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Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today?

(greatwavetoday.com)
124 points colinprince | 8 comments | 09 Jul 25 03:34 UTC | HN request time: 0.995s | source | bottom
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akkartik ◴[09 Jul 25 05:24 UTC] No.44506571[source]▶
The 'but why?' link is fascinating: https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/not-fade-away-preventive-...
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vasco ◴[09 Jul 25 05:42 UTC] No.44506653[source]▶
> This means that if these prints are displayed for three months at 50 lux, they should be stored in the dark for at least a year before they are displayed again

> 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.

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qq66 ◴[09 Jul 25 06:08 UTC] No.44506766[source]▶
By limiting the hours today, it helps make sure that the people who do see it are the ones most interested in seeing it. Those are the ones who will look up the schedule, schedule their trip around it, etc... while if it's just permanently up, many of the viewers will be random passersby (and the number of viewers per hour of illumination will probably be lower)
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1. qalmakka ◴[09 Jul 25 07:00 UTC] No.44507056[source]▶
Exactly this. When I was younger they did an exhibit of the Great Wave and Ukiyo-e next to where I lived, so I saved the date when the ticket office opened on my calendar. I then found friends interested in coming with me and grabbed some tickets before they ran out. If you just put it on display every day it will just fade away while being yet another print in a museum full of paintings. You're denying future generations the chance love this print and cherish the opportunity to see one in person. Art is not just taking a photo and passing by, it's about appreciating the fact some human made some very special thing we can now enjoy
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2. MangoToupe ◴[09 Jul 25 08:37 UTC] No.44507606[source]▶
> You're denying future generations the chance love this print and cherish the opportunity to see one in person. Art is not just taking a photo and passing by, it's about appreciating the fact some human made some very special thing we can now enjoy

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.

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3. Angostura ◴[09 Jul 25 11:58 UTC] No.44508920[source]▶
For many works, even the best photographs don't entirely capture the physical object - particularly those where texture, including brush strokes is important. Many pigments can't be duplicated via the standard printing gamut. This particular work is a woodblock print, so perhaps photography is adequate - I don't know.

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.

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4. nkrisc ◴[09 Jul 25 12:14 UTC] No.44509083[source]▶
Paintings are not simple two-dimensional images. You can't view a painting from different angles from a photo. You can't see the light reflecting off the texture of the paint from different viewing angles. You can't get close and observe the brush strokes. A photo of a painting is superficially similar to the painting, but there's much that it lacks.
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5. GolDDranks ◴[09 Jul 25 14:30 UTC] No.44510498{3}[source]▶
However, in this case, we are not talking about a painting, but a woodblock print. (Not disagreeing with your point in general, though.)
6. refactor_master ◴[09 Jul 25 15:03 UTC] No.44510890{3}[source]▶
Tangentially I saw this exhibition in Tokyo on modern ukiyo-e https://www.tnm.jp/modules/r_free_page/index.php?id=2693&lan... and I was blown away by the incredible level of detail the artists were able to pack into woodblock print. From a distance it looks almost like print, but up close you can really see the textures, and interestingly also the physical limitations compared to real print (the colors being layered by individually carved woodblocks).

With that being said, I’m sure they could make a replica that would be almost impossible to tell apart from the real. After all, this technique was specifically invented for mass production.

7. umanwizard ◴[09 Jul 25 17:27 UTC] No.44512690[source]▶
Photographs of paintings don't look the same as paintings. Dunno about woodblock prints but I'd imagine the same is true.
8. Yeul ◴[09 Jul 25 20:29 UTC] No.44514426[source]▶
There's a nice Japan museum in the Netherlands which was founded by one of the greatest weebs of the 19th century. It's basically his giant house filled with Japanese memorabilia. Watching katanas, kimonos and Japanese lacquer boxes in reality is quite different from watching them in a book!