Review by Choice Review
Among celebrated designers of Ukiyo-e in premodern Japan, Katsushika Hokusai is perhaps the most familiar to Western audiences and the most highly regarded since being "discovered" during the 19th century. He is also the most written about--in French, German and English--and Hokusai bibliography in those languages is extensive. Calza (East Asian art, Ca Foscari Univ., Venice) expansively surveys the artist's work as painter, print designer, book illustrator, and "personality" throughout his long life (1760-1849). Calza brings together the collective opinions and interpretations of Hokusai's art and life developed in the West over the past 100 years and offers new points of view. Seven informative essays by Western and Japanese specialists focus on specific "areas of interest" in Hokusai studies, including one on the pornographic output of the designer; these are enriched by hundreds of illustrations, most in full color. Chronologically structured chapters describe the mutations of Hokusai's art and artistic persona from his training in Shunsho's workshop to the ripe, fruitful years of his maturity and beyond. A final essay measures the impact of Hokusai on the development of "Japonisme" and early modern art in Europe and America. List of works; useful commentaries on each illustration; glossary; index of known works by Hokusai. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. General readers. D. K. Dohanian emeritus, University of Rochester
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this exhaustive volume, editor Calza smartly resists any attempt to neatly categorize Japanese artist Hokusai (1769-1849)-innovative printmaker, illustrator and painter-and instead catalogs his prodigious output with sumptuous reproductions that provide indisputable evidence of an expansive and innovative talent. Additional studies and sketches reveal Hokusai to be a master craftsman, whether he was composing monumental seascapes or small-scale, complex fabric patterns. Throughout his 70-year career, Hokusai mastered multiple genres and constantly reinvented-and renamed-himself; several scholarly essays explore the astonishing results, from the renowned, magnificent views of Mount Fuji to intricate erotic miniatures to lesser known virtuoso instruction manuals for dance steps. Other chapters examine the artist's response to Western practices, spatial handling in particular, and the subsequent perspectival shifts in his own technique. But influence works two ways-so attests an analysis of Hokusai as one of the main catalysts of the 19th-century Japonisme movement. Calza's comprehensive and lavish monograph will prove an invaluable resource for Hokusai scholars and students of Japanese art in general. 500 full-color and 200 b/w illustrations. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Choice Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review