Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa (1830) has been on my mind a lot recently. As a print, it’s widely owned by museums around the world as about 5000 copies would have been made from the original color woodblock. Yet, it’s rarely displayed because prolonged exposure to light can too easily fade its contrasting Prussian blue and indigo. It’s so iconic and recognizable but most of us would know it from cheap reproductions, so how closely have you looked at its many subtle variations? The Great Wave is an unmistakably Japanese image, charged with the uncertainty that Japan would have faced as it was forced out of its self-imposed 200 years of isolationism by the battleships of US Commodore Perry. Fast forward to our daily dose of news from the world and The Great Wave keeps on resonating, bringing to mind the force experienced in the surf as one wave retreats and the next one crests. Processing my feelings through the filter of Art helps me put things in perspective. Think about it. When you’re looking at the Great Wave, as viewer you are also in a boat! And here, Hokusai provides a canvas of universal appeal for everybody to lay down their big (or small) fears […]
The days are a bit colder, it’s winter almost everywhere…Can you feel it too? I thought I’d share my vaccine against life becoming a grisaille, one of those melancholic artworks exclusively in shades of grey. So today, I give you…COLORS. Yes. Tried and tested, add colors to your outfit, pop some colorful jewelry and it will fight the gloom and lift your spirits…People are bound to notice and comment on it so you get to share the joy! Ta da! One area I really cannot live without colors is when I cook. My epiphany was when I wondered how I could make my son ingest something other than white food and stumbled on an Ottolenghi cook book. My husband and I used to live around the corner from his first deli in London. Such fond memories of delicious and colorful food well before Ottolenghi became the acclaimed chef he so deserves to be. His original deli was all white walls to let the colors and unusual combinations of his scrumptious Mediterranean food work their magic. First on your eyes, then your taste buds. Pomegranates shining like rubies in his grain salads, the classic green and red contrast revisited with green beans, brocoli, red chili and poppy seeds… In a nutshell, cooking […]
With gemmology and luxury goods as professional background, I thought I knew the reference axes on my grid.