Why were both Van Gogh and Monet influenced by Japanese Ukiyo-e?

However, our protagonist today is not Van Gogh, but a Japanese old man who painted erotic pictures.

How powerful is this old man? There is a very famous selection in the world called "100 Celebrities Who Influenced the World in the Millennium", and he is the only Japanese in it. However, he is not a founding hero, nor is he a ruler who leads the people to glory. Or, he is a bad old man who paints, but he is a representative figure of Japanese Ukiyo-e who is called a teacher by many European Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, such as Van Gogh and Monet.

Of course, Ukiyo-e is not a high-value artwork. At that time, you could buy an Ukiyo-e for the price of a bowl of beef noodles. Ukiyo, derived from a Buddhist term, represents the customs of the world and means to enjoy yourself in time. As the name suggests, people want to see those beautiful geisha ladies after they have some spare money.

As a result, this industry developed rapidly, and the surrounding industries were also stimulated. At first, 70 to 80% of Ukiyo-e were paintings of high-ranking geisha ladies, which are the so-called erotic pictures

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Hokusai Katsushika was engaged in this industry at that time. He mainly painted Japanese senior geisha ladies and painted scenes of fun between them, which was very popular. Of course, as an artist, how can you not have a pen name? In order to vividly display his profession, Katsushika Hokusai gave himself a very avant-garde (wei) (suo) pen name "Iron Rod Slippery".

However, with the circulation of these colorful paintings, the lifestyle of luxury, glitz and instant gratification has been greatly promoted. People have followed "money", causing the social structure to collapse and causing dissatisfaction with the government. So the government issued a ban: no more than three colors could be used in Ukiyo-e; blingbling mica powder could not be used, and many printing plants were even forced to close.

The government’s ban has severely damaged Ukiyo-e, but do Ukiyo-e artists always have to live? Since the bosses at that time probably lived by the sea, and Japanese civilians were prohibited from traveling within the country, painters switched from painting figures to painting landscapes. Not surprisingly, such landscape paintings sold very well.

It was at that time that Katsushika Hokusai was influenced by Western copper engravings and inspired to promote the development of Japanese landscape painting. As a result, Japan's famous beauty (chun) people (gong) painting (tu) master has since become He is a master of landscape painting. "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" is one of Katsushika Hokusai's "Thirty-Six Pictures of Mount Fuji". It is one of the most famous paintings in Japan.

Why "Oki off Kanagawa - Waves"? Kanagawa is a place name; Oki refers to the deep water area far away from the shore; Nami is the way ships seem to be swallowed up in the big waves. Translated into the vernacular, it means: in the big waves in the deep waters of Kanagawa. This painting captured the moment when the waves rolled high. According to relevant scholars, "If you want to capture that moment, you need to press the shutter of 1/5000th of a second immediately to capture that second." ”

In this painting, Katsushika Hokusai deliberately kept the viewpoint very low. The waves were extremely high, and the waves were like sharp claws hitting the face. The ship swayed with the waves, and then zoomed out. , behind this huge wave, there is actually a small and peaceful Mount Fuji. Such a strong contrast makes Mount Fuji even more eternity and loneliness.

There have been many explanations for this painting in later generations: "It talks about national justice, and it talks about Katsushika Hokusai's advanced worldview that has super powers and can see into the future." But in fact, none of them are as good as this sentence "Three Masters of Ukiyo-e" "When the waves rise, facing the worries of the sailors, the waves remain calm, the power of nature suddenly sublimates, and the perfect top of Mount Fuji seems to be watching everything from a distance."

Even though Katsushika Hokusai promoted the transformation of Ukiyo-e, making Ukiyo-e more than just a disappearing erotica form. But what does this have to do with Van Gogh?

There is an old saying in China: "Everyone is destined to die, and it may be heavier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather." Artists agree: the reason why some artists are great is that they are great at the moment, while the reason why some artists are great , because an inadvertent choice he made during his lifetime triggered a domino effect, affecting the entire historical process of later generations. Katsushika Hokusai is such a person.

We all know that Van Gogh's early paintings were very gloomy. His "Shoes" and "Potato Eaters" were undoubtedly not dark tones, but when he saw Japanese Ukiyo-e paintings, he His artistic sense seemed to be touched all of a sudden.

After Van Gogh left Paris and arrived in Arles, he wrote this in a letter to his brother Theo: "I will continue to paint, and some works of permanent value will appear in my paintings. I Hopefully, in this lovely countryside, there will be other artists who, like Japanese painters, paint the scenery of their hometown. I will always love this place, this place is so much like Japanese art that once you fall in love with it, you never will. Abandon him.

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It can be seen that Japanese Ukiyo-e changed Van Gogh so much that many of his later paintings had the shadow of Japanese Ukiyo-e. Some people even compared "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" and "Starry Sky" to Together, there is no sense of contradiction?

Part of the information comes from "Is Art Difficult?"