(soft piano music)
- [Beth] We're here in the storage room
at the Freer Gallery of Art,
looking at two exceptional paintings
by a Japanese artist
the we mostly know through his woodblock prints.
But here we're looking at his paintings.
And paintings made at the very end of his life.
- [Frank] Oh, we are looking at a deep take
by the famous artist Katsushika Hokusai.
- [Beth] Hokusai lived to be a very old man.
- [Frank] Hokusai all writes about his desire to live
even up until the age of 110,
was wish appears from One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji,
he writes "I started sketching everything
"around me at age six"
and wishes to live up until the age of 110,
when he thought his abilities would reach such a level
that every line that he paints comes to life.
- [Beth] It's such a prolific artist.
He's produced so much
that any other artist would have felt so accomplished.
- [Frank] As he saw his end approaching,
he experiences this final birth of creativity
and the medium that he chose was painting.
- [Beth] And so, we can think about these are expressing
something more personal for Hokusai.
- [Frank] Let's talk about the "Woodcutter" first.
This may be based on a Noh play,
in which a imperial emissary was sent out
to find the spring of eternal life.
The emissary comes across a woodcutter,
and asks him "Have you heard of such a spring?".
And the woodcutter sends him to that spring
and the emissary can return
with happy news to the emperor.
- [Beth] So this is a folk tale,
and we can identify
that this particular woodcutter
is likely from that folk tale
because of the gourd
that he has around his waist,
which he would have used to collect the water
from the spring of the eternal life.
- [Frank] But in combination with the "Fisherman",
another theory was also raised.
There is a ancient Chinese story
about a woodcutter and a fisherman
conversing about the meaning of life,
because both of them are men of nature,
and tune with the world around
so they become the symbol for the perfect balance
between the world, the cosmos and a life.
- [Beth] It's important for us to recognize that
although these are figures that have simple professions,
what's going on here
there's something much more serious
for Hokusai at age 90.
- [Frank] This distant mountains are taken
from the Chinese tradition
where distant pics served to create
a sense of spacial death.
But do they also are part
of the woodcutter's natural environment.
He goes into the mountains to gather wood
and bring it back to the village.
Whereas the "Fisherman",
this vast expanse of the ocean as being eluding to
by leaving the upper portion of the painting blank.
And in their combination,
it makes perfect sense to have
these Earth by one creature
that's the woodcutter beneath his toting pics
whereas the fisherman is casing out
into this emptiness
asking us what am I looking at,
what am I thinking.
- [Beth] The image of the fisherman
feels much more contemplative.
I've immediately wondered
whether this was a self-portrait of Hokusai.
He's sitting on this wonderful wicker basket
that's overflowing with fish and feathers
and behind him there's seaweed and then,
although he is very simply dressed,
a sense of abundance,
of a life well lived,
but also a feature that's unknown.
- [Frank] Both of this paintings may have being created
as quiet as a self-portrait of Hokusai.
The feathers have puzzles colors
for as long as these paintings have been known.
Why would a fisherman have feathers in his basket?
Or are these real feathers?
Are those fins?
This maybe references to another play of the Noh theater.
The fisherman comes upon a feathered rope
hanging from a tree
and he takes it home because he finds it beautiful.
One night, a heavenly being comes to him
and says "Give me back my robe,
"because without it, I can not return to the heavens".
The fisherman says "Why should I give it back to you?
"It's now mine and I like it.
"But if you dance for me,
"I'll return it".
So she performs a heavenly dance
and he obeys the bargain
and gives her back her robe.
- [Beth] So perhaps, he's looking out
at the dancing supernatural figure?
- [Frank] Perhaps.
Or he's trying to find another
(both chuckle)
feather robe to take home with him.
But what I always find so striking about these paintings
is this smile on the fisherman's and the woodcutter's faces.
There is this satisfaction with the world around you
and also with yourself.
- [Beth] The way that he leans forward
has a very positive feeling to it.
And I'm thinking until just about
the kinds of infirmities that happen
when one is 90.
The difficulty of holding a brush steel,
of creating fine lines.
- [Frank] The woodcutter is a very moving image.
Hokusai, of course, was an extremely accomplished painter,
one that could draw any line he wanted.
But looking closer,
you find a certain hesitancy
in these black outlines of the robe.
Brush that is not held quite steady.
But it also gives the painting
the certain sense of vibrance,
because the robe by those staggering lines
also seems a little crumbled.
It almost enhances this feeling
of an unaccomplished day of work.
- [Beth] At the same time,
he is also showing us this mastery
that we see throughout his career
and creating figures that have a sense
of very natural stick movement.
And also different textures on struck
by the fuzziness of his hair
comparing with the fabric that he wears around his head.
- [Frank] He really was
one of the most accomplished painters,
both in his own time
or the entire Edo period,
or perhaps if enough entire history of Japanese art.
- [Beth] Or perhaps of the 19th century broadly.
- [Frank] Exactly.
The signatures in border in his paintings
record Hokusai's age,
literally the signature has "Old man aged 90".
Below this a Buddhist symbol.
In Japanese you pronounce this "Manji",
which was Hokusai's last artistic name.
He didn't always call himself Hokusai.
And at this very late stage in his life
he called himself "Manji".
Beneath this,
define a seal reading "A hundred".
And in that seal Hokusai is declaring
"Okay, I'm 90, but actually
"I do wanna live until the age of 100",
and sadly that was not to be.
The signature also reverberates
perhaps Hokusai frail health,
because the characters are not in a full straight line.
There is a hesitancy on the brush,
he had to pause midway in the strokes
whereas a few years ago,
this would have been a swiftly brushed signature.
And among those 12 paintings that he made at age 90,
we don't know which one came last.
But personally, I choose to believe that
this deep take with discontentment
with his sophistication may perhaps even be one of the last,
if not the last paintings of Hokusai.
(bright piano music)