cover image Hokusai

Hokusai

Gian Carlo Calza. Phaidon Press, $95 (520pp) ISBN 978-0-7148-4304-9

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.)