Hokusai Exhibition in Rome

Rome-- The Eternal City could be seen as the greatest monument to human ego ever built and Hokusai is the greatest artist who believed that the ego was an illusion. Putting one inside the other is a philosophical confrontation.

Stepping into the exhibition, you are greeted with a marble figure that stands in front of two Japanese style cranes. The statue is everything and all Rome ever believed about itself – it is large, standing on a pedestal, reflecting a kind of perfection built to last. The birds are fluid – vulnerable, blending into their surroundings. This juxtaposition is what the exhibition explores.

You are standing at the headquarters of the longest argument in Western history, the most ego-saturated square in the world. It convinces us that human will can defeat time, that greatness built in stone outlasts the men who built it. Civilisation is measured by what it leaves standing. Palazzo Bonaparte sits at Piazza Venezia. The Vittoriano looms at one end. The Forum is a five-minute walk. The Colosseum, a few minutes beyond. Into this city comes Katsushika Hokusai. And Hokusai, politely and devastatingly, disagrees with all of it.

Born in 1760 in Edo, Japan, he moved house 93 times. He changed his name at least 30 times, each one a deliberate dismantling of whatever he had been before. At 75, he wrote that everything he had made before 70 was not worth considering. He would understand the essential nature of things at 90, achieve divine understanding at 100, and that at 110, every dot and stroke would be animated with life. Unfortunately, he died at 89 in 1849, and it is a crime that we will never find out what he could have accomplished.

The idea of man as an immovable force with the gift of creating anything unquestionably great, is Hokusai’s greatest enemy of art, yet exactly what Rome has embodied.

Where Rome conquered nature – rerouting rivers, draining lakes, framing them behind windows to separate itself – Hokusai merged into it. His worldview was shaped by Shinto, Buddhism and Taoism. To him, everything was in flux. His art depicted the dance between being and becoming. In his prints, humans appear constantly, but never dominant, never in command of the frame. 

The exhibition seems to understand these stakes, because the space makes the argument before the art gets the chance to. The palazzo's Baroque ceilings – ornate, white, grand – preside over everything. At the threshold between spaces, Japanese shoji screen archways glow, their warm amber grids quietly softening the Roman scale around them.  

Over 200 works make up the show, on exceptional loan from the National Museum in Kraków, many never before seen in Italy. Among them are the iconic Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, the revolutionary Manga sketchbooks, and rare illustrated books. Alongside these is a rich collection of Japanese objects including lacquerware, armour, helmets, swords and traditional kimonos. An immersive room of projected Hokusai-inspired visuals is one of the most eye-catching parts of the exhibition, inviting viewers into his world.

The star of the exhibit – The Great Wave inside a glowing arch. The wave is small and mid-fall – a fleeting moment. The arch is a Roman creation – permanent. The wave is not. And it is the wave you cannot look away from.

Hokusai believed that the divine was not in great temples or long scriptures, but in the act of creation itself. Rome built the Pantheon to house its gods. Hokusai found his in the form of a wave, the bend of a crane's neck, the particular light on a mountain he painted 36 times and never once felt like he had finished.

Rome insisted on eternity and is now surrounded by its ruins. Hokusai embraced impermanence completely leaving behind one of the most reproduced images in human history. The man who refused permanence became permanent. The city that demanded eternity became a museum.

They were both right. And this exhibition is two great civilisations setting aside their argument to simply look at each other.

The Hokusai exhibit runs from March 27 to June 29 at Palazzo Bonaparte, Piazza Venezia 5, Rome. It is open Monday to Thursday from 09:00 to 19:30, and Friday to Sunday from 09:00 to 21:00. Tickets can be booked in advance through the Palazzo Bonaparte website, Ticket.it or purchased on site directly.