Travel

choi

Luke Lyman, The Art of Being Where You Are. Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2025, at page C12.
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture ... ing-things-3dae0c9e

Note:
(a) A banner strides across and stop the article. The banner reads: 'When I am 110, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive. I beg those who live as long as I to see if I do not keep my word.' -- HOKUSAI

葛飾北斎
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/葛飾北斎
(1760 – 1849; section 1 生涯, section 1.7 画狂老人卍時代: "75歳となった天保5年（1834年）3月に、北斎は富士図の集大成とも言える『富嶽百景』を上梓した[80]。『富嶽百景』の巻末では画狂老人卍と号した北斎が初めて自跋を載せ、これまでの半生とこれからの決意を語った[81]。要約すると「6歳の頃から絵を描き、50歳の頃から様々な作品を発表したが、70歳より前に描いた絵は取るに足らないものだった。73歳になって鳥や獣、虫や魚などの骨格や草木の生え方がわかってきた。80歳になればそうした摂理がもっとわかるようになり、90歳になってその奥義を見極めることができるようになるだろう。100歳になればそれを超越した世界を知ることができ、110歳では1点1画がまるで生きているように描くことができるだろう。長寿の神様、自分の言葉が嘘でないことを見ていて欲しい」という胸中を明かしている[82]。"
(i) my translation: At 75 in 1834, he had 上梓 printed 富嶽百景 that could be said 富士図の集大成 culmination. At the end of the atlas, he signed 画狂老人卍 as his 号.
(ii) Google Translate does the rest of translation: He "wrote his first postscript [or epilogue 跋], in which he talked about his life up to that point [これまでの半生; これまで up to now] and his determination [決意] for the future [これから; literally: from now]. [ 81 ] In summary [要約], he said [from his heart 胸中, this Google did not translate], 'I started drawing when I was six years old, and from the age of fifty I began to produce various [様々な] works, but the pictures I drew before the age of seventy were insignificant [(idiom as adjective) 取るに足らない insignificant]. At the age of seventy-three I began to understand the skeletons [骨格, which is the simplified form of 骨骼] of birds, beasts, insects, and fish, and the way plants grow. At the age of eighty I will be able to understand these laws [摂理: law (of nature)] better, and at ninety I will be able to discern their mysteries [奥義 (inner mystery), whose literal meaning is inner meaning, where 奥 is inside (of a house, a mountain etc -- as opposed to surface or outside (of a house etc) )]. At the age of one hundred I will be able to know a world that transcends them, and at 110 I will be able to paint each and every stroke [the 1画 in 1点1画 means 一つの筆画 'stroke in a Chinese character' ito Jim Breen's online Japanese-English dictionary] as if it were alive. I hope the god [神様] of longevity [長寿] will see that my words are not lies [嘘]. " [ 82 ]

(b)
(i) In Letter XXVIII (on travel as a cure for discontent), Seneca "takes up Socrates' teaching" that external changes like travel cannot solve internal problems.
(ii) Seneca the Younger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger
(c 4 BC – AD 65; usually known mononymously as Seneca; stoic; "His father was Seneca the Elder * * * His prose works include 12 essays and 124 letters dealing with moral issues")
(A) He and his father shared the same full name: Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger.
(B) Seneca was a prominent gens (Roman clan who descended from a single pair of ancestors).
(c) The Roman (sur)name Seneca came from senex (noun masculine or feminine meaning old person) or (adjective masculine or feminine, meaning (of a person, as opposed to a thing) old).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/senex
(iii) gens
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gens
(pronunciation)


(c)
(i) Ushibori in Hitachi Province
(A) Ibaraki Prefecture  茨城県
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibaraki_Prefecture
("Ibaraki Prefecture was previously known as Hitachi Province" 常陸国)

Kanji 城, pronounced as ki, is neither Chinese nor Japanese pronunciation, but appears in (place) names only.
(B) Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-six_Views_of_Mount_Fuji
(No 20 is 常州牛堀)
(C) Ushibori in Hitachi Province, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. Yale University Art Gallery, undated
https://artgallery.yale.edu/collections/objects/47636
(c 1831; "In this woodblock print, the use of varied shades of indigo (ai [Japanese pronunciation for 藍; Japanese pronunciation for 青 is ao; Japanese do not distinguish these two kanji, to be discussed in a posting of mine]), as well as clean, sharp lines, creates a serene atmosphere. The stillness of the scene is broken by the sound of a bucket of water being poured into the marsh, which sends two egrets into flight. Katsushika Hokusai freezes this moment of transition in his image. The artist's excellent use of bokashi, or color gradation, can be seen in the background, where Mount Fuji rises above the reeds into a deep blue sky that fades to white at the top")

Japanese-English dictionary:
* bokashi  ぼかし《暈し》 (n): "blurring (eg of an image); blur; gradient; gradation; shading"
* manji 卍 万字 【まんじ】 (n): "卍 is used as a symbol for Buddhist temples on maps)"
(D) 冨嶽三十六景《常州牛堀》. Cultural Heritage Online 文化遺産オンライン (オンライン is katakana for online; website operated by Agency for Cultural Affair 文化庁, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) 文部科学省), undated
https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/197848
(collection of 公益財団法人 東京富士美術館)

The "language" at the top right corner for the alternative "English" does not work. Use Google Translate.
(E) 牛堀 refers to 牛堀町
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/牛堀町

Kanji 堀 means either moat or canal/ ditch.
(ii) "he changed his name to Gakyō [画狂] Rōjin [老人] Manji: 'The Old Man Crazy to Paint.' "


(d) Alexander Keirincx
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Keirincx
(e) Isamu Noguchi  野口 勇
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isamu_Noguchi

Japanese-English dictionary:
* isamu 勇む 【いさむ】 (v): "to be in high spirits; to be encouraged; to be lively; to cheer up" (but not to be brave)
(f) "Berthe Morisot * * * In Normandy, she cultivated her plein-air technique"
(i) Berthe Morisot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berthe_Morisot
(1841-1895; French painter)
(ii) English dictionary:
* plein-air (adj)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plein%20air


----------------
Seneca, that crabby Roman Stoic, once chided a disciple for believing travel could dispel his gloom: “You ask why such flight does not help you? It is because you flee along with yourself.” The masters in Travis Elborough’s jaunty “Artists’ Journeys That Shaped Our World” prove otherwise. In his tidy book, Mr. Elborough, a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster, includes 30 artists whose reasons for traveling are as varied as their destinations.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) orbited Mount Fuji’s sacred summit for years, painting the peak and the people living beneath it from dozens of locales. In works such as “Ushibori in Hitachi Province” (ca. 1830-33, above), the mountain looms over its subjects like a watchful god. Hokusai was so moved by the sights he witnessed in his travels that he changed his name to Gakyō Rōjin Manji: “The Old Man Crazy to Paint.” Equally mad about painting was Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), whose nocturnal wanderings around Austria’s Lake Attersee led locals to dub him the Waldschrat (“forest demon”). The destination inspired his most innovative landscapes, in which nature devours a castle, the Schloss Kammer.

For the Flemish painter Alexander Keirincx (1600-52), British castles proved a muse after King Charles I commissioned him to paint the royal residences in Scotland and Yorkshire. Keirincx showed the countryside surrounding these stony manors bathed in a pastoral light—a vision that stoked the popular image of the British landscape as a mythic ideal and helped create the very British genre of house portraiture. This was the landscape, however, that David Hockney (1937-) sought to escape when he decamped for California in 1964, trading rainy Yorkshire for eternal summer in Los Angeles, where he would discover the motif of shimmering swimming pools that became his trademark.

Isamu Noguchi (1904-88) made a globe-trotting odyssey in pursuit of the lover who’d dumped him. Did he win her back? No. But he did see the ancient sculpture of four continents, whose influence greatly enlivened his work. Berthe Morisot’s (1841-95) travels brought happier romantic tidings: In Normandy, she cultivated her plein-air technique as well as a relationship with Eugène Manet. The two were engaged while painting side by side. They honeymooned on Britain’s Isle of Wight, which Morisot declared “the prettiest place for painting.” Mr. Elborough’s book makes a breezy companion to any summer wanderings.

--Mr. Lyman, an associate editor at the Spectator, is a former Joseph A. Rago Fellow at the Journal.