HOKUSAI: OLD MAN CRAZY TO PAINT, BBC4, 9pm
I RECEIVED a new book yesterday called Ghosts of the Tsunami.
It’s about the terrible earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 and killed 18,000 people.
On the front cover is a surging wave, a recurring and iconic image in Japanese culture.
The artist behind Japan’s most famous representation of waves is Hokusai, whose woodblock print The Great Wave off Kanagawa is instantly recognisable. This documentary, part of a wonderful Japanese season on BBC4, tells us more about him.
Hokusai was born in 1760 in what is now Tokyo, and is credited with inventing modern art. He stressed that you don’t need to follow a master or an artistic tradition, but can stray off the path to find your own style. However, even then there’s no guarantee of success. As Hokusai said: “From the time I was six until I was over 80, not a day went by when I didn’t take up my brush – and yet I still can’t even paint a single cat. It won’t come out as I wish.”
ROBERT REDFORD’S THE WEST, HISTORY, 10pm
ACTORS are never happy, are they? They’re always trying to launch additional careers as directors, singers or “goodwill ambassadors”.
Here’s another: Robert Redford has set himself up as a producer and narrator of this mammoth historical documentary. I assume he hopes to match Laurence Olivier in The World At War (Fat chance! And at least Olivier wasn’t arrogant enough to call it Larry Olivier’s World At War).
Across eight episodes, it tells the well-worn story of the American West from 1865 to 1890 and is unashamedly Hollywood. You might expect interviews with historians but you’ll also get movie stars, such as Burt Reynolds, Ed Harris and Kiefer Sutherland.
Tonight’s opening episode, America Divided, features the stories of Jesse James, General Custer and Crazy Horse.
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