How to Read Paintings: Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai
The most famous Japanese print in the world
How do you see this image? Do you see a depiction of the formidable power of nature?
Or do you see an image of beauty, the gracefully balanced forms of the ocean and a distant mountain?
For me, the allure of this famous Japanese print is in the tension created by these two possibilities, for the work seems to contain both immense ferocity and elegant beauty. Few images in the history of art contain such extremes and hold them in such perfect balance.
The Artist
The image was made by the Japanese printmaker Katsushika Hokusai, sometime around 1830.
Born in 1760 in the city of Edo, today’s Tokyo, Hokusai became a leading ukiyo-e artist, who is thought to have produced over 30,000 paintings, sketches and woodblock prints during his lifetime.
Creating Great Wave off Kanagawa came late in his career when he was in his early 70s. He later claimed that nothing he produced before the age of seventy was of very much value. For Hokusai, with age came wisdom, as he wryly expressed:
“And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one…
