Word: hokusai
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...pure color created an effect of light-vibration which was not confined to the pictures themselves but seemed to radiate from them. And where the impressionists minimized drawing, he applied an oriental concept that he had learned from studying the woodcuts of the 19th Century Japanese artists, Hiroshige and Hokusai. To Van Gogh, as to the Japanese, line was more than a lasso for capturing shapes, it was a way of touching and riding the slope of a field, the thirsty arc of a sunflower, the surge of a mountain or the flamelike thrust of a cypress...
...nine children, Dufy had to pinch centimes in his student days. "I concentrated on drawing," he remembers, "because paints were too expensive." That concentration made him a superb draftsman, with a quick, nervous but perfectly assured style reminiscent of Japan's 19th Century master, Hokusai. But Dufy did not begin to paint like Dufy until he was in his 403. He lived on the top of Montmartre, got along by designing wallpaper (see below), tapestries, upholstery and dresses...
Orphaned when he was 13, Hiroshige immediately took over his father's post as a Tokyo fireman. Between fires he taught himself brush drawing. Hiroshige's later prints rivaled even Hokusai's for force of feeling, showed exactly how close art can come to nature without being naturalistic...
...though Hokusai died at 89. He left behind him thousands of haunting, crystal-clear landscapes which illustrated poems scrawled across their skies...
...second star of the Metropolitan's show was Hiroshige, who was born 37 years after Hokusai. His work ended the golden age of Japanese prints and started a new era in Western art. His prints, frequently used in wrapping tea for export to Europe, exerted an influence on Manet, Whistler, Degas, and Van Gogh...