This big and beautiful book presents a comprehensive survey of the work of one of Japans greatest and most influential artists, together with a collection of essays that focus on a key aspects of the masters career.
The book opens with an introductory essay by Gian Carlo Calza presenting an overview of the changing world Hokusai was born into and lived through. This is followed by a series of essays by distinguished Western and Japanese scholars that present new research on a range of crucial areas of interest in Hokusai studies. These form a context for the core of the book, which forms a retrospective of Hokusais entire career, divided into seven chapters. Each chapter provides a succinct account of a phase in Hokusais life, followed by a series of the finest and most representative works of that period. Great care has been taken throughout to choose for reproduction the best-preserved original prints that reveal Hokusais mastery of line and colour to full advantage. This magnificent pictorial survey of Hokusais prints, paintings and drawings is the first publication in English to make such a rich selection widely available, and to demonstrate the extraordinary range and quality of Hokusais achievement. The final component of the book is a detailed scholarly commentary on each illustration that provides not only the necessary technical information but also a revealing analysis of style, colour, composition and motif.
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