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| My imitation of Hokusai's works. If there ever was an artist that had struck my fancy at the very first encounter of his or her works it was Katsushika Hokusai. Who was Hokusai? Let Wikipedia answer part of it for fact and figures of which I am have no patience for and i hve a very short memory with dates and such.
Hokusai's date of birth is not known for certain, but is often said to be the 23rd day of the 9th month of the 10th year of the Hōreki era (in the old calendar, or October 31, 1760) to an artisan family, in the Katsushika district of Edo, Japan.[6] His childhood name was Tokitarō.[7] It is believed his father was the mirror-maker Nakajima Ise, who produced mirrors for the shogun.[7] His father never made Hokusai an heir, so it is possible that his mother was a concubine.[6] Hokusai began painting around the age of six, possibly learning the art from his father, whose work on mirrors also included the painting of designs around the mirrors.[6]
Hokusai was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime. Although the use of multiple names was a common practice of Japanese artists of the time, the numbers of names he used far exceeds that of any other major Japanese artist. Hokusai's name changes are so frequent, and so often related to changes in his artistic production and style, that they are useful for breaking his life up into periods.
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| At the age of 12, he was sent by his father to work in a bookshop and lending library, a popular type of institution in Japanese cities, where reading books made from wood-cut blocks was a popular entertainment of the middle and upper classes.[8] At 14, he became an apprentice to a wood-carver, where he worked until the age of 18, whereupon he was accepted into the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō. Shunshō was an artist of ukiyo-e, a style of wood block prints and paintings that Hokusai would master, and head of the so-called Katsukawa school.[7] Ukiyo-e, as practiced by artists like Shunshō, focused on images of the courtesans andKabuki actors who were popular in Japan's cities at the time.[9] |
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Upon the death of Shunshō in 1793, Hokusai began exploring other styles of art, including European styles he was exposed to through French and Dutch copper engravings he was able to acquire.[9] He was soon expelled from the Katsukawa school by Shunkō, the chief disciple of Shunshō, possibly due to studies at the rival Kanō school. This event was, in his own words, inspirational: "What really motivated the development of my artistic style was the embarrassment I suffered at Shunkō's hands."[4]
Hokusai also changed the subjects of his works, moving away from the images of courtesans and actors that were the traditional subjects of ukiyo-e. Instead, his work became focused on landscapes and images of the daily life of Japanese people from a variety of social levels. This change of subject was a breakthrough in ukiyo-e and in Hokusai's career.[9] Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge (1790) dates from this period of Hokusai's life.[10]
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| What I truly liked about Hokusai's works is that he was prolific in his subject matter especially in his 'Mangas or comic works. Hokusai reminded me of my grand father who was also a full time artist in his days and till the day he died. Hokusai draw creatures of the forest and the rivers and of the skies and he even drew ghosts and demons. His life itself was said to be that of a starving artist and he was cared for by his only daughter. |
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By 1800, Hokusai was further developing his use of ukiyo-e for purposes other than portraiture. He had also adopted the name he would most widely be known by, Katsushika Hokusai, the former name referring to the part of Edo where he was born and the latter meaning, 'north studio'. That year, he published two collections of landscapes, Famous Sights of the Eastern Capital and Eight Views of Edo. He also began to attract students of his own, eventually teaching 50 pupils over the course of his life.[9]
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| He became increasingly famous over the next decade, both due to his artwork and his talent for self-promotion. During a Tokyo festival in 1804, he created a portrait of the Buddhist priest Daruma said to be 600 feet (180 m) long using a broom and buckets full of ink. Another story places him in the court of the Shogun Iyenari, invited there to compete with another artist who practiced more traditional brush stroke painting. Hokusai's painting, created in front of the Shogun, consisted of painting a blue curve on paper, then chasing across it a chicken whose feet had been dipped in red paint. He described the painting to the Shogun as a landscape showing the Tatsuta River with red maple leaves floating in it, winning the competition.[11] |
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| n 1811, at the age of 51, Hokusai changed his name to Taito and entered the period in which he created the Hokusai Manga and various etehon, or art manuals.[7] These etehon, beginning in 1812 with Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, served as a convenient way to make money and attract more students. The first book of Hokusai's manga, sketches or caricatures that influenced the modern form of comics known by the same name, was published in 1814. Together, his 12 volumes of manga published before 1820 and three more published posthumously include thousands of drawings of animals, religious figures, and everyday people. They often have humorous overtones, and were very popular at the time.[12] |
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Dragon Ball - my Etching.
The next period, beginning in 1834, saw Hokusai working under the name "Gakyō Rōjin Manji" (The Old Man Mad About Art).[10] It was at this time that Hokusai produced One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, another significant landscape series.[14]
In the postscript to this work, Hokusai writes:
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The next period, beginning in 1834, saw Hokusai working under the name "Gakyō Rōjin Manji" (The Old Man Mad About Art).[10] It was at this time that Hokusai produced One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, another significant landscape series.[14]
In the postscript to this work, Hokusai writes:
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| Both Hokusai’s choice of nom d'artiste and frequent depiction of Mt. Fuji stem from his religious beliefs. The name Hokusai (北斎?) means "North Studio (room)," an abbreviation of Hokushinsai (北辰際?) or "North Star Studio." Hokusai was a member of the Nichiren sect ofBuddhism, who see the North Star as associated with the deity Myōken (妙見菩薩?).[4] Mount Fuji has traditionally been linked with eternal life. This belief can be traced to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, where a goddess deposits the elixir of life on the peak. As Henry Smith expounds, "Thus from an early time, Mt. Fuji was seen as the source of the secret of immortality, a tradition that was at the heart of Hokusai's own obsession with the mountain."[3] |
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Hokusai inspired the Hugo Award winning short story by science fiction author Roger Zelazny, "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai", in which the protagonist tours the area surroundingMt. Fuji, stopping at locations painted by Hokusai.
His influences also stretched to his western contemporaries in nineteenth century Europe whose new style Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil in Germany, was influenced by him and by Japanese art in general. This was also part of the larger Impressionism movement, with similar themes to Hokusai appearing in Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. According to the Brooklyn Rail Many artists collected his woodcuts: Degas, Gauguin, Klimt, Franz Marc, August Macke, Manet, and van Gogh included.[19] Hermann Obrist's whiplash motif, orPeitschenhieb, which came to exemplify the new movement, is visibly influenced by Hokusai's work.
A much more direct influence was Japonism, "which started with a craze for collecting Japanese art, particularly ukiyo-e, of which some of the first samples were to be seen in Paris: In about 1856 the French artist Félix Bracquemond first came across a copy of the sketch book Hokusai Manga at the workshop of his printer.".
Wikipedia.
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