Hokusai and Hiroshige
I'ma tell you about Japanese "ukiyo-e" ('Floating World') prints.
Everybody who knows anything about Japanese art knows (and usually loves) Hokusai Katsushika. That's as incontravertable a fact as "If you know anything about cars, you know Ford." You know Hokusai, in fact. He did the woodblock ukiyo-e print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, which you will have seen unless you are dead or blind. It's undoubtedly the single most famous image ever produced by a Japanese artist ever, and is part of one of the most successful print runs of ukiyo-e woodblock cuts: Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji, which actually has 46 prints in it because it was so popular he made 10 addendum prints later. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa is #1. #2 is also fairly popular, and my personal favorite of the series, South Wind, Clear Sky, aka "Red Fuji."
Back in 2005 I took a Japanese art class at UCSB, and discovered Hokusai's number one rival, Ando Hiroshige, and discovered that I actually liked Hiroshige's style better than Hokusai's. This is at least somewhat due to the fact that Hiroshige influenced Van Gogh, who I've always thought was awesome. Van Gogh went so far as to copy some of Hiroshige's prints. But a major reason I like Hiroshige more is the subject matter of his work.
Like Hokusai, he did landscapes, but he preferred to base them around roads and regions rather than singular features. His competing print line to Thirty Six Views was The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido, the Tokaido being the major road which lead between Edo and Kyoto.
There are a couple of stand out prints from this series, with my personal favorites being Kanbara-juku (#16), Shono-juku (#46), and Saka-no-Shika (#49).
On a lark, I was browsing ebay yesterday, and found a number of Hiroshige prints for not too much.
I now own original, 1830 prints of Kanbara-juku and Shono-juku.
I'm especially happy about scoring the Shono-juku print, since it's my favorite.
Everybody who knows anything about Japanese art knows (and usually loves) Hokusai Katsushika. That's as incontravertable a fact as "If you know anything about cars, you know Ford." You know Hokusai, in fact. He did the woodblock ukiyo-e print The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, which you will have seen unless you are dead or blind. It's undoubtedly the single most famous image ever produced by a Japanese artist ever, and is part of one of the most successful print runs of ukiyo-e woodblock cuts: Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji, which actually has 46 prints in it because it was so popular he made 10 addendum prints later. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa is #1. #2 is also fairly popular, and my personal favorite of the series, South Wind, Clear Sky, aka "Red Fuji."
Back in 2005 I took a Japanese art class at UCSB, and discovered Hokusai's number one rival, Ando Hiroshige, and discovered that I actually liked Hiroshige's style better than Hokusai's. This is at least somewhat due to the fact that Hiroshige influenced Van Gogh, who I've always thought was awesome. Van Gogh went so far as to copy some of Hiroshige's prints. But a major reason I like Hiroshige more is the subject matter of his work.
Like Hokusai, he did landscapes, but he preferred to base them around roads and regions rather than singular features. His competing print line to Thirty Six Views was The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido, the Tokaido being the major road which lead between Edo and Kyoto.
There are a couple of stand out prints from this series, with my personal favorites being Kanbara-juku (#16), Shono-juku (#46), and Saka-no-Shika (#49).
On a lark, I was browsing ebay yesterday, and found a number of Hiroshige prints for not too much.
I now own original, 1830 prints of Kanbara-juku and Shono-juku.
I'm especially happy about scoring the Shono-juku print, since it's my favorite.