Hokusai. Edmond de Goncourt

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СКАЧАТЬ nobles, yokels, women, old men, and children gathered in the temple courtyard to see the drawing produced.

      In the afternoon, Hokusai and his students, in almost ceremonial garb, with bare legs and arms, got to work, students carrying ink in the cask, putting it into a bronze basin and accompanying the painter at work moving across the giant page. Hokusai first took a brush the width of a sheaf of hay. After dipping it in the ink, he drew the nose, and then the left eye of the Darma. He took several strides and drew the mouth and the ear. Then, he ran, tracing the outline of the head. That done, he completed the hair and the beard, taking, to shade them, another brush made strands of coconut that he dipped in a lighter India ink. At that moment, his students brought, on an immense platter, a brush made of rice sacks soaked in ink. To this brush was attached a rope. The brush was placed at a place indicated by Hokusai. He attached the rope around his neck and pulled the brush, with small steps, to make the thick lines of the Darma’s robe. When the lines were complete, he had to colour the robe red. Some students took that colour in buckets and spread it with shovels, while others mopped up the excess colour with wet towels. It was not until dusk that the Darma was completed. It was lifted up with the pulleys, but part of the paper stayed in the middle of the crowd, who, as in the Japanese expression, resembled an “army of ants around a piece of cake”. It was not until the next day that they were able to extend the scaffold sufficiently to lift the entire painting into the air.

      This performance made Hokusai’s name burst out like a “thunder clap”. For some time, throughout the city, one saw everywhere, drawn on frames, screens, walls, and even in the sand by children, Darmas, this saint who had been deprived of sleep. According to the legend, indignant at having fallen asleep one night, he cut off his eyelids. He threw them far away, as if they were miserable sinners. By a miracle, his eyelids took root where they had fallen and a tea plant grew, giving the fragrant drink that drives away drowsiness. This was not the only huge painting that Hokusai executed. Later, he painted, in Honjô, a colossal horse. Later still, in Ryōgoku, he completed a giant hotel, that he signed, “Kintaïsga Hokusai”: “Hokusai of the house of the brocade sack”, alluding to the canvas sack carried by the gods. The day he painted the horse the size of an elephant, we are told that he laid his brush on a grain of rice, and when the grain of rice was examined under a magnifying glass, one had the illusion of seeing, in the microscopic stain from the brush, the flight of two sparrows.

      The greatest honour that this artist obtained during his life was that his fame reached all the way to the Tokugawa court, and that he was able to display his talent, without rival, before the great prince. Once, while the shogun was walking in the city of Edo, Hokusai was invited by the prince to paint before him. He first started to trace a rooster’s feet on an immense sheet of paper with a brush, then suddenly transforming the drawing by putting a touch of indigo on the feet, he created a landscape of the Tatsuta River that he presented to the surprised prince.

      Name and signature changes are typical in the life of a Japanese painter. But with Hokusai, these changes were more frequent than with any other painter from Japan. These name changes all have a history. Thus, at one point, the master handed down his signature of Hokusai to one of his students who owned a restaurant in Yoshiwara, a neighbourhood of public houses. This student painted in his establishment, paintings of 16 ken (32 metres), each time that Hokusai made an overture to the artists’ guilds to adopt a new signature.

      The Poet Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, c. 1802.

      Ink and colour on silk, 34.8 × 44.3 cm.

      Museo d’Arte Orientale Edoardo Chiossone, Genoa.

      II. Surimonos, Yellow Books, and Illustrated Novels

      Plum Tree in Bloom, 1800.

      Ink and colour on silk, 204.5 × 51.7 cm.

      Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.

      Hokusai’s work was of staggering quantity and diversity, an oeuvre inscribed in the Japanese tradition, of course, but that the master took and made his own. Japanese painting traditionally takes three major forms: the kakemono or the makimono; the fan and the drawing for woodcuts which looks like an engraver’s drawing, done by the master in a size for a woodcut. The drawing itself is always done in India ink, the painter only trying colour versions on a few proofs printed in private for himself and his friends. Kakemonos are large format works, destined to be hung on walls; makimonos are small format works made to be held in one hand; surimonos, finally, are luxury versions of stamps. All these works are executed according to a complex printing technique, developed and improved throughout the history of the Japanese print, brilliantly used by Ukiyo-e artists, who bring beauty and sophistication to their height. Midway through the eighteenth century, techniques allowed the production of these prints in colour. Hokusai’s oeuvre is composed of writings (texts and poetry) and, above all, pictorial creations in various forms: kakemonos, makimonos, surimonos, and illustrations for books and albums, printed in black or in colour, of which the most famous are erotic books (shunga).

      1. Surimonos

      Surimonos are luxurious stamps, made in a very careful fashion: high quality paper, exceptional pigments, often enhanced with gold and silver, parts en relief, embossing, and great delicacy in the engraving. All defects during printing were destroyed. The sales price was very high. Surimonos, specially ordered from editors or artists were ‘private printings’ of small numbers; they were destined either to be given as gifts on certain occasions (parties, the new year, congratulations for a marriage, or to honour a famous actor), or to poets’ or stamp lovers’ clubs. Surimonos are generally made in a small format, shikishiban (about 20 × 18 cm), sometimes smaller (15 × 10 cm), but large pieces do exist. In general, one or more poems are written on surimonos; they illustrate the scene and give it a deep meaning, and their script is part of the beauty and balance of the drawing. Subjects are more varied than on ‘traditional’ stamps. These prints are not made for commercial purposes. They are sometimes New Year’s cards that one gives to friends or concert programs; they sometimes commemorate a party honouring an academic or an artist, living or dead. They are soft prints, where the colour and the drawing seem tenderly soaked up by the silk in Japanese paper. They are images with a beautifully softened tone, artfully blended and faded, with colouring similar to the lightly tinted clouds made by a brush full of paint in a glass of water. These images are characterised by the silkiness of the paper, the quality of the colours, the careful printing, the gold and silver enhancements, and by embossing, which is obtained by the weight of the worker’s bare elbow on the paper. These engravings, so typically Japanese, are a large part of Hokusai’s œuvre.

      Mount Fuji behind Cherry Trees in Bloom, c. 1800–1805.

      Surimono, nishiki-e, 20.1 × 55.4 cm.

      Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

      The first known surimono by Hokusai dates from 1793. It is signed: “Mugura Shunro “. It represents a young drinking water merchant, sitting on the staff used to carry his two small barrels; at his side are sugar bowls, and porcelain and metal bowls. This surimono carries, on the back, the program for a concert organised in the month of July, to introduce a musician under his new artistic name and is accompanied by the names of those who sent out the following invitation: “Despite the great heat, I hope that you are in good health. I wish to inform you that my name has changed, and that, to celebrate this change, on the fourth day of next month, I am organising a concert at Kiôya de Ryogoku’s house, with the participation of all my students, a concert from ten o’clock in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon and, whether the weather is nice or it rains, I count on the honour of your attendance. Tokiwazu СКАЧАТЬ