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Hokusai the Great
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16502 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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11 / 1989 |
2,619 Words |
| Author
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Stephen Addiss
Stephen Addiss, professor of art history at the University of
Kansas, is the author of The Art of Zen: Paintings and
Calligraphy by Japanese Monks, 1600-1925. (New York City:
Harry N. Abrams, 1989). |
The world of art is as subject to fads and fashions as clothes, restaurants, popular songs, and interior design. Certainly the Japanese master Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was well aware of changing trends, experiencing a great many ups and downs in a career that spanned more than three quarters of a century. Now, 140 years after his death, a new surge in interest in Hokusai is evinced by several stunning new publications of his work in English, as well as a series of exhibitions and facsimile publications in Japan.
Hokusai. The very name suggests overwhelming energy, vigor, humor, invention, intensity, fecundity, and a search for the essential geometry of all living things. There is no Western artist to compare. Perhaps Picasso comes closest in his remarkable range of styles and talents, his energy throughout a long career, and his ability to find the human drama in every aspect of the world around him. But Picasso was a prodigy, gifted from his teens. Hokusai, in contrast, had to work harder than any of his contemporaries to achieve success, and if he had died at the age for forty, he would be remembered only as a prolific but minor artist. It was not until the final two of his nine decades that he became the master whom we revere today.
Studies of such a multifaceted artist as Hokusai have always divided into two kinds: Overall biographies and specialized publications focusing upon one aspect of his work. For some time the English-speaking public has been well served in both regards by Jack Hillier. His Hokusai (London: Phaedon Press, 1955) has been the standard overall biography, and his Hokusai Drawings (London: Phaedon Press, 1966) and The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration (London: Sotheby Parke Burnet, 1980)
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