Name: Better Know the Great Wave
Uploaded: 2019-04-12T01:32:35.000Z
Duration: 8 min 35 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Basic passive voice

Adverbs of manner

by Skillshare and our patrons, especially Indianapolis Homes

You've seen this image before, a giant wave,

its distinctive curly claws arched and ready to pounce.

It's invoked when natural disaster strikes,

but also when it's time to sell beer, jeans, and sweatshirts.

It inspired Claude Debussy's orchestral work "La Mer,"

as well as a not insignificant number of tattoos.

What is it about this image that continues to enthrall us?

First off, the title is not The Great Wave.

It's one of a series of woodblock prints called

36 Views of Mount Fuji, made by the Japanese printmaker

Katsushika Hokusai between 1830 and 1833.

Mount Fuji is depicted from a variety of perspectives.

And the artwork in question is just one of them.

Its actual title translates to Under the Wave Off Kanawaga,

Also under the wave are fishermen, just trying

to the city of Edo, rowing for their lives to escape the wave.

But the great wave, of course, dominates the composition

the name for the mass produced woodblock prints of the Edo

period, notable for their distillation of forms,

emphasis on line and pure color, and depictions

"Ukiyo-e" means floating world, referring to the ephemerality

available to a growing middle class for about the cost

Hokusai was fascinated by the movement of water,

throughout his career, and not just rough seas,

In the 1830s, when The Great Wave was created,

Japan was largely shut off to the wider world,

due to the isolationist policies of the Tokugawa shogunate

We can see Hokusai borrowing from Japanese Rinpa School

in the tentacle-like projections from his waves.

But Western realism was creeping into Japanese art

nevertheless, largely due to European engravings smuggled

The Great Wave betrays a clear Western influence--

the use of linear perspective, a low horizon line,

a synthetic pigment then very new to Japan,

Thousands of copies of the Mount Fuji prints

were released within Japan, mostly bought as souvenirs

by an emerging market of domestic tourists

and those making pilgrimages to the mountain.

Japanese culture quickly became all the rage in Europe.

And ukiyo-e prints were admired and collected

by many, including Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt,

and a number of artists who were heavily influenced

vivid colors, and what for them was a flattening of space.

and news of its destruction spread worldwide.

It's been hypothesized that this event, coupled

with the Japonisme craze, helped propel The Great

Although the print does not depict a tsunami,

It would certainly still be deadly, however.

And that's where we get to the real and obvious drama

This juxtaposition can be seen in the art of many cultures

But we have perhaps never seen it played out more clearly

Traditional Japanese landscapes of the time

put the viewer at a remove from the action.

But here, we are right up against this pending disaster.

Hokusai's contrast of near and far, and man made and natural,

heighten the tension and place us inside the narrative.

of surviving a terrifying storm on a fishing boat,

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Better Know the Great Wave

episode

resilience

variety

grief