Comment by techdragon
2 years ago
I had the great pleasure of seeing two printings side by side when the National Gallery of Victoria had an exhibition several years ago.
Was amazing to see the differences side by side like that, and ever since I’ve tried to make a habit of looking for the little details that distinguish each of the extant prints. It’s a famous and commonly used piece of art but at the same time the different versions serve as a fingerprint for which individual print has been used as the source material.
I’ll upload a picture of them side by side and post a link once I’m back at my desktop.
Chucked up a page on my site with the side by side images, and some closer up shots that show the variations better. https://www.techdragon.io/quick-share/hokusai-at-the-ngv and https://web.archive.org/web/20230518114437/https://www.techd... in case I ever change the URL/Hosting
Wonderful! Very lucky to see two prints from different institutions at the same time! If I'm reading correctly the left one is NGV and the right one is Japan Ukiyo-e Museum, Matsumato. Bravo to the curator!
It was an amazing exhibition, I hope the experience of seeing multiple prints of the same work together like that comes along again some day, even if I don’t get a chance myself, it’s just amazing to see with your own eyes.
More info seems to still be online https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/hokusai/ including the complete exhibit label list detailing everything that was on display, https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Hokusa...
It was the first time I’d been able to see so much of his work presented together. I had seen several pieces in various collections at museums and galleries, but this was something else, to see all of it together like this, to be able to walk through the exhibition and see his famous series together at the same, the waterfalls, the bridges, and what I’m pretty sure was the entire set of the Thirty Six views of Mt Fuji (id have to re-examine the entire label listing to be sure) … all together so close you can see the skill with which even though the different printings and reprintings have subtle changes, he crafted the artworks with such skill that they just look right together despite the obvious and not so obvious imperfections that clearly mark them as being copies or copies of copies.