Yesterday morning, at the end of a lecture I gave on Waves and Tides, I showed a picture of Hokusai’s famous work of art The Great Wave Off Kanagawa. My lecture was being observed by one of my colleagues (every year we have to observe and be observed) and she remarked afterwards that there was a Plymouth version of The Great Wave painted onto a wall in the Mutley area of Plymouth. After a short discussion we established roughly where this mural was and I was surprised to find that it is on a road that I have driven along many times. My colleague said they thought they had a photograph of it and just now they have tagged me into a tweet that they have posted with their picture. It’s absolutely tremendous – a graffiti style rendition of the great work in bold colors, somewhat simpler than the original but capturing the same scene and sufficiently similar to be immediately recognizable but not so similar that it is simply a copy.
Here is the picture – I am absolutely going to have to make a special trip there soon to find the building a take a picture or two of my own…
Tim O'Hare 