Hokusai at the Musée Guimet

Follow him into a world of dreams, imagination, stories…

Tile maker in Imadogawa

To penetrate the world of Hokusai, the viewer must abandon the West and the minimalist idiom of contemporary art, forget that “trash” is in the spotlight. One has to follow him into a world of dreams, imagination and stories, enter a world of pleasure and beauty, be ready to lose oneself in the poetry, the subtle colours, the wealth and precision of the details. The exhibition is held in the lower part of the museum, in soft artificial lighting well suited to these prints.

What was the art of printing in Hokusai’s time ?

Courtesan and her two attendants admiring cherry blossoms in Nakanacho

The vast majority of the works presented are prints. What was the art of printing in Hokusai’s time ? Prints were made from woodblocks carved in relief, used alone or in succession with different colours, from an original drawing that was destroyed afterwards. The prints were always small, some the size of a book. The art form grew out of the rise of pleasure districts : teahouses, Kabuki theatre, courtesans and dancers. The prints (ukiyo-e), especially those using a polychrome technique (nishiki-e), were often extremely popular. They were produced in large series or even in the form of illustrated books emphasising themes of city life and the world of pleasures known as the “floating world”.

Hokusai, a man of many talents

Sometimes ukiyo-e were privately commissioned by men of letters or intellectual circles. In this case, they were more refined, produced in limited series of very high quality with several colours : for example, prints commemoratng special events (surinomo), illustrations of humorous poems (kyoka) or erotic prints (shunga, images of spring).

One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean : {Chosi in the Province of Shimosa

Hokusai tried every medium. He is said to have made a thousand drawings, from novel illustrations to sophisticated series. He is considered to be the artist who launched the landscape, seldom a theme in the earlier art of Japan, unlike that of China. But we mustn’t forget Hokusai was taught by Chinese masters ! He had a special fondness for scenes of everyday life, of courtesans as well as the common man. His gift for capturing movement, people, animals and plants is striking. Interested in the work of other artists, he also used Western techniques such as perspective ; recognised and appreciated early on in the West, he had a definite influence on its painters, notably in France (Monet, Degas, Klimt).

The origin of today’s mangas

Let us continue the exhibition : ten prints from the legendary series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji are here, along with a number of preparatory drawings : landscapes, naturally, which were unusual at the time in Japan, but also a pretext for genre scenes, with extraordinary characters in movement : precious, delicate women depicted in graceful poses, peasants and lower-class people going about their daily occupations…

Laughing Demon

The marvellous Laughing Demon and two others from the series A Hundred Ghost Stories are shown, reminding this visitor of the beautiful 2005 exhibition “Yokai” , the bestiary of fantastic Japanese animals” at the Maison de Culture du Japon in Paris. There were Hokusai prints in that show as well, particularly Star on a Frosty Night, revealing the genesis of today’s mangas.

Don’t miss the twelve erotic prints

The poems explained by the governess Tenchi Tenno take us back to the fairy tales of our childhood ; five are on display here ; the small series of twelve newly published prints of street scenes is delightful ; and of course, twelve erotic prints, a style that played an important role in introducing Japanese prints to Western audiences. And then, four prints from One Thousand Pictures of the Ocean, representations of flowers, birds, animals, views of Celebrated Bridges…

Hokusai, a painter of genius

Hokusai was also painter of genius, as the works grouped together at the end of the exhibition amply demonstrate : the famous pair of The Tiger and the Dragon, painted at the end of his life, as well as eight life-size screen panels. In organising this exhibition almost entirely from its own collection, the Musée Guimet also wished to pay tribute to the donors of works, particularly Norbert Lagamme, an honour they more than deserve.