Exquisite Hokusai show redeems the horror of British Museum's American Pop Art

About half way through the American Pop art exhibit at the British Museum, with angst and disgust rising in equal levels, I was seriously considering cutting off our museum membership.

The show had started promisingly, with disturbing but relevant links to current events. "Repetition adds up to reputation" read the Warhol quote beneath his Marilyn Monroe silk screens. Prescient insight into much that is wrong with our present world. The art movement explored here, bridging the 1950s to the present day, reflects pop culture and consumerism back to us as a dark warning about our world. There are a few things here that are both meaningful and beautiful to look at: Ruscha's petrol station, Oldenburg's oddly compelling giant electrical plug, Haring's AIDS awareness cartoons. But most of the rest is menacing, angry, and .. in its lack of obvious artistic skills  ... begs the question: How is this art? And, more important to me as a British Museum member: Why is this here?

Hosted south of the river in Tate Modern, and positioned as a show about modern art as political protest, it might have worked better. But in this sacred ark of world culture, running under the title of American Dream: Pop to the Present, it was a dark embarrassment to both the British Museum and the United States. No wonder, when we moved on to American politics at dinner with friends later that night, I unexpectedly broke into gasping sobs. This stuff casts a long shadow of gloom and dread. If the point of art is to provoke emotion, then I suppose it's successful in its way.

My eyes, however, would like to find some beauty in art.

Thank heavens for Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave in the smaller exhibit space upstairs. This show
is as lustrous and life-affirming as Pop Art was grim and soul-sucking. And it's not just pretty. In Hokusai's long life (1760-1849) he introduced many modern innovations to Japanese art, while his influence flowed westward to be seen in everything from Beardsley prints to post-war decorative fabrics. He even predicted the musician Prince's "symbol as name" phase, changing his name ... and thus the cartouche with which he signed his work ... multiple times throughout his career to encapsulate what he was trying to accomplish in each phase of his life.

Hokusai was a Japanese painter and print maker, most famous for his Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji. We all know The Wave. (Officially, The great wave off Kanagawa.) Few realise there are 35 more scenes, rich with variety. There are landscapes from every angle, some with the mountain dominant and others where you really have to search for it. In some scenes, people go about their everyday lives so accustomed to the beauty they hardly notice. In others, they're on the mountain itself, climbing to find spiritual enlightenment. Hokusai uses simple, elegant lines and wry observation to bring people into glorious life. Flora and fauna are acutely observed. Colours are exquisite. In the example above, check out the fishermen fighting the sea in the blue twilight, with Fuji looming in the distance. If all this show did was to broaden our awareness of The Wave into its larger series, it would be a wild success.

But there's so much more.

From his earliest days, we see exquisitely beautiful and highly traditional images of deities, dragons and legends. Even here he's breaking away from the pack: a series on the adventures of the warrior hero Tametomo is filled with humour and has a clarity of line so modern it seems to be laying the foundations for manga. Another series of genre scenes originally commissioned by the Dutch East India Company shows him learning from European styles, playing with perspective and introducing the new colour of Prussian Blue into Japan (a shade that would transform his work). These also show his amazing ability to capture slices of real life. In one scene, a samurai stops to advise a boy and his father getting ready to fly their kite. In the foreground, two dogs are sniffing each other's butts. That sweet, achingly real touch of reality makes it feel like you could step through the frame and join the scene.

This is, indeed, a show worth having reading glasses to view. You will want to linger over prints to see what his tiny people and animals are doing. The drama and humour captured in deft brushstrokes is extraordinary.

Later, we come to a series of flower and bird prints suffused with a sense of profound peace. I could happily hang Weeping cherry and bullfinch above my bed and contemplate it nightly. Just when you think Hokusai may be getting staid in this category of stately flowers and perching birds, he surprises you with Carp in waterfall, a scene of remarkable action as the fish bob and weave through the pounding torrent. There are ghost stories and illustrated poems, portraits and temple decorations. Hokusai's gentle humour keeps rearing its head throughout.

We also get to see Hokusai the commercial designer, a reminder that he was extremely famous in his own time. There are designs for exquisite hair combs, fans and netsuke, some with the finished products beside them. It's no surprise that the Hokusai-inspired jewellery in the gift shop is some of the most beautiful I can remember associated with any British Museum show. Rather than splurging on that, however, I bought the show catalogue so I could pour over all the detail I'd missed.

Which leads me to the only drawback of this show: its thick crowds. You will spend far more time queuing to pay close attention to these modestly-sized masterpieces than you will actually get in their contemplation. Downstairs, my footsteps echoed through cavernous, mostly empty display spaces for the Pop Art show. I wonder if the visitor numbers are making management regret their decisions? Upstairs, you're packed body-to-body trying to take in hundreds of detail-rich objects in a small space.

Even without the crowds, there'd probably be too much here to digest in a single viewing. So yes, I will be keeping my British Museum membership. Because shows like Hokusai are more typical of the Museum's track record than the American angst. And because membership means I'm going to be able to pop in several more times before Hokusai closes 13 August. Like that other Japanese favourite, sushi, this art deserves to be savoured in many small bites.