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Hiroshige\u2019s Night View of the Matsuchiyama and Sam\u2019ya Canal (Matsuchiyama San\u2019yabori Yakei), No. 34 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo<\/p>\nImagine that you have been transported back in time to the booksellers\u2019 district of Edo, modern-day Tokyo, in the 1830s. Browsing the stalls, your eye is caught by a print that has just hit the market. Three boats battle in a seething sea. A wave of water rises above them seconds from a capsizing crash. You rummage in the pouch tied to your kimono sash and pay the print-dealer 20 mon \u2014 about the same as for a bowl of soba noodles.<\/p>\n
Last year an impression of Katsushika Hokusai\u2019s Under the Wave off Kanagawa sold for $2.8 million, a record for the artist, at Sotheby\u2019s Hong Kong. That\u2019s a lot of noodles. Although about 8,000 impressions are thought to have been printed from Hokusai\u2019s woodblocks, only 100 or so survive today. <\/p>\n
Originals may now sell for millions, but you could drown under a tidal wave of \u201cGreat Wave\u201d tat: totes, socks, ties, umbrellas, Thermos cups, even a Build-A-Bear teddy. If I were feeling overwhelmed by deadlines, I could text my editor a desperate Great Wave emoji. It is one of only two paintings \u2014 the other is Munch\u2019s Scream \u2014 to make it into the official emoji lexicon.<\/p>\n
Hiroshige\u2019s Night View of the Matsuchiyama and Sam\u2019ya Canal (Matsuchiyama San\u2019yabori Yakei), No. 34 from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo<\/p>\n
We\u2019re so used to seeing the Great Wave, we forget to look. Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai and Hiroshige at the Whitworth gallery in Manchester introduces us to Hokusai\u2019s most famous print as if we are encountering it for the first time. This perceptive, beautifully presented show is arranged across two rooms. <\/p>\n
One room invites close comparison of the land and seascapes of Hokusai (1760-1849) and Hiroshige (1797-1858). The other, like one of Hokusai\u2019s fishermen bent over roiling waters, casts its net wider to take in the city and characters evoked in \u201cukiyo-e\u201d or \u201cfloating world\u201d prints: images of sensual cosmopolitanism and hedonistic pleasure-seeking as here-today, gone-tomorrow as cherry blossom.<\/p>\n
This is the world of geishas and actors, lanterns and moonlight, cross-dressing, role-playing and assorted concealments. In one print by Katsukawa Shunsho, a male actor tip-taps about in his costume, as mannered as any courtesan. In another, by Utagawa Kunisada, a band of women have taken over a printer\u2019s workshop.<\/p>\n
One incises the lines into a block, another cuts away the excess wood, a third prepares the paper for printing, a fourth rests between puffs on a pipe. It\u2019s an elegant, romantic recreation of the reality of a busy studio with wood shavings on the floor and ink staining every surface.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a competition, but as with Turner and Constable at Tate Britain, you can\u2019t help but compare. Hokusai surely wins on humour, only then you spot the poor palanquin bearers in a Hiroshige print staggering under the weight of a patron. <\/p>\n
Hiroshige was the greater poet, softer, subtler, more attuned to nature and light, you think, until Hokusai makes you pull back your feet from the spray of a mountain cascade. I\u2019ll have the lot \u2014 and a side order of soba noodles.
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Whitworth, Manchester, to Nov 15, whitworth.manchester.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine that you have been transported back in time to the booksellers\u2019 district of Edo, modern-day Tokyo, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-332098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}