| Katsushika Hokusai, a virtuoso who helped to shape the course of Japanese art history.; No other design associates the public's mind with Japanese art more instantaneously than Hokusai's internationally esteemed prints, the "Great Wave " and "Red Fuji." Yet Hokusai's artistic versatility and achievement is not confined to the category of Ukiyo-e, known as the Japanese woodcuts that reached fruition by the late nineteenth century. During approximately seven decades of extensive work, Hokusai indulged his inexhaustible artistic gusto in the creation of ink painting, manga (Japanese comic illustration), and woodcuts. Furthermore, unrestricted by the traditional Oriental mannerism, Hokusai experimented with an array of artistic devices available to his day, such as the Eastern ink painting and Western perspective. Just as what Old Man Mad about Paining suggests---an art name coined by the artist himself---Hokusai devoured nearly every artistic style, and reflected his infinite energy in fervent lifetime devotion by his unrelenting drive for perfectionism.; Hokusai was said to have had an interest as vast as the universe to capture both animate and inanimate subjects into his artwork. It seems Hokusai's approach to his portrayals always has an essence of humanist spirit, and this humanist perspective is of the Confucian as well as of the Edoite ideology. The eclectic quality in Hokusai's humanistic view reflects not only the culture of Edo Japan, but also the unique idealism of his art. This thesis, however, aims not at evaluating the totality of Hokusai's artistic assets, but at the most celebrated genre of his artistic production---landscape painting. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
