Big wave off Kanagawa beach

mars9 (64)in #art • 8 years ago

Some critics consider this painting to be the most famous painting in Asia, and since its completion more than 180 years ago it has been an icon symbolizing Japanese art in the world.
Hokusai is one of the biggest names in Japanese art. He was educated by his compatriot Shunshu, from whom he gained engraving skills and drawing on wood.
Hokusai has been more famous in the West than in his native Japan.
Around the middle of the 19th century his work reached Paris and was greatly celebrated by the then impressionist painters such as Monet, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec.
In the "big wave" we see three boats swinging amid the turbulent waves. There are young humans who may be seafarers or fishermen trying desperately to escape the grip of the large wave that breaks up to form what resemble giant claws applied to fishermen.
From afar, the view of Mount Fuji is steeped in snow.
But despite the sea storm and the wave revolution, the sun looks bright and the weather is healthy.
Hokusai was a strong artist. In his over 30,000 paintings, he has depicted nature and humans, drawing on his subjects from Japan's fertile civilization, ancient traditions and astounding legends.
But he did not care about filming samurai, nobles, generals or Shoguns, but he had a special focus on drawing ordinary people and their everyday life.
The painting, as it is clear, depicts the power of nature and its eternal struggle with the man who triumphs over his fragility and weakness by possessing determination and strong will.
But today the painting also symbolizes the flood of knowledge and the struggle of the modern world with the torrent of news, knowledge and information that arise every hour and every minute.
Hokusai was inclined to love nature. Many of his drawings include pictures of birds, animals, grasses, trees and flowers.
But he was more fascinated by the love of the sea. The water was depicted in motion. Unlike his contemporaries of painters, he was not fond of portraying the lives of the rich and the privileged; he preferred to draw fishermen in their simple daily lives, despite the fact that an artist would not have dared at that time to paint this class, which Japanese society was then viewed as inferior and despised.
Some say the "big wave" is a western painting painted with the eyes of a Japanese artist. Japanese artists at that time were not aware of their interest in nature, nor did they care about perspective or drawing people.
There are critics who see that the Japanese painters benefited from the Dutch countryside paintings and gave it a Japanese flavor and model.
However, since the middle of the last century, Japanese artworks have invaded the capitals of Western art and culture, and artists such as John Whistler and Van Gogh have found their interest in quoting some of their distinctive techniques and techniques.
During his lifetime, Hokusai was an eccentric person with many whims. He painted many paintings, but he destroyed what he painted, perhaps in pursuit of more mastery and perfection. He changed his home more than ninety times and took over twenty different names throughout his life.
It is said that when he attended the death, at the age of ninety, he wished if the sky gave him five more years to paint better and more beautiful.