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Inspired by the British Museum’s exhibition Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road, Sean Forester – San Francisco-based artist and lecturer – has devised for us Hiroshige & Japanese Art, a study exploring the unique art and aesthetics of Japan and how a direct line can be drawn between the work on display and that of the French Impressionists. Born in 1797, as Japan was just beginning to emerge from the long isolation of the Edo period (1603-1868), Utagawa Hiroshige was an artist whose enormous body of work captured the people, life, landscape and nature of the country in vivid and compelling detail.

Over five meetings Sean will examine the hugely influential art and culture of Japan from the Heinan period to the Edo, looking not just at the work of master artists and printmakers, but also considering the significance of Zen temples and gardens, ceramics, tea ceremonies, haiku poetry, calligraphy, woodblock prints, and dress (kimonos and netsuke).

” . . . one cannot study Japanese art, it seems to me, without becoming merrier and happier, and we should turn back to nature in spite of our education and our work in a conventional world . . .

“I envy the Japanese the extreme clarity of everything in their work. It is never dull and it never seems to be done in too much of a hurry. Their work is as simple as breathing, and they do a figure in a few sure strokes as if it were as easy as doing up your waistcoat.”

Vincent van Gogh, writing to Theo van Gogh, September 1888

“If you absolutely must … find an affiliation for me, put me with the Japanese of old: the refinement of their taste has always appealed to me, and I approve of the suggestions of their aesthetic, which evokes the presence by the shadow, the whole by the fragment.”

Claude Monet, 1909

The British Museum exhibition continues until 7 September (although it is currently closed until 4 July as they refresh the display). If you have not already visited then this Guardian review – “I could look forever at these passing moments in cosmic colours” – may tempt you, and there is more to read about the Japanese influence on Impressionism in this article in The Collector magazine.

Participants in the study can join Sean on an informal visit to the exhibition on Thursday 4 September. Buy your own ticket and meet inside the British Museum at the entrance to the Hiroshige exhibition at 12.00 noon (please email to let us know you are coming).  

When Laurence Olivier’s film of Hamlet—Shakespeare’s longest and most deeply philosophical play—opened in 1948, the critics were almost without exception entranced. The exhilarating production won four Oscars, including Best Actor and Best Picture. Olivier’s celebrated version also paved the way for other filmmakers to significantly cut the text, an action already commonly undertaken in stage performances, but one which later critics were to lament. Among other cuts, Olivier and his co-editor, Alan Dent, struck Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from the text along with Fortinbras’ last entrance and at least two of Hamlet’s most famous soliloquies. Had Olivier massacred the Bard?

Kenneth Branagh may have thought so. His 1996 production showcased nearly the entire script, resulting in a film with a running time of 4 hours and 2 minutes, nearly 1.5 hours longer than Olivier’s production half a century before, which came in at a slick 153 minutes. (It may or may not be significant that Branagh’s version garnered zero Academy Awards, though it did receive four nominations that did not include either Best Actor or Best Picture, but did include Best Writing – Adapted Screenplay).

Counter-critics to those lamenting Olivier’s cuts have praised the 1948 production for being, for example, ‘thrillingly intelligent and moving’ (Rafferty, 2000, para. 3), also referring to the interpretation as having been sensitively reduced to its ‘largest, most mysterious, and most intractable theme’ (Rafferty, 2000, para. 4): morality.

The London Literary Salon’s latest study of Hamlet also examines a carefully curated script. Our study will focus on 2,600 of Hamlet’s 4,167 lines. We will be working from the 1604 quarto, which was printed from a manuscript believed to be Shakespeare’s ‘foul papers’ (his rough drafts). Our own ‘version’ is more exhaustive than Olivier’s. It includes all the play’s subplots—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Fortinbras, and Hamlet’s relationship with Ophelia—as well as all of Hamlet’s soliloquies. Together, we will dive into the heart of the text, considering not only its philosophical core but also its most spectral and cinematic aspects: the paranormal, incest, adultery, murder, madness, and above all, revenge.

References: Rafferty, T. (2000). Hamlet. The Criterion Collection.

Join Dr. Julie Sutherland on six successive Wednesday evenings (5.00-7.00 pm GMT) beginning on 8 January 2025 to discuss a play that has enthralled audiences for more than four centuries.

One of the challenges we face in the Salon is the viability of ‘Long’ or ‘Slow Read’ studies. These are designed to offer a more in-depth consideration of a text. Instead of visiting a few significant passages, the ‘Long Read’ studies give time and attention to all the richness of the writing, we move slowly enough through the text to address greater complexity and the quieter moments of revelation.

The challenge is that while there is enthusiasm for these studies — and participants find them immensely satisfying — over time people’s circumstances may change, forcing them to drop out or take a break. The good news is that there are some extended studies — for example the Ulysses Slow Read, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Finnegans’ Wake, The Iliad Unhurried — that it is quite possible to join part way through. The groups immersed in these huge texts will support and help new recruits to enjoy the meditative rhythm of the experience. Some (Ulysses and Iliad) do require you to have read the work once, but for others this is not necessary and in all cases the facilitator can advise you and suggest ways of getting up to speed before you decide whether or not to join. You can see what’s currently available to book (including more typically-paced readings of Ulysses and the Iliad, with more to be announced soon) on our study calendar.

So why not take a chance? You may find the pay-off to be increased attention and focus, a practice of consciousness that is, as Iain McGilchrist describes below, ‘the ultimate creative act.’ I also encourage you to widen your perspective by choosing a study outside of your comfort zone — dip into the classics for a new perspective, see what George Eliot is exploring in her portrayal of tensions in the social relationships and gender roles of nineteenth-century England, check out the distilled power of poetry or short stories — and, if you find you have benefited from your work in the Salon, do please tell a few friends (you could even gift them a Salon study for the New Year).

One recent Proust participant described the Salon experience like this: “ . . . thoroughly enjoying the Proust. Exactly what I anticipated and wanted. It’s the stimulus of the discussion I find motivating. I’m not that interested in the reading round it. The group is warm and tolerant enough for me to utter things that I quickly realise are wrong (a long-standing way of learning with me) and I can readjust. I guess the dialectic approach has always appealed to me and it is great to be in a rich environment in which I can indulge it without irritating people (too much anyway!) and deepen my understanding. Basically a blast! “

Another gift of the Salon: receiving reading recommendations galore! Thanks to a Salonista I am just discovering the wisdom of Iain McGilchrist, this really speaks to me of what I gain in the ongoing practice of deep reading and broadening discussion:

“The world we know cannot be wholly mind-independent, and it cannot be wholly mind-dependent. Once again, this leaves no room for a philosophy of ‘anything goes’. What is required is an attentive response to something real and other than ourselves, of which we have only inklings at first, but which comes more and more into being through our response to it—if we are truly responsive to it. We nurture it into being; or not. In this it has something of the structure of love.

“The best way I can put it is that it is the manner in which our consciousness is disposed towards whatever else exists. The choice we make of how we dispose our consciousness is the ultimate creative act: it renders the world what it is. It is, therefore, a moral act: it has consequences. ‘Love’, said the French philosopher Louis Lavelle, ‘is a pure attention to the existence of the other’.”

Iain MacGilchrist The Matter with Things