Late Hokusai: Thought, Technique, Society

北井克介(1760-1849)是迄今为止最著名的日本艺术家，有时与伦勃朗和毕加索一起被提及为少数几位创作了真正具有全球影响力的艺术的艺术家之一。他的工作的力量早已显现出来。他的一生迷住了日本公众，很快就吸引了欧美艺术家的目光，从那以后一直吸引着全球观众。据估计，他的《大浪》(约1831年)是现在世界上复制最多的图像。然而，北塞仍然是一个谜，他的作品的全部范围也鲜为人知。在公众中，他经常被视为浮世绘(浮世派)的典型代表，尽管这未能捕捉到他作品的全部。在专家中，他通常被孤立为日本传统艺术类别之外的“怪人”，尽管人们对他的作品的真实性缺乏共识。这两种视角都没有抓住北塞绘画想象力的原始、持久和普遍的力量。为了做到这一点，这个项目将专注于他最后的三十年。富士山的版画不仅证明了他对一系列令人震惊的风格、形式和格式的掌握。他们开创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，北井继续完善他与人类、自然和看不见的世界的交流。为了理解这部作品的力量，我们将问：1.北井的艺术是如何受到他的思想，特别是他认为绘画和素描是超越自我限制的手段的启发的？2.北井成熟的风格是如何综合和重新定义他职业生涯早期研究的日本、中国和欧洲的艺术词汇的？3.我们如何识别北井自己的绘画作品，鉴于对确定真实性的标准缺乏共识？4.北井的作品是如何通过社交网络与合作者和工匠、印刷商和出版商、学生、赞助人和公众联系起来的？这些问题将为下一代学术和公众对北井的转变欣赏提供基础。研究结果将通过以下方式传播：2017年在大英博物馆举行的大型展览和专著，然后将前往日本；国际会议和编辑的研究卷；以及试点在线资源，提供一个空间，研究人员和公众可以在其中探索和进一步了解北塞的成就。该项目由大英博物馆的蒂莫西·克拉克领导，他是江户时代视觉艺术的专家。他将得到伦敦大学SOAS的日本历史学家安格斯·洛克耶以及大英博物馆和SOAS的两位江户时代艺术专家阿尔弗雷德·哈夫特和松河良子的协助。核心项目团队将由用英语研究北海的领先专家罗杰·凯斯和北海专家兼大阪Abeno Harukas博物馆馆长浅野·舒戈提供建议，展览将在伦敦之后前往大阪。京都立命馆大学的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。该项目依赖国际合作，将吸引一系列研究人员来探索其核心的跨学科问题。主要的机构合作伙伴是波士顿美术馆、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Guimet博物馆，以及包括东京国立博物馆在内的日本十多家领先的博物馆。在该项目的主要贡献者中，将有一个咨询委员会，成员包括亨利·史密斯教授(哥伦比亚大学)、彼得·科尼基教授(剑桥大学)、罗伯特·坎贝尔教授(东京)和小林忠志教授(东京)、约翰·卡彭特博士(大都会博物馆)和长田诚司教授(津野克苏希卡·北塞博物馆)。

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).