21–30 of 93 posts
> If not the most famous artwork in the world Wait, what?? Am I the only one who thinks this sentence is off by an order of magnitude? I'd bet that the Great Wave is not even one of the 10 most famous. Unfortunately I have no evidence to support my statement...
> If not the most famous artwork in the world Wait, what?? Am I the only one who thinks this sentence is off by an order of magnitude? I'd bet that the Great Wave is not even one of the 10 most famous. Unfortunately I have no evidence to support my statement...
The search gives a few lists, but all of them feel western-biased.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is true of documents, text messages, social media etc., but most books, magazines and other printed matter are still done vertically and R-L.
Wow, I didn't know that! I thought vertical text was a thing of the past. Interesting.
I find that reading vertical text feels better, even though I first learned to read horizontal text. I don't know if this is all in my mind, or it really does have some appeal to it, though.
Wow! Never thought about it like this before: > Because Japanese text is read from right to left, the earliest viewers of The Great Wave would have likely read the print that way too, first encountering the boaters and then meeting the great claw of water about to swallow them. So instead of riding along with the gargantuan wave as you might in a left-to-right reading, they would face right into the massive wall of o…
Wow! Never thought about it like this before: > Because Japanese text is read from right to left, the earliest viewers of The Great Wave would have likely read the print that way too, first encountering the boaters and then meeting the great claw of water about to swallow them. So instead of riding along with the gargantuan wave as you might in a left-to-right reading, they would face right into the massive wall of o…
I think that's just the natural direction to draw a wave as a right handed person.
> If not the most famous artwork in the world Wait, what?? Am I the only one who thinks this sentence is off by an order of magnitude? I'd bet that the Great Wave is not even one of the 10 most famous. Unfortunately I have no evidence to support my statement...
In https://www.google.com/search?q=famous+artwork I got it at the 26th position. The search gives a few lists, but all of them feel western-biased.
> If not the most famous artwork in the world Wait, what?? Am I the only one who thinks this sentence is off by an order of magnitude? I'd bet that the Great Wave is not even one of the 10 most famous. Unfortunately I have no evidence to support my statement...
As an example recently talking to a Japanese friend who is the same age as me we realised she had seen less than 10% of the movies that "everyone born in the early 80's has seen". She didn't know who OJ Simpson was, nor is she familiar with Henry VIII and his 6 wives. She knew the Backstreet Boys & One Direction, but not Take That nor East 17.
Traveling in China a few years ago I was surprised to see many Hokusai images used on clothing and shop decorations.
The Mona Lisa might be the western world's most famous artwork, but you rarely see it on a T-shirt unless you're meeting a tourist near the Louvre. I suspect that if both were in still trademarked that Hokusai would be making orders of magnitude more on royalties than Da Vinci...
I first encountered it in a class where we looked at the whole series. It gives this sense of Japan being very diverse of setting, but always in the shadows of Fuji. I've not been to Japan, and not sure of the accuracy of the size of Fuji but it does make it feel like wherever you are, Fuji is there watching.
Mount Rainier, at a bit over 14,000 feet, is just a bit taller than Mt. Fuji (a bit over 12,000), and both are similarly-shaped stratovolcanoes. Kanagawa Prefecture (the "Kanagawa" in the print's name) is part of the greater Tokyo area, so a wave "off Kanagawa" is either in Tokyo Bay or in the Pacific just outside of it. Wikipedia's analysis suggests the perspective is from southern Tokyo Bay, around 60 miles from the peak of Mount Fuji. And downtown Seattle is, as it happens, about 60 miles from the peak of Mount Rainier.
So the view of Rainier from Seattle is quite similar to the view from of Fuji in the print. The view from Tokyo proper would place Fuji slightly smaller than Rainier, since Tokyo is slightly more distant from Fuji than Seattle is from Rainier, and since Fuji is the slightly smaller of the two mountains.
Which is a terrible idea. The air pressure at that altitude does not support driving four reeds, especially through a splitting headache.
Imagine if there were quantum-mechanical minds that were able to appreciate quantum-mechanical art, but, the very act of contemplating, comprehending the art irreversibly degraded it. What a beautifully sad thought! A stark finiteness, like NFT's for conscious experiences.
Dyes are destroyed by the very light that illuminates them to visibility. Observation is destructive.