Katsushika Hokusai

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Katsushika Hokusai, 1839, self-portrait

Katsushika Hokusai ? / i ( Japanese 葛 飾 北 斎 ; * probably on October 31, 1760 in Warigesui, Honjo, Edo (today: Sumida , Tokyo ); † May 10, 1849 in Henjōin, Shōten-chō, Asakusa ) was a Japanese painter and one of the most important representative of the ukiyo-e genre. His most famous works are the color woodcuts in the series " 36 Views of Mount Fuji ". Audio file / audio sample

Life

Hokusai was born in Edo, today's Tokyo , in the ninth month of the tenth year of the Horeki period. His parents are unknown. When he was three years old, he was adopted by Nakajima Ise ( 中 島 伊 勢 ), a mirror maker for the shogun's court . His real adoptive name is Nakajima Tokitaro ( 中 島 時 太郎 ).

Katsushika Hokusai began an apprenticeship as a block carver at the age of 15. When he already had some experience as a woodcutter , he began to work at the age of 18 in the art workshop of the ukiyo-e master Katsukawa Shunshō from the Katsukawa school , a painter and draftsman of colored woodcuts.

Ukiyo-e, images of the flowing world, were particularly popular from the end of the 17th to the early 20th century. They represented the world in its fleeting beauty with scenes from courtesans to actor portraits. Hokusai's first works in 1779 were portraits of famous actors, who were mainly characterized by the individual facial features of the sitter, and which he published under the name Katsukawa Shunrō ( 勝 川 春 朗 ). During this time he also took lessons from another master, Yusen from the Kanō School . He studied Western painting, which can be clearly seen in some of his graphics. Only in 1793, after the death of his master Shunshos, did Hokusai leave the workshop. He carried the name Shunrō until 1794.

Double page from volume four of the Hokusai manga depicting people bathing

Then Hokusai traveled through Japan and often changed his teachers and schools and also his name, as was customary in Japanese artistic circles. Often the names corresponded to the respective artistic development phase. In his almost ninety-year life, Hokusai used 30 names, including Gakyojin , which translates as crazy in painting and denotes his productive phase. He lived in around 100 different places. At the same time he also wrote popular stories. Hokusai published his first book in 1782, which was filled with his own illustrations.

Hokusai suffered many setbacks in his personal life. His first wife died in 1793, leaving him with two daughters and a son. In 1797 he married again. In 1812 his eldest son died. His two daughters had an unhappy marriage, were divorced, and returned to Hokusai's household. Hokusai adopted his eldest daughter's son. In 1828 the artist's second wife died.

It was not until 1798 that he took his own students and taught them the art of woodcut and drawing. From then on he drew under his name, which is still known today, Katsushika Hokusai.

When the economic situation in Japan worsened, the sales opportunities for Hokusai also deteriorated, so that he had to sell his paintings in the street. After this phase, a period of state censorship began , which led him to switch to commissioned paintings for wealthy customers.

Katsushika Hokusai died on May 10, 1849, the 18th day of the fourth month of the second year of the Kaei period. His tomb is located in the cemetery of the Taitō district of Tokyo .

  • Travelers cross the Oi River

  • The Suwa lake

  • Dragon over Mount Fuji (picture)

plant

The dream of the fisherman's wife (also clam diver and octopus ), around 1820

At times he lived in extreme poverty, and even after he was able to earn money with his artistic work, he preferred a simple life.

In Edo, today's Tokyo, Hokusai dealt with many styles and found his own distinctive artistic style. The endeavor to convey spatial depth, known from European art, was well developed in Japanese printing. More and more colors were also available. His spectrum included all forms and techniques of woodcut and painting, and his motifs ranged from the depiction of fighting samurai to erotic scenes such as The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife . His most famous pictures, however, depict nature and landscapes.

Hokusai popularized the term manga (about casual / unbridled image ), which is still used today for Japanese comics . His Hokusai manga are sketches that were published between 1814 and 1815 in a total of 15 volumes (the last issue appeared after his death in 1878). They do not tell coherent stories, but rather show snapshots of Japanese society and culture during the late Edo period and depict the entire spectrum of human life.

The great wave off Kanagawa , Japanese woodcut from 1830–1832 in the Tokyo National Museum from the series " 36 Views of Mount Fuji "

Hokusai's series of 36 Views of Mount Fuji , which was created between 1829 and 1833 and in which he captured the elegant and monumental shape of the highest and most famous mountain in Japan from different points of view, in different weather conditions and compositions, became even better known . Sometimes the mountain is shown in the foreground or as a background accessory. The great wave off Kanagawa , a picture from this cycle, is probably the world's best-known Japanese work of art. Hokusai introduced landscapes in the ukiyo-e style and produced the first series of woodblock prints that consisted exclusively of landscape motifs. Im Hokusai's wood engravings are the result of his engagement with the centuries-old Japanese art of color woodcut . During this time he also made over 200 drawings.

Hokusai has been busy developing himself artistically all his life. At the end of his life he proudly described himself as a "farm worker". On his deathbed he is said to have said:

“ If heaven had given me another five years, I would have become a great painter. "

- Katsushika Hokusai

A good century later, the mathematician Benoît Mandelbrot showed in his work how Hokusai reproduced the fractal aspects of nature very well recognized in his works of art , such as the self-similar ripple in a large wave or the recursively recurring arch structure in the shadow of a cloud on a mountain Fuji.

Hokusai is the world's most famous Japanese artist. The fact that he is not so well known in his home country has to do with his style of ukiyo-e (in German: images of the flowing world ), which was more of a folk art. He also depicted a few Japanese subjects, while his work is influenced by the traditional Japanese Kanō school and by Chinese and Dutch landscape painting.

Influence on art

Hokusai's works initially only spread in Japan, as the country was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world from the beginning of the 17th to the middle of the 19th century. Only Dutch traders who lived on the remote artificial island of Dejima in the port of Nagasaki were allowed to do limited trade with Japan. With them his pictures finally reached Europe. There they contributed to Japonism , inspired artists such as Vincent van Gogh , Paul Gauguin , Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt and influenced - like all Japanese woodblock prints - Art Nouveau , especially Art Nouveau graphics.

museum

North view of the Sumida Hokusai Museum

At the end of 2016, the Sumida Hokusai Museum , dedicated to the artist, was opened in the Sumida district of Tokyo .

Exhibitions

Movie

  • Visit to Hokusai. (OT: Visite à Hokusai. ) Documentary, France, 2014, 52 min., Script and director: Jean-Pierre Limosin, production: Zadig productions, arte France, RMN Grand Palais, first broadcast: December 10, 2014 by arte, synopsis by ARD . Documentation on the occasion of a Hokusai exhibition in the Paris Grand Palais .
  • Miss Hokusai (OT: Sarusuberi: Miss Hokusai) Anime-Biopic, Japan, 2015, 90 min., Director: Keiichi Hara, the film biography is based on the manga by Hinako Sugiura and tells the Vita Hokusai from the perspective of his daughter Katsushika O-ei who was also a talented artist and collaborator of her father, who, however, was denied recognition in patriarchal Japan of the 19th century. Cinema release in Germany June 16, 2016.

literature

Books and illustrated books

  • Friedrich Perzyński : Hokusai . Second increased and improved edition. Velhagen & Klasing, 1908.
  • Hokusai. 46 woodcuts and drawings. Selection and introduction by Franz Winzinger . R. Piper & Co., 1954.
  • Hokusai - The one obsessed with painting. 48 color reproductions with an introduction by Joe Hloucha . Artia, 1956.
  • Jack R. Hillier: Hokusai - paintings, drawings, color woodcuts . Phaidon Publishing House , London 1956.
  • Yang Enlin: Japanese Landscapes . EA Seemann , Leipzig 1994, ISBN 3-363-00629-2 .
  • Gian Carlo Calza: Hokusai . Translated by Kristina Brigitta Köper, Phaidon Verlag, Berlin 2006, 518 S., ISBN 978-0-7148-5792-3 .
  • Matthi Forrer: Hokusai . Translated from English by Bernd Weiß. Prestel Verlag , Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-7913-4437-9 .
  • Tinios, Ellis: Japanese Prints . London, 2010 British Museum Press , ISBN 978-0-7141-2453-7 .
  • 北 斎 漫画 Hokusai Manga. 3 vols. (Collection of manga with Japanese text.) Seigensha Art Publishing, Inc., Kyoto 2011.

items

Web links

Commons : Katsushika Hokusai  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gian Carlo Calza: Hokusai , Phaidon Verlag , 2006, ISBN 978-0-7148-5792-3 , p. 87.
  2. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Katsushika Hokusai .
  3. ↑ Cornelia Morper: The Buddhist deity "Marishi-sonten" - A contribution to the interpretation of Siebold's 'Nippon'. In: Tempora mutantur et nos? Festschrift for Walter M. Brod on his 95th birthday. With contributions from friends, companions and contemporaries. Edited by Andreas Mettenleiter , Akamedon, Pfaffenhofen 2007 (= From Würzburgs Stadt- und Universitätsgeschichte, 2), ISBN 3-940072-01-X , pp. 141–145, here: p. 141.
  4. ↑ Julyan Cartwright, Hisami Nakamura: What kind of a wave is Hokusai's Great wave off Kanagawa . In: Notes and Records of the Royal Society . tape 63 , no. 2 , June 20, 2009, p. 119-135 , doi : 10.1098 / rsnr.2007.0039 .
  5. ↑ Hokusai - retrospective. August 26 to October 31, 2011. In: Archive Berliner Festspiele 2004–2011, accessed on December 16, 2014.
    Andreas Platthaus : Hokusai in Berlin. The first globalizer was a Japanese. In: FAZ of August 27, 2011, p. 33.
Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Katsushika is the family name, Hokusai the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Katsushika, Hokusai
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 葛 飾 北 斎 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese ukiyo-e artist
DATE OF BIRTH uncertain: October 31, 1760
PLACE OF BIRTH Warigesui, Honjo, Edo
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1849
Place of death Henjōin, Shōten-chō, Asakusa