CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 4/21/2015

Hokusai

At last, Hokusai! Featured image, "The Falling Mist Waterfall at Mount Kurokami in Shimotsuke Province" (circa 1832), is reproduced from MFA Publications' wonderful catalog to the major new Hokusai show at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reviewed last week in the Boston Globe. Sebastian Smee writes, "Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) had everything you could want from an artistic genius, in any epoch, anywhere: a masterpiece as well-known as the Mona Lisa (in the form of “Under the Wave off Kanagawa,” a.k.a. “The Great Wave”), a glint of madness and mayhem in his eyes, even multiple pseudonyms. But beyond all this, and over and above his virtuosity, inventiveness, range, and infectious sense of mischief, what this artist most forcefully conveys is appetite."