On Being Slightly Less Ignorant.

Being something of a fan of traditional Chinese culture, I decided in an idle moment to Google ‘Chinese art’ to see what delights it would show me. The first example given under ‘Images for Chinese art’ was this:

  

A note of doubt entered the simple mind of JJ. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ I muttered to the wall, ‘but isn’t that Mount Fuji in the background? And isn’t this one of the most famous works by Japan’s most famous artist, Hokusai?’

Knowing myself to be deplorably ignorant in an awful lot of subjects (Hokusai is the only Japanese artist I’ve heard of, for example), I investigated further and discovered that it’s called The Great Wave off Kanagawa and is, indeed, by Hokusai. So now I’m beginning to suspect that whoever chooses the images displayed in the ‘Images for…’ section at Google might be even more deplorably ignorant than I am.

This is Chinese art…

  

…and I rather like it. And at least I’m not so deplorably ignorant that I fail to recognise the significance of the four toes. (It means that it isn’t an imperial dragon because they have five toes. My ex wife taught me that a very long time ago, probably while we were watching an episode of Monkey or The Water Margin. And it’s an odd coincidence that The Water Margin was actually made by a Japanese production company. I’m digressing. End of post.)

Except to say that I also like this one:

  

And I love this Qing dynasty figurine:

  

And I could go on and on, but I won’t.

Added later:

I just discovered that the dragon does has five toes, so it's an imperial one after all. I missed the fifth digit because of where it was placed in the picture. Bloody artists! You'd think they'd understand human frailty and make allowances, wouldn't you?