Hokusai - by Amelie Balcou (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Hokusai's beloved series of woodblock prints is now available in a stunning new format that honours the Japanese bookmaking tradition and illuminates the artist's radiant colours and exquisite lines.

Hokusai's series depicting Mount Fuji is widely considered to be the pinnacle of his career. This beautiful boxed accordion- fold edition comprises the full set of forty-six prints (the original thirty-six and ten more that were completed later) and features a luxurious silken binding along with a separate explanatory booklet. The book and booklet are packaged in an elegant slipcase. Devoted entirely to landscapes, Hokusai's series shows Mount Fuji from various viewpoints, framed in different ways. An indefatigable traveler who was passionate about nature, Hokusai explored every vantage point and season at the volcano. He presented it both as a solitary and majestic snow-capped peak and as a smaller object on a distant horizon. Hokusai also portrayed the mountain as an element in Japanese daily life and as an imposing force of nature that can be peaceful and beneficent, or ferocious and unforgiving. These impeccably reproduced prints invite readers to examine Hokusai's virtuosic use of color and composition, his talent for contrasting perspectives, and his interest in the dueling roles of man and nature. An exquisite objet d'art, this volume is the perfect vehicle for appreciating Hokusai's crowning achievement in all its lasting and subtle beauty.

Review Quotes

"Hokusai: Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, compactly presented in a handsome slipcase, opens up like a nigh-on infinitely expandable concertina of a book...This magnificent suite of woodblock prints feels as homey as it is exalted." --Hyperallergic

"Hokusai: Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, compactly presented in a handsome slipcase, opens up like a nigh-on infinitely expandable concertina of a book, in wave after wave after wave of images of daily life as it proceeded in the eye of that dreamily cloud-wreathed sacred mountain...This magnificent suite of woodblock prints feels as homey as it is exalted. And how magically alluring is its oh so dominant Prussian Blue!"--Best Design Books

About the Author

AMELIE BALCOU is a French art historian specializing in East Asian art and Japanese woodblock prints.