Katsushika Hokusai is one of the most fascinating artists in the history of Japanese art. Born in Edo, present-day Tokyo, he lived through the Edo period, an age of great change and cultural flowering in Japan. He was a master of ukiyo-e, the woodblock-print genre that took as its subjects everyday life, landscape, and scenes from myth.
Chief among his works is the famous series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, in which he rendered the majestic mountain from different vantage points and under different conditions. Prints such as The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Red Fuji became icons of Japanese art, and they remain widely known and admired. Hokusai was also prodigiously prolific: his legacy runs to thousands of prints, paintings, and illustrations.
He was an artist forever in search of novelty and perfection. The line, he believed, was the foundation of art, and he spent years refining his command of line and form. His central conviction was that art should be simple yet expressive — that a line can carry the whole range of emotion and sensation. His contribution to culture was to help make Japanese art known throughout the world and to inspire generations of artists and designers.
His life was full of paradox and hardship. He changed his name more than thirty times — unusual for the day — becoming, each time, "another" artist. A perfectionist, he was seldom satisfied with what he had made, and the dissatisfaction kept him in constant creative motion. At ninety he said he was only beginning to understand how the line works, and asked heaven for ten more years in which to keep creating. The request was not granted; he died soon afterward.
Despite his relatively short life, Hokusai's legacy remains vital and inspiring today. His art continues to fascinate viewers the world over, and his ideas about the simplicity and expressiveness of line still speak to contemporary artists and designers. His passion for his work and his ceaseless pursuit of perfection make him a model for anyone drawn to art and design. Hokusai remains an essential figure in the history of art, and his work goes on inspiring and fascinating us today.