Customer Reviews

Hokusai

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What it is: The most thorough biographical reference I know, by an 1890s French author, de Goncourt. It's been translated into English, with a few notes added by the modern author (Forrer). The text has many accompanying illustrations. Those include sketches and remarkable paintings on silk or paper. Quite a few will be unfamiliar to most viewers - they include unique objects (like the drawings) and many rare prints. In fact, some of the prints were only discovered recently, or so people thought until they were seen mentioned in de Goncourt's text.

What I hoped for: A collection of Hokusai's art that really shows the art. This is basically a history or biography. Only a handful of the reproductions are in color, but printed well in those few cases. The overwhelming majority of illustrations are black-and-white, often too small to see any detail. Many large ones have such uncertain focus that detail gets lost, too. The real purpose of the pictures, though was to support the text. The illustrations do that adequately, like visual signposts along the path of Hokusai's career.

If you're looking for a coffee-table set of Hokusai reproductions, give this one or two stars. The book is a biography, though, the best I know, and interesting in itself.

Still, it's not what I was hoping for.

//wiredweird