Hokusai

Over a century and a half after his death, Katsushika Hokusai is still one of Japan''s most popular and influential artists. This handy volume presents the wide range of Hokusai''s artistic production in terms of one of his most remarkable characteristics: his intellectual ingenuity. It attempts to answer the question of how the self-styled ''Man Mad about Drawing'' approached his subjects - how he depicted human bodies in motion, combined figures and landscape, represented three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface, and used tech¬niques of illusionism or adjusted reality for greater visual or emotional effect. Including some fifty stunning and unusual paintings, prints, and drawings from the peerless Japanese art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this book is a treasure trove that introduces readers to a witty, wide-ranging and inimitably ingenious Hokusai.