Hokusai and Hiroshige's Approaches to Landscape - Essay Example

Two Approaches to Landscape: The Prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige (s) Two Approaches to Landscape: The Prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige Introduction Hokusai and Hiroshige are renowned Japanese artists famous for their landscape artworks. Born in 1760, Katsushika Hokusai was a Japanese artist during the artistic awakening period in the print maker and ukiyo-e often marked historically as Edo period. Hokusai was particularly influenced by the artistic prowess of painters such as; Sesshu and the overall styles of Chinese painting elegances. Born in the region of Edo now referred to as the city of Tokyo, Hokusai is best remembered for the authoring of woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji in the 1831. These paintings include the internationally focally recognized prints such as The Great Wave off Kanagawa printed by late 1820s. Hokusai painted a creational artistic work of the “Thirty-six Views” both aimed adversely in a responsive form to domestic travel boom and as a leisure activity painting in obsession with Mount Fuji. It was in regard to the “Thirty-Six views” painting series’ clear atmospheric weather conditions that heightened Hokusai’s fame both oversees and in Japan (Ray 22). On the other hand, Utagawa Hiroshige also known as Ando Hiroshige was a Japanese born Ukiyo-e artist just as Hokusai. This artist was considered the last artistically great master of the ancient painting tradition. In comparison, Hiroshige is also best known for his prowess in landscapes prominent example being such series as the fifty thee stations of the Tokaido as well as the sixty-nine stations of the Kiso Kaido (Forbes and Henley124). Lastly, the depiction of birds and flowers is an additionally exotic painting done by Utagawa Hiroshige. The works of Utagawa were purely a form of ukiyo-e genre whose focal point was on popular actors, beautifully created women as well as the extraordinarily scenarist parts of urban settings and pleasure districts of the 1603-1868 Japan’s Edo period. This paper critically compares the landscape approaches used by Hokusai and Hiroshige with particular focus to the Hokusai’s work of “Thirty-six Views Hokusai” and Similarities and Differences of the Prints of Hokusai and Hiroshige Hokusai and Hiroshige are two landscape artists with remarkable similarities. However, despite belonging to the same art movement at the same time the artists also have significant identifiable differences in their individual styles. With regard to their similarities, the works of the two artists were all similar in their paintings are critically acclaimed adversely the composition of colors (Neave et al., 2014). These paintings distinctively are distinguished in many print sets depicting Edo by referring to their uniquely presented Ichiyusai Gakki; a tittle which was derived from the fact that the serial artistic designs by these artists emerged either as Ichiyusai Hiroshige or Ichiyusai Hokusai. On the other hand, with regard to their differences, Hokusai’s works were mainly characterized by their use of experimental, bold and wild presentation of landscape designs. The popular Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series by Hokusai for example was at the top most influential lists of Hiroshige’s choice of artistic subject; even though Hiroshige’s approach were inconsequentially incompatible with Hokusai’s as most of Hiroshige’s approach were more of ambient and poetic ones, his painting approach more formally bolder in nature. Contrastingly, Hiroshige’s landscape styles attempted to depict nature in an elegant, delicate but realistic manner, displaying the gentle sympathy and humor of the common people (Barnet143). Hiroshige’s work ultimately paved way for the influential nature of the Western painting towards the end of 19th century as part of the emerging trend in Japonism. Western artists accordingly studied closely studied the complementary compositions of Hiroshige’s composition. Some of these western artists include people such as van Gogh who painted conclusively copies of Hiroshige’s prints. Lastly, the difference in Hokusai and Hiroshige’s painting difference is evidently clear that it is Hokusai who set the trend in artistic field which was later followed by Hiroshige. This implies that landscape printing was basically an entity of Hokusai in the Japan’s artistic world. Japanese “Ukiyo-e” woodblock of nineteenth-century prints are normally called the “pictures of floating world” this is to say in other words, they are pictures of the passing world of courtesans, rich brothel merchants and actors and also the theatre district of Edo city, which is referred to as Tokyo for nowadays.Ukiyo-e, however, were very further than the scenes of Edo, mostly in masters hands like Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849) and Utagawa Hiroshige (1797 – 1858), who applied Ukiyo-es“fleeting world”ways of viewing the landscape scenes. When Ukiyo-e master’s world was confined to Edo’s brothel and theater district at the time of Japan’s Tokugawa(1615 - 1868),that is what was drawn by them, however, as their reality increased, their art also increased tillit eventually portrayed the life of the common people of Japan as a whole.The different approaches of Ukiyo-e artists is nowhere more apparent than in the development of landscape prints in the 19th century, which reveal how differently reality could be perceived by masters such as Hokusai and Hiroshige. Hokusai was a prime example of the independent and bohemian artist, and Hiroshige, 37 years younger, typified the artist of the establishment point of view. They might view the same scene, but they would see different things. Hiroshige was much less tempestuous. Born AndôTokutarô, he was the son of low-ranking samurai. During the Tokugawa Period the samurai were the middle class, below courtiers in rank but above commoners. In the stability and peace of the Tokugawa Period the lesser samurai, like the Ando, ceased to be warriors and became scribes, administrators and bureaucrats. Hiroshiges family worked for the fire-fighters league, a job that Hiroshige inherited at the age of 13 when his father died. As a low-level bureaucrat, Hiroshige would have found it hard to support himself. Thus, in 1811, his family apprenticed him to the Ukiyo-e artist UtagawaToyohiro (1773--1828). In 1812, Hiroshige received the name Utagawa Hiroshige from Toyohiro, marking his acceptance into the Utagawaschool, the largest in Ukiyo- e. Later, as Hiroshiges artistic career developed, he supported himself by selling his art, but even as he ceased to be a bureaucrat officially, he remained an establishment man, a joiner, one whose tastes and sensibilities matched those of the group he represented. No other artist of his time and stature contrasts so strongly to the outsider and loner Hokusai. Hiroshige himself summed up the distinction between his style of print-making and that of Hokusai in his inscription on his set of the old man [Hokusai] had drawn grasses, trees, birds, animals, and other things in his usual talented brush. Also, he had drawn people and places and their customs. Filled with power of his brush, his work focused upon making things interesting. For instance, he manipulated Fuji as he liked. My work differs. I simply reproduce sketches of what I had seen before my eyes. "This small set of prints is too limited to draw everything in all its details. So there are many places where I had to abbreviate things, but as much as possible I made the compositions true to life. For those who can take long trips, please bring this book along and compare my scenes to the actual scenes. Please forgive the clumsiness of my technique."—Ryusai Hiroshige. What Hiroshige meant is evident in Hokusais print South Wind, Clearing Weather from his set The Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji. The large triangular mass of Mt. Fuji occupies fully three-quarters of the composition, and it seems all the larger against the tiny trees below it. The long left slope of Mt. Fuji increases the illusion of massive scale, as does the mountains distinctive, dusky brown color, which gives the print its popular name, The Red Fuji. In contrast to that simple, bold image is Hiroshiges own The Returning Sails at Yabase from The Eight Views of Lake Omi. Hiroshiges view contains a complexity of objects that Hokusais The Red Fuji lacks, and the many things to look at in The Returning Sails allow the viewers eye to wander freely through the composition, moving from one object to the next. This liberty Hokusai does not accord his audience. The simplicity of Hokusais The Red Fuji forces a focus on the great volcano. He manipulates his audience in a way that Hiroshige does not. He also manipulates his subject matter. In some compositions Hokusai relegates Mt. Fuji to the background, as in The Great Wave off Kanagawa, where a tiny, triangular Fuji peeks out from beneath the curve of the massive breaker. In other works from the set a diminished Mt.Fuji appears beneath a bridge, behind trees, or through the arch of a huge wooden tub that an artisan is constructing. By contrast, Hiroshige claims that he himself simply reproduced in sketches what he saw before his eyes, and made his compositions true to life. But this requires further analysis, for Hiroshige was much more selective than that in arranging his compositions. In fact, the landscape prints of Hiroshige do not depict exactly what was before his eyes, although they are a serious attempt to base his composition on a confrontation with reality. His writings make it clear that he emphasized a direct experience of the sites that he portrayed, but he does not exercise the "power of his brush" as Hokusai does. Rather, he is more subtle and passive, sensitively responding to reality and allowing nature itself to shape the imagery and mood of his compositions. Hiroshige does not make "life sketches" in the usual meaning of that term. In The Satta Pass at Yui from his Fifty-three Stages of the Eastern Sea Road, he correctly depicts Mt. Fuji rising out of the Izu peninsula with Suruga Bay in front--but this view is actually impossible to see because of the great distance between Mt. Fuji and Suruga Bay. Hiroshiges diaries of his trips to Kazusa, Kai and Mt. Kano make it clear that he did not design the compositions of his prints on the spot as a pleineaire painter might. Rather, he sketched as he traveled, using the sketches like notes to aid his memory later as he designed prints in his studio. And yet his landscapes are a more revealing record of reality than had been previously attempted in Japanese art. Many of the places shown by Hiroshige were the "famous places" (meishô) of Japan--the sites known through history, poetry, literature and lore. Such meishô often had standardized images to symbolize them, much as the Eiffel Tower represents Paris. Before this time, Japanese landscape artists regularly concentrated on the symbols, rather than on the places themselves. For that reason, it was not necessary for them to actually see the sites that they would draw, for it was not the geographic reality of a place that counted, but its image in history, poetry, literature and lore. Ukiyo-e artists were among the first to break with this tradition of conventionalized and symbolic portrayals of unseen famous places. The reputed founder of Ukiyo-e, IwasaMatabei (1578--1650,) for instance, traveled the Eastern Sea Road, and in his journal stressed the importance of seeing the meishô for himself. Hiroshige was heir to Matabeis method of seeking out the legendary beauty spots of Japan and confronting them in reality. Diaries of his trips to Kazusa, Kai and Mt. Kano show how seriously he did that. Many of his works show an understanding of local customs and lore that he could only have obtained by examining the sites personally. His Atsuta Festival at Miya from The Fifty-three Stages of the Eastern Sea Road depicts a horse race--an activity not mentioned in guidebooks or other writings about Atsuta prior to Hiroshiges time. Consequently, many scholars believe that the race was added to the festival only in Hiroshiges day. Similarly, if Hiroshiges landscapes are not entirely "true to life," they are nevertheless geographically instructive. His 1847 triptych The Whirlpools at Awa, for instance, was considered so precise a rendering of these straits that the reproduction of this print was forbidden during World War II when the area around Awa was deemed strategically important for the defense of Japan. Hiroshiges accuracy is evident again in The Fifty-three Stages of the Eastern Sea Road. This set depicts the journey from Edo to Kyoto, reversing the usual order of the presentation of these sites in travel diaries. The sequence in which the prints are to be seen is clear, despite the fact that they are not numbered, because Hiroshige subtitled one image Kanaya: The Far Bank of the Oi River. Kanaya is the distant bank of the Oi only to those going towards Kyoto. Thus Hiroshiges more sensitive and passive responses to recording landscape allowed nature itself to shape the imagery and mood of his compositions. Whereas Hokusai insisted on depicting the world in his own individual way, and controlled the viewer of his compositions, Hiroshige took the public and more common route, and added his genius to the traditional imagery and actual reality of the Japanese landscape. Conclusion In conclusion, although both Hokusai and Hiroshige belonged to the same art movement and almost lived at the same time with only thirty six years apart, the artists also have significant identifiable differences in their individual styles as was evidenced in their the prints art works. For example, while Hokusais works such as the popular Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji were mainly characterized by their use of experimental, bold and wild presentation of landscape designs, Hiroshige’s landscape styles contrastingly depicted nature in an elegant, delicate but realistic manner, displaying the gentle sympathy and humor of the common people. Works Cited Neave, Dorinda, Blanchard, Lara C.W., Sardar, Marika. Asian Art . New York: Pearson, 2014.Print. Forbes, Andrew and Henley, David. Utagawa Hiroshige’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji. Chiang Mai: Cognoscenti Books, 2014. Print. Ray, Deborah K. Hokusai : the man who painted a mountain. New York: Frances Foster Books2001.Print. Sylvan, Barnet. A Short Guide to Writing about Art on writing comparison-contrast essays. New York: Pearson Prentice Hall (2010):135–148. Print. Read More