Late Hokusai: Thought, Technique, Society

葛饰北斋（1760-1849）是迄今为止最知名的日本艺术家，有时与伦勃朗和毕加索一起被认为是少数几个真正具有全球影响力的艺术家之一。他的作品的力量早已显而易见。在他的一生中，他迷住了日本公众，很快引起了欧美艺术家的注意，并从那时起继续吸引着全球观众。据估计，他的《巨浪》（约1831年）是目前世界上被复制最多的作品。然而，葛饰北斋仍然是一个谜，他的全部工作范围鲜为人知。在公众中，他经常被视为浮世绘（“漂浮的世界”）流派的典型代表，尽管这并不能反映他的全部作品。在专家中，他通常被孤立为一个“怪人”，游离于日本艺术的传统范畴之外，尽管人们对他的作品的真实性缺乏共识。这两种观点都没有抓住北斋绘画想象力的原始、持久和普遍的力量。为此，本项目将重点关注他过去三十年的生活。富士山的版画不仅证明了他掌握了惊人的风格、形式和格式。他们开始了一系列非凡的图像，其中一些来自他生命的最后几个月，在这些图像中，北斋继续完善他与人类、自然和看不见的世界的交流。为了理解这项工作的力量，我们会问：1。葛饰北斋的思想，尤其是他相信绘画是超越自我局限的一种手段，如何激发了他的艺术？2. 北斋的成熟风格是如何综合和重新定义他职业生涯早期研究过的日本、中国和欧洲的艺术词汇的？在对确定真伪的标准缺乏共识的情况下，我们如何识别北斋本人的绘画作品？4. 葛饰北斋与合作者、工匠、印刷商、出版商、学生、赞助人和公众之间的联系是如何使他的作品得以实现的？这些问题将为下一代的学术研究和公众对葛饰北斋的全新认识奠定基础。研究结果将通过以下方式进行传播：2017年在大英博物馆举办一场大型展览和专著，随后将前往日本；国际会议和编辑的研究卷；以及一个试点的在线资源，为研究人员和公众提供一个空间，让他们可以探索和进一步了解北斋的成就。该项目由大英博物馆的蒂莫西·克拉克（Timothy Clark）领导，他是江户时代视觉艺术方面的专家。他将得到伦敦大学亚非学院的日本历史学家安格斯·洛克耶（Angus Lockyer）、大英博物馆和亚非学院江户时代艺术专家阿尔弗雷德·哈夫特（Alfred Haft）和松子良子（Ryoko Matsuba）的协助。核心项目团队将由Roger Keyes和浅野修go担任顾问，Roger Keyes是研究葛饰北斋的英语专家，浅野修go是葛饰北斋专家，也是大阪安野晴景博物馆馆长，展览将在伦敦之后前往大阪。京都立命馆大学艺术研究中心是世界上领先的浮世绘图像数据库，将为该项目提供数字支持。该项目依赖于国际合作，并将吸引一系列研究人员来探索其核心的跨学科问题。主要合作机构包括波士顿美术博物馆、史密森学会的弗里尔-萨克勒画廊、大都会艺术博物馆、巴黎的mussame Guimet，以及包括东京国立博物馆在内的十多家日本主要博物馆。该项目的主要贡献者将是由Henry Smith教授（哥伦比亚大学）、Peter Kornicki（剑桥大学）、Robert Campbell（东京大学）和KOBAYASHI Tadashi（东京大学）、John Carpenter博士（大都会博物馆）和NAGATA Seiji （Tsuwano Katsushika北饰博物馆）组成的咨询委员会。

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is by far the best-known Japanese artist, sometimes mentioned with Rembrandt and Picasso as one of the few artists to have created art with a truly global reach. The power of his work has long been apparent. He captivated the Japanese public in his lifetime, quickly caught the eye of Euro-American artists, and has continued to fascinate a global audience ever since. His Great Wave (c. 1831) is by some estimates now the most reproduced image in the world.Hokusai remains a puzzle, however, and the full scope of his work little known. Among the public, he is often seen as the archetypal representative of the ukiyo-e ('floating world') school, although this fails to capture the full range of his work. Among specialists, he is usually isolated as an 'eccentric', outside the conventional categories of Japanese art, even though there is a lack of consensus about the authentic body of his work. Neither perspective grasps the original, enduring, and universal power of Hokusai's pictorial imagination. To do so, this project will focus on his last three decades. The prints of Mount Fuji were not only evidence of his mastery of a startling range of styles, forms, and formats. They inaugurated an extraordinary series of images, some from the last months of his life, in which Hokusai continued to refine his communion with human, natural, and unseen worlds.In order to understand the power of this work, we will be asking: 1. How was Hokusai's art animated by his thought, notably his belief that painting and drawing were a means of transcending the limitations of the self? 2. How does Hokusai's mature style synthesize and redefine the artistic vocabularies of Japan, China, and Europe, which he had studied earlier in his career?3. How can we identify Hokusai's own painted work, given the lack of consensus about criteria with which to establish authenticity? 4. How was Hokusai's work enabled by the social networks that linked him to collaborators and craftsmen, printers and publishers, pupils, patrons, and the public?These questions will provide the foundation for the next generation of scholarship and a transformed appreciation of Hokusai among the public. The results of the research will be disseminated through: a major exhibition and monograph at the British Museum in 2017, which will then travel to Japan; an international conference and edited research volume; and a pilot online resource, providing a space within which researchers and the public can explore and further our understanding of Hokusai's achievement.The project is lead by Timothy Clark of the British Museum, a specialist in Edo-period visual arts. He will be assisted by Angus Lockyer, a Japanese historian at SOAS, University of London, and Alfred Haft and Ryoko Matsuba, two specialists in Edo-period art at the British Museum and SOAS. The core project team will be advised by Roger Keyes, the leading specialist on Hokusai working in English, and ASANO Shugo, a Hokusai specialist and Director of Abeno Harukas Museum, Osaka, where the exhibition will travel after London. The Art Research Center, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, the leading database of ukiyo-e imagery in the world, will furnish digital support for the project.The project relies on international collaboration and will draw on a range of researchers in order to explore the interdisciplinary questions at its heart. Key institutional partners are Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Freer-Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée Guimet in Paris, and over ten leading museums in Japan, including the Tokyo National Museum. Among the key contributors to the project will be an advisory committee comprising Professors Henry Smith (Columbia University), Peter Kornicki (Cambridge), Robert Campbell (Tokyo) and KOBAYASHI Tadashi (Tokyo), Dr John Carpenter (Metropolitan Museum) and NAGATA Seiji (Tsuwano Katsushika Hokusai Museum).