Looking for a good introduction to Hokusai? There are of course lots of books about this great artist. Some are weighty, oversized tomes that I suspect are more impressive-looking (and impressive) than they are read. Five hundred page volumes complete with scholarly text are not the optimal place to start learning about the genius who conceived “Under the Wave off Kanagawa” - the world’s most famous print.
That’s why I prefer Ms. Thompson’s book. It’s the best introduction I’ve read for those who want to learn or know more about Katsushika Hokusai (or one of the other 30 names he chose to call himself over a 70+ year artistic career). There’s lots of information here about Hokusai’s life and art, along with background on the Edo period in which he lived. The writing is fine and strikes the right balance between too simple and abstruse.
The book’s 162 pages cannot be any more comprehensive than an introduction to some other subject. Nevertheless the text along with wonderfully photographed illustrations and illuminating closeup cutaways hit all the highlights of Hokusai’s art which you’ll need to get started. In sum, Hokusai is an excellent foundation for further reading and museum exhibition viewing.
Katsushika Hokusai remains one of Japan's most popular and influential artists. This handy volume presents the wide range of Hokusai's artistic production in terms of one of his most remarkable characteristics: his intellectual ingenuity. It explores the question of how the self-styled "Man Mad about Drawing" approached his subjects―how he depicted human bodies in motion, combined figures and landscapes, represented three-dimensional objects on two-dimensional surfaces and when he used the techniques of illusionism or adjusted reality for greater visual or emotional effect. Including some 50 stunning and unusual paintings, prints and drawings from the peerless Hokusai collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this book is a treasure trove that introduces readers to a witty, wide-ranging and inimitably ingenious Hokusai.
Known by at least 30 other names during his lifetime, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was an ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. In 1800, he published his two classic collections of landscapes, Famous Sights of the Eastern Capital and Eight Views of Edo. His influence extended to his Western contemporaries in nineteenth-century Europe, including Degas, Gauguin, Klimt, Franz Marc, August Macke, Manet and van Gogh.
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