Hokusai's rice farmers

The Artdog Image of Interest 

Throughout September, the Artdog Images of Interest will highlight pieces of artwork by respected masters from around the world, that highlight the value of labor.

This woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai dates to about 1835-6, and is the first of an incomplete series based on the poems collected in a famous anthology, A Hundred Poems by a Hundred Poets, collected by Fujiwara no Teika in 1235. 

The poem that inspired the print is attributed to Emperor Tenchi Tenno, in which he "expresses empathy for his hard-working subjects."

One might debate how much empathy an emperor could have for a rice farmer, but the value of the farmers' labor to the Japanese economy and culture, both in Tenchi's time and later, is hard to overestimate. They not only fed his empire; in the Emperor's role as a Shinto priest, many of his duties "revolved around rice-growing." To this day, rice is still Japan's staple grain.

IMAGE: The best image I could find online of this work is from MUZÉO. Many thanks to them, for publishing such a fine image. You can buy an open-edition copy that's even better quality from them, if you like it. I also am indebted to Scholten Japanese Art, for the story behind the print.

A tale of Hokusai and Cézanne

This week's Artdog Images of Interest: 

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a painting from the age of Japonisme in Europe. Today I'd like to offer an example of how the Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints that arrived in Europe during the Meiji Era changed European art, and inspired the aesthetic that created "modern" art. 

Tokaido Hodogaya, one of the Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji, by Katsushika Hokusai, shows us a glimpse of the ukiyo-e prints that took Europe by storm in the latter half of the 19th Century.

Many people in Europe, and especially such painters as Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, James A. McNeill Whistler, and Paul Cézanne amassed large collections of Japanese prints. Monet had a whole living room full. Van Gogh didn't have many physical possessions, but he did have a cherished collection of ukiyo-e prints. The radically different way in which the Japanese artists viewed space, color, and perspective influenced these artists deeply--some more directly than others.

Paul Cézanne painted The Chestnut Trees of Jas de Bouffan in Winter, a view that included Mont Ste. Victoire, one of his favorite subjects, from the courtyard of his home. Hokusai's influence is hard to miss.

Paul Cézanne was such an ardent admirer of two print series, each titled Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji--one created by Katsushika Hokusai, and the other by his younger rival Ando Hiroshige--that he created his own series of thirty-six paintings of Mont Ste. Victoire, a distinctive mountain near Aix-en-Provence, visible from Cézanne's home and studio at Bastide du Jas de Bouffan.

There was no question about cultural appropriation in Cézanne's day. Europeans considered themselves and their culture to be the apex of human civilization. They felt free to draw upon any source they wished, and never questioned whether they had a right to do so. I am not sure that Cézanne's painting count as "appropriation" per se, though it's easy to detect a touch of "the sincerest form of flattery." Similarities are also easy to see in others he painted, whose compositions bear a striking resemblance to certain prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige--I may share them at some point in the future.

IMAGES: I found this great image of Hokusai's Tokaido Hodogaya through the Ukiyo-e Search website. Many thanks to the British website Poster Lounge for the photo of Cézanne's Les Marroniers du Jas de Bouffan en hiver.