The aim of Hokusai, a Japanese artist, was to live – and work – beyond the age of 100. He said (young people, listen up) that “until the age of 70, nothing I drew was worthy of notice”. Every year he worked, he improved. Older meant better. “At 110, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive.” A new exhibition at the British Museum in London covering the last 30 years … [Read more...] about Hokusai: old man, crazy to paint
ART
The tattooed hipsters of 18th-century Japan
Tattoos are by nature fleeting, a living art form that dies with the body which serves as its canvas. But a new book manages to pin down the Japanese practice of irezumi, or traditional tattooing, by drawing on an unlikely source: 19th-century woodblock prints. “Tattoos in Japanese Prints", by Sarah E. Thompson, curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, … [Read more...] about The tattooed hipsters of 18th-century Japan