Japanese Art

Ecocapsule by NICE Architects.

Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai died on this day in 1849.

These are three stunning woodblock prints from his famous Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series.

Hokusai (1769-1849) was the first great designer of landscape prints. Before him, most print designers created images of beautiful women or kabuki actors. Then, in the 1820s and 1830s, Hokusai produced his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series which showed the sacred mountain from different viewpoints, during different seasons and at different times of day.

With its simple colour schemes and bold compositions it was stylistically ground-breaking, combining elements of Japanese, Chinese and Western painting.

Many 19th-century European artists collected Hokusai’s prints – including Monet, Degas, Gauguin, Klimt, Manet and van Gogh – and without him Impressionism may never have happened.

Poppies (from an untitled series of Flowers)  -    Katsushika Hokusai , 1833-34

Japanese  1760-1849

Colour woodblock print,  25.4 x 36.5 cm

Sou Fujimoto - House NA. Tokyo, Japan. 2010.

Photo: Iwan Baan

Designed for a young couple in a quiet Tokyo neighborhood, the 914 square-foot transparent house contrasts the typical concrete block walls seen in most of Japan’s dense residential areas. Associated with the concept of living within a tree, the spacious interior is comprised of 21 individual floor plates, all situated at various heights, that satisfy the clients desire to live as nomads within their own home.

Sou Fujimoto states, “The intriguing point of a tree is that these places are not hermetically isolated but are connected to one another in its unique relativity. To hear one’s voice from across and above, hopping over to another branch, a discussion taking place across branches by members from separate branches. These are some of the moments of richness encountered through such spatially dense living.”

Japanese Lady Writing