Hokusai

About this book

Over a century and a half after his death, Katsushika Hokusai is still one of Japan's most popular and influential artists. This handy volume presents the wide range of Hokusai’s aristic production in terms of one of his most remarkable characteristics: his intellectual ingenuity. It attempts to answer the question of how the self-styled “Man Mad about Drawing” approached his subjects – how he depicted human bodies in motion, combined figures and landscape, represented three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface, and used the techniques of illusionism or adjusted reality for greater visual or emotional effect. This book introduces readers to a witty, wide-ranging, and inimitably ingenious Hokusai.