HN Explorer

Where can I see Hokusai's Great Wave today? (greatwavetoday.com)

201 points by msephton ↗ HN
I made this project.

It is automated and checks museum collection pages for changes in the "on view" status for the various impressions of "The Great Wave" by Katsushika Hokusai that are infrequently displayed around the world.

I've only seen two different impressions in the past 20 5 years and I want to see as many as I can.

The automation is a bunch of Huginn scenarios scraping pages on a schedule and checking for changes. I can't do all museums this way, some simply don't have good websites, but enough are covered to make this project worthwhile. The hard work was finding all the collection pages, figuring out the data to be watched and settings up the automation.

The static website presenting the results is hosted on a free Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Compute instance running Docker, EasyEngine for nginx. That's pretty much it!

115 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 250 ms ] thread
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
kachnuv_ocasek
This is a sweet little project and your explanation here made my day. Thank you so much for making this.
msephton
And thank you for the positive reaction and comment, which has made my day!
wgx
I've seen it once, in Chicago. I was in my early 20s and I didn't know back then there were lots of versions of it.

How about exposing the "upcoming" dates to users? It's a bit a of tease not knowing where it'll be next...

thorin
A bit like "the scream" and "sunflowers". I went to the Munch museum in Oslo and was very impressed.
BelleOfTheBall
Aren't the versions of "The Scream" all pretty different though? I think I read some of them are pencils or charcoals only, whereas the Great Wave variants seem to be quite similar
thorin
There are some different pictures on a theme and some more similar ones from what I remember. I'll have to check out the wave, I only know it from popular culture, I don't think I've seen it in person.
msephton
Thanks for the request. I appreciate people might want to plan ahead for trips.
criddell
I went to the page and came away frustrated because I thought the “upcoming” link was broken. I say either show the information or remove the tease.

If you’re really worried about people missing a showing, include an add to calendar link.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
msephton
I've now added a Calendar feed, which also contains any of the upcoming events with confirmed end dates. Thanks for the suggestion!
inopinatus
given that many visitors to this forum are several thousand kilometers from the current "on view" locations, I suspect that information will be appreciated
zeeZ
You may want to hit up David Bull, he's done a bit of research on the various versions of the great wave, while making his own

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLK-Wicsj5rAasS2g7e-Z9eFUd...

wodenokoto
With regards to buying a print of the Great Wave from David Bulls work shop (which I'd personally consider as original as any other print), I got this e-mail from the Mokuhan team back in January:

> The printing is going very slowly - we limit each run to a maximum of 60 sheets, in order not to overly wear out the key block. And we cannot turn our top printers (the ones working on this project) into 'Zombie Great Wave Printing Machines'. They take turns working on this one, mixed in with plenty of work on subscription prints and other designs, so we end up with a new batch of prints every 7~8 weeks or so.

> [...] At present this email address is in position [ 2,017 ] from the top of the list

I signed up, gosh, feels like years ago.

msephton
Woah, I had no idea of the queue. I'll settle for my current mass-produced print.
secondcoming
I got one years ago, and was a little bit underwhelmed but I'm not sure why. I originally thought the colour of the boats was off, but looking online it seems that some people render them in a richer red/brown than they actually are.

My copy actually is just lying in a cupboard in the original packaging. I never got around to actually displaying it!

Beware the import duty from Japan too!

The whole wood-block printing process is amazing, I just wish he'd branch out from copying Japanese stuff. Hardly any of his other works float my boat.

msephton
The British Museum have published some great info on the variations. It's best as this video https://youtu.be/U_025NB8alw or the PDF research paper equivalent.

My personal favourite impression is the one at Claude Monet's house in Giverny, France. I'm yet to see it in person, but they have a high resolution photo online. In this one the boats are muted and Fuji looks like a small wave. Of course, originally the colours may have been wildly different! https://twitter.com/gingerbeardman/status/115623713193900851...

mmastrac
I saw this one a few weeks ago. It's sad that it's displayed with a highly reflective glass cover in a very bright room. It's impossible to take in the whole thing at once.
olsgaarddk
> My copy actually is just lying in a cupboard in the original packaging. I never got around to actually displaying it!

Interested in finding it a new home?

newswasboring
I don't understand this rotating crafter thing. Wouldn't you want your crafters to be experts in their craft? How is rotating them making them better at this?
boppo1
Printmaking requires care and attention, and doesn't pay great. It falls squarely in the 'art career' category, where people choose it for reasons other than comp. If you have to print the same image every day, potentially indefinitely, the type of person who chose to be a printmaker is going to get sick of it.
newswasboring
Aah, its a supply side thing. That actually makes sense, I would leave a job too if all I did was write the same html page all day.

(Don't know if that is a fair analogy, maybe a better one exists on sysadmin side?)

tialaramex
Because programming is meta-applicable, competent practitioners will respond to being given the same task over and over by automating it, which isn't a thing if the whole point of what you do is that a human did it manually.

Princess Nell's observation about the nature of the Dovetail community in the novel Diamond Age applies: this is all very well, but it makes no actual sense without the context of the rest of society, on its own this practice is not tenable.

wodenokoto
It would seem nobody wants to be good at only printing one picture.
prepend
I guess they only make 400/year so I guess it will take many years to get to the top of the list.
caaig
I have one, it's a beautiful work of art.
BonoboIO
Wow. What an amazing process and how delicate. Thanks for the playlist.
Findecanor
One interesting detail about the Great Wave that came up in those videos is that apparently none of the known Edo-era prints in existence is (believed to be) an actual original. All of them show one or more signs of being a copy, or a copy-of-a-copy.

Copyright did not exist in Japan at the time, so copying of popular woodblock prints happened a lot. And each time, it had to be traced, carved and printed by hand.

Dave Bull's work is nothing short of amazing. He looked at multiple prints in detail, compared them against each other and knowing the nature of copying artefacts, he attempted to discern the original strokes and cuts as much as possible.

msephton
The original was destroyed as it was pasted to the block for the carver to cut its image. Then many impressions are printed with the blocks. The blocks wear and are damaged over time so new parts of blocks or whole new blocks are swapped out. Eventually, somebody creates a whole new set of blocks, and so on.
exitb
Doesn’t that severely underreport the opportunities to see that print considering that there are ~100 surviving “originals”, some on regular display in big name museums?
pavlov
Of those 100, many are presumably in private collections. (A quick glance at the auction database on Artsy suggests that 2-3 originals of Great Wave are sold annually, so there must be dozens of them privately held.)

The site lists 59 museum locations, which could be nearly complete if we assume 40% of copies are in private collections.

msephton
I don't count private copies because I don't know anything about them.

The main reason for the lower number is lack of data, plus some institutions have multiple copies: Boston have 7(!), NY Met 4, British Museum 3, Tokyo National 3, Chicago Art Institute 3, and many with a couple each.

msephton
No it doesn't underreport. Why? It's complicated.

Some of the ~100 known originals will never be available to view publicly, for a variety of reasons.

Many museums don't provide data on their collection, which reduces the possible count by a dozen or so.

Also it depends on your definition of "regular", as preservation demands they must be rested for 3+ years between viewings. So for example the impression in the Polish National Museum, Krakow, was last on view in 2021 and won't be viewable next until 2025 at the earliest.

Boston are currently showing one of their seven(!) impressions. I expected them to rotate it out part way through, but that has yet to happen.

Hopefully that answers your question.

drcongo
Today I learned loads of stuff I didn't know I wanted to know. Thank you.
Aunche
> preservation demands they must be rested for 3+ years between viewings

Does the act of resting help the ink last longer or are they simply rate limiting the amount of light that the print receives?

msephton
As far as I know it's light, though I did see that The British Museum want to do some testing of inks/pigments on individual paper fibres to learn more.
GauntletWizard
Great job. I wish I had seen this a couple weeks ago when I could have driven down to see it myself.
msephton
Sorry you missed an opportunity. This link was posted some weeks ago to HN but received zero upvotes. It's here again today because of the HN Second-Chance Pool.
eps
It'd far more useful to know when I can see the Great Wave near me.

Otherwise the site, as nice and minimalist as it is, is rather useless.

strunz
Are you unable to travel? Just because it's not useful to you doesn't mean it's useless.
eps
From the EU to Boston to see a painting? No, I am not able to do that.
elliotpage
This is a great project, I wish you well in seeing the work again!

If you would like your own ersatz version, lego make a set approximating this lovely art work in their own style.

msephton
I've put the LEGO version on my Christmas list :)
globular-toast
Why would I want to see this?
msephton
Why would anybody want to see one of the greatest, most influential, most enduring artworks ever created by man? No idea ;)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
globular-toast
Right? I've seen the Mona Lisa. It didn't add anything to my life. Is it just FOMO?
nrb
For some, I imagine it’s a matter of experiencing and connecting to something of cultural significance. That’s not for everyone, and that’s okay.
msephton
I was being facetious, apologies. I have no desire to see the Mona Lisa as it's of no interest to me. But for art that I am interested in, I want to see it in person. There's no need to, of course, but I want to. If you don't want to see art in person, don't worry about what why others might.
secondcoming
I never saw the big deal with the Mona Lisa. Sure it’s a painting I could never do myself but why is this one in particular so special? I don’t get it
nemo44x
I think it's one of those it's famous because it's famous things. Something has to be the most the special and I guess this particular thing is the thing that gets to be so special.
msephton
Interpretations vary but I personally think it's self-perpetuating. In the late 1800s Japan opened up to contact with the West after centuries of being closed to almost everybody, in fact nobody could leave the country and only chosen few could enter. Some of these prints got out and it must have been like seeing an alien artefact for the first time, almost impossible to imagine in this day and age with the internet. But artists like Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Degas, Picasso all scrambled to get hold of them. They were enraptured by this new form of art, many of them painting homages or their own versions of favourites. The Great Wave became famous because of this, and the cycle has repeated since.
the_af
Do you mean art in general or just the Great Wave?
globular-toast
This in particular. I've now seen a picture of it and I do appreciate the composition. But why would I want to see the "actual thing"? I was hoping for answers like "the colours are more vibrant and can't be reproduced on most monitors" or "it's very large, much larger than you could possibly display on your monitor". But instead I just got downvotes.
the_af
Ignore the downvotes.

I think in general the answer would include the fact that computer reproductions of art are seldom color accurate. Every step from taking the picture to compressing it to displaying it in your monitor is lossy/distorted. The colors and texture of paintings are better appreciated by looking at the real thing.

However, I don't think this is true of Japanese prints. I'm no expert, but I think they were made to be reproduced -- and in fact, many reproductions exist. Color fidelity is probably not a thing. Prints are also small, so that's not a factor either.

In this case, I would say the thing you get out of it is the knowledge that you are looking at "the real thing", a physical piece of history. Whether this is important to you, only you can decide. I've long decided I don't care enough about the Mona Lisa to go look at it in person; reproductions are enough for me. I can make a different decision for other pieces of art that feel more meaningful to me.

techdragon
I had the great pleasure of seeing two printings side by side when the National Gallery of Victoria had an exhibition several years ago.

Was amazing to see the differences side by side like that, and ever since I’ve tried to make a habit of looking for the little details that distinguish each of the extant prints. It’s a famous and commonly used piece of art but at the same time the different versions serve as a fingerprint for which individual print has been used as the source material.

I’ll upload a picture of them side by side and post a link once I’m back at my desktop.

Chucked up a page on my site with the side by side images, and some closer up shots that show the variations better. https://www.techdragon.io/quick-share/hokusai-at-the-ngv and https://web.archive.org/web/20230518114437/https://www.techd... in case I ever change the URL/Hosting

msephton
Wonderful! Very lucky to see two prints from different institutions at the same time! If I'm reading correctly the left one is NGV and the right one is Japan Ukiyo-e Museum, Matsumato. Bravo to the curator!
techdragon
It was an amazing exhibition, I hope the experience of seeing multiple prints of the same work together like that comes along again some day, even if I don’t get a chance myself, it’s just amazing to see with your own eyes.

More info seems to still be online https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/hokusai/ including the complete exhibit label list detailing everything that was on display, https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Hokusa...

It was the first time I’d been able to see so much of his work presented together. I had seen several pieces in various collections at museums and galleries, but this was something else, to see all of it together like this, to be able to walk through the exhibition and see his famous series together at the same, the waterfalls, the bridges, and what I’m pretty sure was the entire set of the Thirty Six views of Mt Fuji (id have to re-examine the entire label listing to be sure) … all together so close you can see the skill with which even though the different printings and reprintings have subtle changes, he crafted the artworks with such skill that they just look right together despite the obvious and not so obvious imperfections that clearly mark them as being copies or copies of copies.

zorrotorro
Too much Great Wave. Especially on HN. Just recently there was an Apple II black and white version of front page.

Look up Hiroshige. Very nice prints.

There was another nice Ukiyo-e artist but I forgot the name...

msephton
In my defence, this link was originally posted by somebody else 34 days ago, and also by me 22 days ago, long before the Macintosh 1-bit version, but my link received zero upvotes. It's here today on the front page because of HN's Second-Chance Pool https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308

My personal favourite Japanese woodblock artist is Kawase Hasui who was part of the Shin-Hanga movement in the 1920s/30s.

joshlk
I went to Japan last month and was surprised that there wasn’t much of Hokusai’s artwork available to see
msephton
There is a specific Hokusai museum, but I think this particular image (being a blend of Western and Japanese techniques) is much more popular outside of Japan. There are other great woodblock artists, my personal favourite is Kawase Hasui who was prolific from around 1920 for a few decades. As is with the way of woodblock printing, the named artist is the person that drew/painted the original artwork which was then interpreted by their supporting team of carvers and printmakers and the original is destroyed in the process! Some alternate originals have survived for a handful of Hasui artworks, featuring people or boats in different locations or different colour schemes, but that is not the case for The Great Wave.
jasonjamerson
We have one that's always on display at the LSU Museum of Art.
msephton
Thanks for the info! If it's always on display then it's more than likely a later reproduction rather than an original impression, as original impressions need to be stored away for long periods of time to minimise fading. You can use a guide by The British Museum to figure out if it's an early impression, if it's not already known. https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/great-wave-spot-differenc...

I'd take a look, but it's not listed on the LSU MoA collection website?

jasonjamerson
It's in a pull-out drawer display covered in glass. I'll ask the curator for more info.
selimthegrim
Visiting from New Orleans and would love to check it out tomorrow or Tuesday, or even next Saturday!
jasonjamerson
It's in a (very well protected) set of art drawers in the children's section just left of the lobby when you come up to the gallery floor in the elevator.
tharax
“Stored away for long periods of time to minimise fading” is such a polite way of saying “so that future generations have a chance of seeing it, _you_ aren’t able to see it today”.
msephton
at least not here, maybe somewhere else? "this isn't the impression you're looking for" waves hand
bombcar
Doesn’t the constitution or Declaration of Independence only uncover itself every ten minutes so to reduce fading?

I thought I remember that.

koliber
I love focused tools that deliver concrete value.

My only feedback is that the "not on view" section provides no apparent value. It says that there are 53 places where I presently can not see this painting. True, but of little benefit to anyone. Technically speaking, there are many more than 53 locations where I can't see this painting :), my office being one of them.

msephton
I've just added a link next to the "not on view" section to explain why that is, to give extra context.

IMHO the "not on view" gives weight to those "on view". Currently there are 2 original impressions on view anywhere on Earth, I think it makes a difference to know that it's 2 from ~50. If it was just 2 from an unknown number would you appreciate how rare these original prints are and how infrequently they are on view? (I don't think so.)

I also have a print in my studio, but I can assure you there's nothing like the real thing - it took my breathe away.

adrianparsons
I just have to say the the entire Hokusai exhibition currently on view at MFA Boston[0] is very very cool. Great Wave is on display (as shown on this site), but the dozens of other prints (From Hokusai, Hiroshige, and others) are just incredible.

0: https://www.mfa.org/exhibition/hokusai-inspiration-and-influ...

msephton
Would love to be able to get over to Boston!
obituary_latte
According to the site, it's currently in Farmington CT if that is any closer.
msephton
Yes, it's my site :) I'm in England so it would be an expensive trip to anywhere in the USA. Impressions are currently on display at both Boston and Farmington.
andrewcl
The Harvard Art Museum also has a copy: https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/203742

I don't think most folks realize there are a couple of copies in Boston!

msephton
7 in Boston! So far they have shown 2 different impressions since the exhibition started. I am tracking the Harvard one, no movement since the project started.
pdabbadabba
But is it on view? Most museums only rarely exhibit it to avoid fading. That's why, according to TFA, 56 museums have it in their collections but only two have it on view.
obituary_latte
Doesn't the site say the Great Wave is on display in Farmington, CT? Next stop is Boston, but currently the Great Wave (not sure about rest of collection) seems to be in CT.
msephton
There isn't just one Great Wave, there are around 100 first generation impressions. Boston are showing one of their 7 at the moment, and Farmington are showing theirs. Most others are currently stored away for preservation.
Aeolun
If people like it so much, can’t we make more?
secondcoming
The wooden carvings no longer exist. David Bull makes actual wood block print copies, see further up the thread for details.
msephton
We can make more, in different ways. There are lots of modern digital or screen printed versions, but they're printed from photos of existing original versions so are more like a photocopy. There are a few modern woodblock woodblock prints. But the original impressions have that special something about them.
thrownaway561
You might want to reach out to John Resig who has run ukiyo-e.org and maybe collaborate on things together.

https://ukiyo-e.org/image/artelino/46365g1

msephton
I met John a few times many years ago, when I was a full-time web developer. Such a great guy! I use his Ukiyo-e search often. Would love to hear from him so I'll send him a message.
pajko
Make sure to visit the Hokusai Museum and the Gansho-in temple in Obuse, if you are near Nagano. There are quite a lot of attractions nearby, so it worth spending a weekend in the neighborhood.
msephton
I'll put it on my list, for sure! Thanks
ChatGTP
Visited once, amazing little gallery, wonderful trip.
jmholla
What is the intent behind the "upcoming" and "not on view" sections? Outside of the link to the explanation of fading, they don't impart much information. I don't see how to tell what 3 locations are coming up, or what's special about 54 other unknown locations that their lack of displaying is worth quantifying. Are there only a total of 59 locations that have impressions?
msephton
Upcoming locations may not have their dates confirmed and they're in the future so they were outside the original scope of the site, where you can see it today, right now. Plus it was to provide a bit of hope that there are more to come rather than not have any idea if/when more are coming.

However, I do see the need for people to plan as far ahead as possible so I will in future list upcoming events that have their dates locked on the page, in fact they are already in the calendar feed.

Not on view: there are indeed a total of only 59 locations that have original impressions, some have multiple (Boston have 7!) and others can not be viewed by the public or only by appointment. I am currently unable to track 11 locations, but things are always changing so I'm hopeful they can all be tracked at some point.

rvba
7! is quite a lot indeed :)
valgaze
"Huginn Scenarios" from here: https://github.com/huginn/huginn
msephton
Yes, I should have linked it and the post was locked by the time I spotted it was missing and there were some typos. In my Huginn Scenario I have one Website Agent per museum/gallery/institution containing the URL to check and a some rules of how to extract the text from the page that I have figured out signifies whether the work is "on view" or not. These feed into a private RSS feed of my own that I then process separately to update the web page. Here you can see the Agent for Portland Museum of Art and that it created two events (one when it went on view, one when it was taken off view). Tada! https://imgur.com/xMGJvRu
dkdbejwi383
The upcoming section would be more useful if it said when and where it was coming up. Just telling me it's upcoming at 3 locations is not very useful.
msephton
I'll improve this section. Only some of the upcoming viewings have confirmed dates. Those that are show in the webcal feed (link in footer) but I'll make sure they appear in the HTML soon.
psychoslave
I would rather ask, where can you go and not see it, on some wall, T-shirt, package, whatever.

The mountain is usually not there though.

jrockway
I have it on a desk mat and it has the mountain ;)
varikin
I saw it years ago at the Printing Museum of Tokyo[1]. I think it was an original and part of their permanent collection, but I could be wrong. I know it was a woodblock print and they had a couple of with just a couple colors to show the process of printing with multiple blocks, each with different colors.

I don't see it listed on their website, but I didn't look too hard.

[1] https://www.printing-museum.org/en/

msephton
Thanks for the info. No sign of it on their site, but I'll make a note.