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Description and analysis of the great wave of kanagawa
Description and analysis of the great wave of kanagawa
Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso
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From Day to Night, and an Appreciation of Both: A Comparative Analysis of The Great Wave off Kanagawa and The Starry Night
Asian civilizations stretch back thousands of years, some which had early trading contacts with the West (e.g. India and China) while others, such as Japan, was an isolated country up until the 19th century. In 1853, after Japanese ports finally reopened to trade with the West, foreign imports and Japanese art flooded to the Western world, influencing European and American artists of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist eras. Specifically, woodcut prints and paintings made by masters of the ukiyo-e movement in Japan brought a new and unusual dimension to mainstream art, having a huge impact on the post-impressionist movement and on prominent artists like Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, and Vincent van Gogh ("Japanesque: The Japanese Print in the Era of Impressionism"). Two works of art which
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Each considered to be each artist’s magnum opus, the two paintings display unprecedented skill, as well as vast similarities and differences to communicate the power of the natural world over humans and their civilization. At the same time, Hokusai’s and Van Gogh’s idiosyncratic and internal natures are reflected through their respective works and, moreover, are indicative of the artistic movements in which they produced art.
Completed in 1832, The Great Wave off Kanagawa is a woodblock print, as well as the first print in Hokusai's series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji depicting an intense unraveling drama; this print is not only considered as one of the most recognizable works of Japanese art, but also a highly admired and appreciated print around the world. Though the series title indicates a focus directed toward Japan’s famous active volcano, Mount Fuji is quite hidden and
...clouds above refer to traditional Japanese screen paintings and provide a softening side to the water. They create a balance symbolising hope and good luck. Four wind symbols are used as a devise to balance the composition – all are blowing air gently into the picture. The cartoon like face with its puffed out, red cheeks expelling air. All suggest a positive, natural energy.
In 1857 Ando Hiroshige created a woodblock print titled Riverside Bamboo Market, Kyobashi representing a scene in Japan. The print is of a blue river, a bridge, and what looks like a mountain of bamboo. People are shown walking on the bridge as if they are entering the bamboo market. The colors in the artwork give off a calm feeling and the lines draw you into the details of the work. Calling the print Riverside Bamboo Market, Kyobashi, Ando Hiroshige presents the river as a market where people come to gain items to sustain focusing on the abundance of bamboo.
The books Night by Elie Wiesel and Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt hold many comparisons and contractions. Plots vary yet they still contain similarities, as do the characters and the themes. The time frame in both books take place during a war but at two very different times in history. Though the books have great likeness, the two still remain vastly distinctive.
Pages 30-31 “The two young men had little in…the art contrived by Honolulu and Yokohama masters.”
It is called Scenes of Hell Japan, Endo period (1603-1868). The mediums are ink, colors, and paper. It was located at the Newman Museum and was purchased in 1915. Now it is also in the Frist Museum of Visual arts. The specific artist in unknown but was found in Japan. This is a very large painting. Dimensions were not given in the museum. This painting is very dark it has demons blowing fire on dammed souls that were thrown in the fire of heaven. This painting has a lot in common with the installation called ClusterFuck. They both have a dark realism to them. They express death and the consequences of humans choices that they make in their own life. Along with that they do have differences. The installation had light, by that a sweet innocence to it that calmed the darkness down. The painting did not. Figures are distorted and evil looking. The painting had implied lined from the demons to the burning people. It also has more color to it then the installation. The installation had subjects that were just there but in the painting the subjects moved the viewers around the painting. Both were similar by the death aspect but the painting had more color, lines, and more of a story that goes with
Hiroshi Sugimoto is a Japanese photographer born in Tokyo in 1948. Upon graduating from Saint Paul’s University in Tokyo with a degree in Sociology and Politics and moved to Los Angeles in 1970 and attended the Art Centre College of Design. He moved to New York in 1974 after receiving his Bachelors degree and now lives in Tokyo and in New York. He divides his work into photographic series, each representing a certain theme. He is most famous for his seascapes, movie theaters, natural history dioramas and portraits, and waxworks series. He explores the idea of photography and time, and uses photography as a way to record science and history alongside the idea of indescribable human nature. His aim when creating portraits is to make them as lifelike as possible so the viewer reconsiders what it is to be alive.
The two artworks I decided to discuss are A thousand peaks and myriad ravines by Wang Hui for the Chinese artwork and View of Kojima Bay by Ike Taiga as the Japanese artwork. Both these share a few similarities including the subject of the artwork being the landscape and naturalism. In A thousand peaks and myriad ravines by Wang Hui you can notice very clear detailing and lining from the top trees of the mountains to the very small fishers and scholars portrayed towards the bottom and center of the artwork. Primarily, this artwork emphasizes the detail. The portrait is mostly taken up by the mountains and that around it. The range of colors used in this hanging scroll consist of the grey scale and a golden bronze done with a very thin brush.
...d pleasures: orientalism in America, 1870-1930. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press in association with the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, 2000. Print.
The ukiyo-e period was when a type of Japanese art was created which represented pictures of the flowing world. It was originally a Buddhist concept that meant the sadness of life. This print was influenced by the Dutch as Hokusai became interested with linear perspective when Western prints came by through Dutch trade. The artwork depicts a large wave which takes up about half of the print and then people in boats underneath the wave. The waves could be a metaphor for the government at the time as it ruled with an iron fist restricting any abroad travel as well as any visitors from other countries. The government was very controlling and limited any communication with the outside world during Hokusai’s time. The boats represent the civilians trying to explore the rest of the world but being stopped by the wave ‘government’ which is trying to get them to stay within the country or within ‘safety’. The boats have no control in the water and are practically helpless which represents the citizens if they were able to travel abroad as they would be defenceless and feeble because they wouldn’t have a proper understanding of the world and its
The Tokugawa period was a time of economic prosperity. In the woodprint displaying fireworks, the Ryōgoku Bridge spans the water, implying
Over the course of Japanese history, arguably, no artist is more famous for their works than Katsushika Hokusai. During his 88 years of life, he produced over 30,000 pieces of artwork, and heavily influenced Western styles of art. His most famous piece was created around 1831, a Japanese styled piece titled, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This piece has stood as a defining piece of artwork in the Japanese culture for over 180 years, analyzed by students and authors for the interpretations filling the paper. The relationship between Hokusai’s painting has directly affected the Western point of view of Japanese style. The English author, Herbert Read’s novel interprets the painting distinctly differently from a Japanese point, American poet,
he artwork I chose to analyze is The Starry Night (June 1889) by Vincent Van Gogh.I
The impressionist movement is often considered to mark the beginning of the modern period of art. It was developed in France during the late 19th century. The impressionist movement arose out of dissatisfaction with the classical, dull subjects and clean cut precise techniques of painting. They preferred to paint outdoors concentrating more on landscapes and street scenes, and began to paint ordinary everyday people and liked to show the effects in natural light.
Impressionism happened during the nineteenth century particularly in France although there is also impressionist movement in other places although the number of artists involved does not match the number of artists involved in impressionism in France. The characteristics of impressionism include the use of short brush strokes (Perry, 1995) and the lack of effort to veil or hide or keep these brushstrokes from being noticeable as the audience looks at the painting. There is also a renewed attention and focus on the effect of light, particularly the natural ambient light which is why many Impressionist painters work outside the studio, the paintings featuring a subject that is often found outside or outdoors, from Claude Monet’s Woman with a Parasol to Alfred Sisley’s Bridge at Villeneuve-la-Garenne. There is ...
In conclusion, the art of the 19th century was composed of a sequence of competing artistic movements that sought to establish its superiority, ideologies and style within the artistic community of Europe. These movements, being Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, ultimately spread far beyond the confines of Europe and made modern art an international entity which can still be felt in today’s artistic world.