Thursday 7 January 2016

More Hokusai Paintings

#HOKUSAI is one of the most unique geniuses of Japanese and World art.

Painter and designer  his images were used on just about everything!

Packaging lanterns toys fans popular prints art prints scroll painting screen paintings art instructional manuals ... frankly I wouldn't be surprised if a kimono turns up with Hokusai art on it. This a festival banner with an image of #Shoki #Zhongkui the demon queller.



I'm sure the only reason there are no handpainted Hokusai collaborations with potters is that most of the major potteries for polychrome and enamel wares were down further south!


This is a silk scroll painted by Hokusai. The subject also used by other print makers and painters is or rather refers to the famous Tang Chinese poet Li Bai or Po looking at a waterfall. I say refers because his costume seems an odd hybrid of Chinese and Japanese and Hokusai has focused our attention as much on the waterfall as the poet.



Finally a painting that is thought to be a collaboration of Hokusai with his daughter OI also a painter partly because the flowers are rendered in a slightly brush style and partly because OI was known to have painted chrysantheums and other flowers. 

This is suppose to be a lion by the way. Unfortunately while Japanese artists may have occasionally had access to tiger skins their ideas of what actual lions and tigers looked like allowed room for imagination!

Wikipedia Commons and various museum sites has excellent Hokusai selections so you can download images that are far closer to the original size if you have  a large monitor and view more detail than a simple blog post allows.

I hope this rather simple limited introduction tempts you to learn more about Hokusai.







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