Free Thinking - Japan and Korea. Hokusai
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2017
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chris Harding discusses the work of Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai with Tim Clark, curator of a new exhibition at the British Museum and explores the relationship between Korea and Japan through the visual arts with art historian Angus Locker, Charlotte Horlyck, chair of the Centre for Korean Studies at the School of Oriental & African Studies, and Je Yun Moon, a curator at the Korean Cultural Centre UK overseeing a year-long festival of Korean arts. Plus Aidan Foster-Carter on the US involvement in the formation of North and South Korea.
Hokusai: beyond the Great Wave runs at the British Museum from May 25th to August 13th. You can find out more about Hokusai on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | This is the BBC. Hello, I'm Chris Harding, one of the BBC's new generation thinkers, and I teach and research |
| 0:41.3 | Japanese culture and history at the University of Edinburgh. On this edition of the Arts and Ideas |
| 0:47.1 | podcast from Radio 3's Free Thinking Team, as a new exhibition opens at the British Museum dedicated |
| 0:53.6 | to the Japanese artist Hokka-Sai, |
| 0:56.0 | famous for his image of the Great Wave, we're looking at ambition, artistic, diplomatic, nuclear. |
| 1:03.0 | Exploring the power of art to change how nations think about themselves and how they're viewed around the world. |
| 1:10.0 | Japan, as Asia's first modern nation. |
| 1:14.2 | South Korea, fast catching up and the subject now of a year-long festival building links |
| 1:19.8 | between the UK and Korea. And is there such a thing as North Korean art? First, Hokka-Sai. |
| 1:29.0 | I've been to the British Museum to meet the curator of the exhibition, Tim Clark. |
| 1:34.0 | The gallery is set to be full soon with 21st century Londoners. |
| 1:38.7 | But who were Hokka-Sai's own audience, |
| 1:41.3 | seeing it when it was newly painted or fresh off the woodblock. |
| 1:45.5 | It's a mass audience. He's working in the colour woodblock print medium and in printed, |
| 1:50.1 | illustrated books, and the audience is anybody who can afford them. And the unit price of a print |
| 1:55.4 | is very low. One sheet print in Hawkside's Day was roughly equivalent to just a bit more than double-helping of noodles in a restaurant. |
| 2:04.5 | So pretty much anybody could walk into a print shop off the street and purchase one of the 36 views of Mount Fuji. |
| 2:10.8 | And what sorts of imagery, what sorts of stories were people really wanting from someone like Hokka-Sai? |
| 2:17.1 | Hoxai grew out of the Floating World School, which was typically depicting the pleasures of the city, |
... |
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