Thanks for the RSS feed. I added it to my reader (Flipboard) just in case I happen to be somewhere near an exhibition.
replies(1):
Obviously "serviceable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, a replica might simply not be very good, might not capture some vital characteristic of the thing which makes it a great work.
But otherwise, it's basically that the knowledge of how important and significant this work is puts the viewer in a more receptive frame of mind, right?
To be clear, that's not nothing. I of course know firsthand how much that affects the impact of a painting, museums and galleries care a lot about how they display their collection. But is that it?
> While these measures will not stop fading from occurring altogether, they will ensure that these world-famous prints fade so slowly that they will be seen by countless generations of visitors to the Museum in the future.
This trade-off is interesting, are we maximizing for number of people watching works? Or are we purely maximizing time? Because its not obvious to me that more people will see a work if it lasts 1000 more years but spends 80% of that time in storage, vs lasting 100 more years spending 0% of the time in storage.
Also lets say you go to the museum today and are lucky that it happens to be on display. But your friend travels to see it, it happens to be in 80% storage time, then the friend goes back home and dies without seeing it so that some future person that doesn't exist yet even can see it later without fading. Why is the future person more important than the current person, in a sense?
Storing it assumes a lot, that humanity will survive, that people will be interested in seeing it, that some fire isn't going to destroy their storage, etc. Meanwhile real life people would've seen it already. I don't have an answer, just questions though.
Last year, I went to Otsuka museum of art[1] where they have life-size replicas of famous paintings (including the Sistine chapel), and it was great.
Before going, I was weirdly hung up about going to somewhere to see "replicas" instead of the real thing. But once I got there, I loved every second of it. All the artworks were replicated with careful detail in life size, so I felt like I wasn't missing much. In fact, I felt like I was enjoying it more! There were no crowds. I could get as close to the artworks as I wanted to. The lighting was great, since they didn't have to worry about damaging the paints. It was more engaging for the kids as they could free touch some of the replicated potteries etc.
It is a bit out of the way, but I'd highly recommend anyone going to Japan to check out that museum and maybe the onaruto bridge [2] on the way
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ctsuka_Museum_of_Art
[2] https://www.japan.travel/national-parks/parks/setonaikai/see...
In fact the replica can even be enhanced. Feed it into an LLM or diffuser and produce something better. But now we call this AI slop even when the slop is superior to most of what humans can ever produce in their lifetimes.
I think the key is not to pretend you’re above it. Don’t be that idiot in the corner asking stupid questions like “why do humans listen to music it’s just patterns of sound waves that have no intrinsic meaning and why do they sing songs and communicate in complicated ways when plain English works”
Are you human? Embrace your humanity and stop pretending you’re some genius savant who’s so above it all that he can’t comprehend human nature. You know why people want to see the real thing for the same reason why a bunch of people want to go to concerts and listen to music that is objectively worse than the recording. If you understand music then you understand art. Don’t pretend you don’t.
[Show HN:] Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 - May 2023 (114 comments)
And when you consider that "original" in woodblock prints is a Ship of Theseus thing -- over the years, prints have been made by different printers (frequently using different colors!), employed by different publishers, using blocks that have been re-carved by different craftspeople -- the "original", in any traditional sense, is only the painting made by Hokusai.
When you start diving into the world of collecting woodblock prints, you realize that "authenticity" is a subtle concept, and prices can differ by thousands of dollars (or far more) based on little more than a publisher's mark and/or the age of the paper. It's an area where encyclopedic knowledge really is required to understand exactly what you're looking at.
For example, you can easily find lots of "authentic" Hokusai prints in the <$1000 range (sometimes much lower), but these are all modern prints, done on re-carved blocks. Some of the cheapest have been done in the past 20 years.
If the store bought ones get destroyed or worn out I can just get a new one. The hand made ones are irreplaceable. They represent a huge personal time investment by someone who cares enough about me to do that work for me.
Art may be a little different but I reckon it's the same idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Work_of_Art_in_the_Age_of_...
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/... (Zohn translation)
https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf (Zohn translation)
https://web.archive.org/web/20220128111229/http://raumgegenz... (French, blocked)
https://web.archive.org/web/20180730163618/https://www.artec... (German)
This is probably a good time to reread it, since AI art is forcing us to revisit many of the same questions from a new perspective.
Though I'd imagine mostly its going to be a random sample of people that happen to be there that day. I imagine there's likely under 1% of museum visitors actually chasing single works and planning trips like that. So most people that would see it are still just random "museum people" (which under the "interest" metric is still better than purely random people).
Waterfall penance is my favorite.
https://www.tremontauctions.com/auction-lot/hokusai-katsushi...
He also made some weird art involving an octopus and a woman, which is insightful both for understanding the other side of a famous artist, and also some of the weirder things in modern Japanese manga.
Edit: after I made this comment I was reminded of a comic I saw on reddit, where the artist was bemoaning their dream of getting paid to draw beautiful art, versus the reality where the only people willing to actually pay for art all want furry porn. So maybe not much has changed really, and maybe it says less about Japanese culture, and more about the general human condition.
Sometimes the replicas themselves are so old they become a monument on their own right, like some "Egyptian" obelisks in Rome, which are roman copies.
I can see and appreciate Michelangelo's "David", in one of its two best-known Italian renderings (not counting the one in Las Vegas), even though the sculpture's human model, and the artist, are long dead.
I think Banksy has the right idea, even though people do what they can to undermine his works -- by, among other things, chain-sawing them out of the walls the artist chose to make his point, then offering them for sale.
A copy of a book isn't a travesty, so why should a copy of a painting be one?
The painting is way smaller than you expect, it's always crowded with folks who want to take selfies, it's behind so many layers of glass/plastic that distort the colors — it's really, really hard to actually have any chance to appreciate it person.
It discusses how Hokusai changed his artistic style every ~10 years for his own pleasure.
[0] https://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=Hokusai:_Old_Man_Crazy_...
https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-story-of-michelangelos-da...
I'm (mis)remembering it was on a math textbook of some kind, perhaps a 90's era high school AP calculus BC text.
I personally don't get this attitude, but I also don't understand a lot of what draws people to museums when we have photographs of works of art. Which is not to say that I don't get why people view works i n person. I just don't understand neurotically trying to preserve a physical work when the author likely didn't even care that much or consider a more preservable medium to begin with.
This seems like such a blatant apples and oranges comparison I'm not sure where to begin:
1. Live music is often better than studio recordings, 2. You can record memories with loved ones there that have no analogue in viewing a static piece of art, and 3. You're supporting a living artist.
People just want to view the mona lisa to because it's an easily purchasable experience widely seen to have value. Or something like that; to be honest, I don't quite grasp the psychology and visiting paris seems like it's not worth the effort.
Arguably there's more educational value and more chance of a visitor serendipitously encountering something that speaks to them if the museum has a big set of prints rotated through, rather than a more static one. After all, even if you haven't ever seen an original of the Great Wave you almost certainly already know the image and it's likely already made most of the impact on you that it ever will...
The current exhibition in Nantes, France, (whose print is on loan from Japan) sold out very quickly. Before I could even organise my travel! So the fascination with The Great Wave lives on.
An example: my partner is working in a relatively expensive "wellness" service. Some people reserve and never show up even though they have reserved for a whole family and lose more than a thousand euros. I am pretty sure a lot of people that cannot afford this service at this price on a regular basis would if it was less expensive for them. I know I do as I only profit from it because I have a 50% discount and my partner doesn't have to pay so we pay a quarter of the price everytime we go together.
So making it an auction and you would still see a mix of interested people and vain but wealthy people for which paying for this would still be pocket change and would just take an "I've been there" selfie and move on without really being interested in the artwork itself. So more money for the museum but not necessarily representative of the interest of the visitors.
This is because of how humans appreciate where the spirit of a work is. In case of a book, most of the essence is in the words, not in the paper or the ink - although, people do appreciate the print itself too to a great deal. But because the words carry the most meaning, the work gets copied, translated, even modernized, and agreed to not lose much of its meaning. After the mass printing era, there is no such thing as "a single master book" when referring to a work. There can be drafts, a manuscript, generations of copies referred to as different editions, etc. It's a mass production affair with a blueprint and products, whereas in case of a painting, there is a single, final version original usually, and subsequent reproductions are copies and modifications of that.
The other thing is that a copy of a painting is not a travesty at all. Many appreciate and decorate with replicas, prints, view them online, use them as wallpaper on their device, etc. I don't think people think of any of this as a travesty. The issue here is to present a copy as the original, in which case the replica becomes a fake. This is a lie, and a betrayal, and these evoke strong feelings in humans.
Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44223424 - June 2025 (1 comment)
Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35985221 - May 2023 (113 comments)
Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35700834 - April 2023 (1 comment)
Where can I see Hokusai's 'Great Wave Off Kanagawa' at a museum today? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35555378 - April 2023 (1 comment)
Also:
Things to know about the Great Wave - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41474449 - Sept 2024 (90 comments)
Hokusai's 'Great Wave' features on new Japanese banknotes (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40688921 - June 2024 (50 comments)
1-Bit Hokusai’s ”The Great Wave” - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35866283 - May 2023 (72 comments)
The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for generations (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26994024 - April 2021 (63 comments)
Iconic Print, “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” Recreated with 50k Lego Bricks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25482654 - Dec 2020 (12 comments)
The 'Great Wave' has mystified art lovers for generations (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22025618 - Jan 2020 (27 comments)
A Great Wave of Hokusai - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21757078 - Dec 2019 (2 comments)
What Hokusai’s Great Wave tells us about museums, copyright, online collections - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547824 - July 2019 (24 comments)
---
Also, Hokusai apart from the Wave:
Hokusai Moyo Gafu: an album of dyeing patterns - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44224992 - June 2025 (14 comments)
Hokusai's five ghoulish prints for the series Hyaku Monogatari (ca. 1830) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41989260 - Oct 2024 (17 comments)
Hokusai's rare Mt. Fuji collection sold for $3.6M. at N.Y. auction - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39762679 - March 2024 (7 comments)
Hokusai’s Illustrated Warrior Vanguard of Japan and China (1836) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36808566 - July 2023 (3 comments)
Late Hokusai: Thought, technique, society - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34403383 - Jan 2023 (12 comments)
Hokusai and ‘The Great Picture Book of Everything’: The Latest Research - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31711386 - June 2022 (2 comments)
British Museum makes lost Hokusai drawings available online - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24542001 - Sept 2020 (31 comments)
A picture of change for a world in constant motion - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24090950 - Aug 2020 (3 comments)
Hokusai: Old man, crazy to paint (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21557558 - Nov 2019 (5 comments)
Hokusai’s Ghost Stories (ca. 1830) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18657668 - Dec 2018 (1 comment)
The Magician of Manga - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13057213 - Nov 2016 (10 comments)
I'm not clear that the original artist's materials, with respect to longevity is really relevant, assuming the artist didn't explicitly intend it to be ephemeral.
https://greatwavetoday.com/all-institutions.csv.txt isn't working.
I'm kind of surprised actually that they haven't found a better way to exhibit it in close to 70 years. But the protective layer is a big part of why it's underwhelming in person.
Orson Welles made a great documentary on this topic.
At first I was a bit mad that you linked a 1.5 hour video just like that, but this sounds really interesting after all. Thanks for the recommendation.