speaker 1: published sketch books known as manga. He also made lots
Speaker 1: and lots of dioramas. These were intricate illustrations that were
Speaker 1: printed on one flat sheet or maybe two. You really
Speaker 1: needed a lot of them, and they were meant to
Speaker 1: be carefully cut out and then assembled, with the cut
Speaker 1: pieces standing up vertically, which would create a three dimensional scene.
Speaker 1: Many of these were extremely complex and detailed. One of
Speaker 1: the prints in the m f A's exhibition is one
Speaker 1: of these uncut and working from a copy of it,
Speaker 1: curators tried to create an assembled version to kind of
Speaker 1: accompany it so you could see the flat one as
Speaker 1: it was printed and the assembled one. It took them
Speaker 1: multiple tries to get it to do. We mentioned before
Speaker 1: that we don't know a great deal about hokusais personal life,
Speaker 1: but what we do know is that he experienced a
Speaker 1: series of tragedy starting around eight twenty. His oldest daughter
Speaker 1: had married one of his students and they divorced in
Speaker 1: hokus I became very very ill, and a year later
Speaker 1: his wife died. His grandson, son of the daughter who
Speaker 1: had divorced, did something. The details of what exactly it
Speaker 1: was are unclear, but whatever it was led Hokusai into
Speaker 1: some really huge financial problems. His third daughter, on the
Speaker 1: other hand, was named Katsushika Oi, and she became a
Speaker 1: wonderful artist on her own, and it's possible that she
Speaker 1: helped her father with some of his work. I actually
Speaker 1: originally wanted to do the episode on her because she
Speaker 1: seems to have been quite a character who loved sake
Speaker 1: quite a lot, and she would sometimes substitute one of
Speaker 1: the characters in her name, for one meaning drunk instead
Speaker 1: when she signed her artwork. But unfortunately, yeah, we know
Speaker 1: even less about her and have way less of a
Speaker 1: body of work to drop round to talk about uh
Speaker 1: Katsushika Oi than we do about her father. And it's
Speaker 1: possible that all these tragedies and the lack of money
Speaker 1: that followed were what spurred hokus I into making his
Speaker 1: most famous work of art, Thirty six Views of Mount Fuji.
Speaker 1: As its name suggests, there are thirty six prints each
Speaker 1: featuring Mount Fuji in some way, and the Great Wave
Speaker 1: is one of those. The series fit in well with
Speaker 1: a trend that was rushing through Japan at that point,
Speaker 1: which was sets of full sized landscape prints that worked
Speaker 1: together as a series. Another of these series that you
Speaker 1: may have heard of is Hero She Gay's fifty three
Speaker 1: Stations of the Tokaido Road. Hokusai himself also did a
Speaker 1: series on the stations of the Tokaido Road, but Hero
Speaker 1: she Gays became more famous than than Hoku Size did.
Speaker 1: Thirty six Views of Mount Fuji was also inspired by
Speaker 1: Prussian Blue ink, which was newly available in Japan and
Speaker 1: known as Berlin Blue there. It led to a huge
Speaker 1: demand for artwork that used the color blue, and while
Speaker 1: the public clamored for azerier or prints done entirely in
Speaker 1: shades of blue, hokus I started using the blue paint
Speaker 1: for the outlines on his landscapes, which had traditionally been black,
Speaker 1: and he also used them for prints of birds and flowers.
Speaker 1: Hocus I also used lots of blue in his work
Speaker 1: in general during this craze for blue, and some of
Speaker 1: the prints in the thirty six Views of Mount Fuji
Speaker 1: in their first edition printing, are almost entirely blue. As
Speaker 1: people became less enamored with the color blue, The same
Speaker 1: blocks would then be used to print new editions of
Speaker 1: these works, but with more colors in them, so they
Speaker 1: weren't quite so overwhelmingly blue. After the success of the
Speaker 1: thirty six Views of Mount Fuji, hokus I created just
Speaker 1: an enormous number of landscape prints, but around eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: four eighteen thirty five, he ran into some trouble with
Speaker 1: his publisher, and the details, as is often the case
Speaker 1: with his story, are unclear, although it seems as though
Speaker 1: a publisher that he'd been working with on several multi
Speaker 1: volume books of prints suddenly went bankrupt, and consequently later
Speaker 1: books that were supposed to come out went unpublished. With
Speaker 1: this problem with his publisher, hoku Size commercial output really
Speaker 1: dropped tremendously. Japan was also hit with an enormous economic
Speaker 1: depression from eighteen thirty three eighteen thirty seven, and that
Speaker 1: dried up demand for hokus Size work, and his studio
Speaker 1: and its contents were destroyed in a fire in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty nine. In spite of all this and of the
Speaker 1: changes in the market for artwork, hokus I continued to
Speaker 1: be tremendously creative right through the end of his life.
Speaker 1: He experimented with paintings and festival floats, and he designed
Speaker 1: a sculpture. He died in eighteen forty nine, at the
Speaker 1: age of ninety by the Japanese method of counting and
Speaker 1: eighty nine by the Western method uh He said he'd
Speaker 1: be a truly skilled painter if he lived to be
Speaker 1: a hundred and at that point he had put out
Speaker 1: just an enormous body of work, a lot of it
Speaker 1: just extremely playful. He experimented with new ways of approaching artwork.
Speaker 1: He made all of these creative strides, but he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if I could just live to be a hundred, then
Speaker 1: I'd be a really skilled painter. Just ten more years
Speaker 1: would get me there. So he drew and painted so
Speaker 1: many things, but so much of his work was in
Speaker 1: the form of wood black prints. And we're going to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about how these prints were
Speaker 1: made and also about how Hokusai later influenced Western art.
Speaker 1: After another brief word from a sponsor. So often when
Speaker 1: we talk about visual artists on the show, we're talking
Speaker 1: about people who made each piece of art as one thing.
Speaker 1: So painters and sculptors and potters and textile artists, they
Speaker 1: make a work of art, and while you can see
Speaker 1: pictures of that work of art or maybe make prints
Speaker 1: of it, there's only one original. Like you go to
Speaker 1: a museum and you see the Mona Lisa, there's one
Speaker 1: of it that's not the eased for one of hokusis
Speaker 1: primary media, the wood block print. Hokus size. Woodblock prints
Speaker 1: include all the typical subjects of the ukio A school,
Speaker 1: as well as waterfalls, birds and flowers, dragons, ghosts and monsters, fish, lanterns.
Speaker 1: It goes on and on in a huge range of subjects.
Speaker 1: Printmaking isn't unique to Japanese art, but in the Edo
Speaker 1: period in particular, wood black prints were a very popular
Speaker 1: form of art in Japan. First, the artist would create
Speaker 1: the picture, then a block cutter would put that picture
Speaker 1: face down onto the wooden block, secure it there, and
Speaker 1: very very carefully cut out the block along the lines
Speaker 1: of the artwork. A black and white work could use
Speaker 1: just one block, but for a color work, the block
Speaker 1: carver would take an impression of that original carving to
Speaker 1: make a different block for each layer of color. To
Speaker 1: make the actual prints, print printmakers inked the block lay
Speaker 1: paper over it, and they rubbed the back to transfer
Speaker 1: for the ink onto the paper. This made print making
Speaker 1: a collaborative, collective form of art, and says Hokusai himself
Speaker 1: had worked as a block carver, he had perspectives that
Speaker 1: came from all parts of this process. There was no
Speaker 1: press involved that a lot of people think of when
Speaker 1: making prints. With these blocks, printmakers could make lots and
Speaker 1: lots of copies of the same work of art, which
Speaker 1: is why you can find copies of the Great Wave
Speaker 1: and other Edo period prints that came from those original
Speaker 1: blocks in museums all over the world, rather than just
Speaker 1: one museum, and it also meant that a lot of
Speaker 1: people living at the time were able to afford to
Speaker 1: buy his work and have artwork on their walls. Hocusize
Speaker 1: work was actually at one point even printed on papers
Speaker 1: for rice snacks, almost like collectible cereal boxes. Like the
Speaker 1: The snack manufacturer was was hoping that people would want
Speaker 1: to buy their snacks more so they could have more
Speaker 1: Hokusi art from the rappers. I love it. I wish
Speaker 1: we could get works of art with our snacks. Uh
Speaker 1: come into our Matthew Perry arrived in Japan on July
Speaker 1: eighteenth of eighteen fifty three, just a few years after
Speaker 1: hokusized death, and acting on behalf of the US government,
Speaker 1: he demanded that Japan open trade to the West. Although
Speaker 1: Perry's fleet was small, Japan had no navy with which
Speaker 1: to defend itself, and so it was forced to negotiate.
Speaker 1: Japan and the United States signed a trading agreement in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty four. Further treaties followed, most of them unequal
Speaker 1: and benefiting the other trading partners more than Japan. Naturally,
Speaker 1: this affected Japan as a nation dramatically. For example, the
Speaker 1: Tokugawa shogunate fell and was replaced by an emperor. But
Speaker 1: our focus here is really going to stay on the artwork.
Speaker 1: While Hoka size work had begun to fall out of
Speaker 1: imperial favor, this newly opened trade with the West sparked
Speaker 1: a craze for Japanese art and culture. Fans. Kimonos, screens,
Speaker 1: and porcelain were in huge demand in the West. Diplomats, tourists,
Speaker 1: and officials who visited Japan also came home with the
Speaker 1: artwork that they bought while living there. A big part
Speaker 1: of the m f a s Japanese artwork collection is
Speaker 1: actually a donation from Dr William Sturtis Bigelow, who lived
Speaker 1: in Japan from eighteen eighty two to eighteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: and then donated the collection of art that he acquired
Speaker 1: while there to the museum in nineteen eleven. For those
Speaker 1: who didn't acquire their Japanese art and artifacts by visiting Japan,
Speaker 1: all this enthusiasm for Japanese culture had the unfortunate effect
Speaker 1: of giving westerners a rather warped and stereotypical view of Japan. However,
Speaker 1: would black prints and other Japanese art wound up being
Speaker 1: hugely influential to artists in the West as well, and
Speaker 1: this are this influence became known as Japanis m. Felix Bruquamant,
Speaker 1: who was a French Impressionist painter, found a set of
Speaker 1: hoku sized manga in Paris in eighteen fifty six. He
Speaker 1: started sharing hoku sized work with his artist friends, and
Speaker 1: soon other Impressionist artists were really seeking out and learning
Speaker 1: from hokus eye art as well as the other as
Speaker 1: well as the work of other artists from the uk
Speaker 1: o A school, the Impressionist painters started to imitate the
Speaker 1: use of color, lines and perspectives along with hokus eyes,
Speaker 1: often very playful treatment of visual subjects. Claude Monet acquired
Speaker 1: about two hundred and fifty Japanese prints, twenty three of
Speaker 1: them by Hokusai, and then, like Hokusai, he made a
Speaker 1: practice of painting the same thing in many angles and
Speaker 1: from many settings. You can see this clear Japanese influence,
Speaker 1: for example in Ari de Devan Japonet and Vincent van
Speaker 1: Goes la Cortezen and a series of etchings by Mary Cassatt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you sort of line up lots of
Speaker 1: uh hokus I prints and other work from the uk
Speaker 1: A school next to lots of Impressionist and post Impressionist work. Um.
Speaker 1: It's pretty easy in a lot of cases, even for
Speaker 1: a late person who's not like deeply uh and meshed
Speaker 1: in the world of art and art history, to see, um,
Speaker 1: to see the progression from this Japanese art style into
Speaker 1: Western art. It's pretty fascinating. I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1: I do too this well. And so I did not
Speaker 1: know how enormous this exhibition was when I went in there. Uh.
Speaker 1: I thought it was about half the size that it was.
Speaker 1: And then I came around a corner and it was
Speaker 1: basically that entire size of what I had just seen
Speaker 1: doubled again or stuff. Uh. And a lot of it
Speaker 1: is really incredible, um, some of it. You know, there's
Speaker 1: a whole, a whole Japanese artwork section of the museum
Speaker 1: that you can see at any time, even when this
Speaker 1: exhibition is not part of it anymore. UM. But I
Speaker 1: do really like that, uh, that this artwork was printed
Speaker 1: on mass and popularly consumed UM. And so you know,
Speaker 1: lots of folks just bought prints as a matter of course,
Speaker 1: and you have all these prints that are still in
Speaker 1: pristine condition that date back to the eighteen fifties and
Speaker 1: before in museums all over the world. I think that's
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. It's fabulous he has it has less of
Speaker 1: the concern about where that art should wipe rightfully be
Speaker 1: since the same prints are also available in many museums
Speaker 1: in Japan. Uh. I know that's a question that comes
Speaker 1: up sometimes when we're talking about art and what is
Speaker 1: in museums around the world and where it came from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining us today for this
Speaker 1: Saturday classic. If you have heard any kind of email
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