The Great Wave Off Kanagawa Analysis

Melissa Whitfield Whitfield 1 Amy Levine Art 111-71 25 October 2015 Great Wave off Kanagawa and the Inlet of Nobuto Katsushika Hokusai was a famous Japanese artist who produced many pieces of art. During his lifetime his fame was mostly in Japan because at that time Japan was fairly secluded from other areas of the world. He didn't gain the fame from the outside world until after his death. One of his most famous works is 36 views of Mount Fuji. Two of the views were called Great Wave off Kanagawa or also called The Great Wave and The Inlet of Nobuto. You can see many similarities as well as differences in the

With both of these pieces you can see Hokusai’s obsession with mountain and his feel for the sacredness of it. Many of the Japanese artist of this era would put Mount Fuji in their art to symbolize the very important cultures and heritage of the Japanese. It was thought of as having a secret of immortality, eternal life. In both of these pieces it shows nature and water, whether peaceful like in The Inlet of Nobuto or active and aggressive like in The Great Wave. On the website angelfire.com it says: The theme of water and nature is fundamental to Japanese art. Water is one of the many power sources of the world. People use water to cook, wash, drink, and as a source of energy. Throughout history, water has been celebrated in many ways. The Japanese are no exception to the rule. Most of wood block paintings feature water in them. Nature in Japanese art seems to be one with the human soul. That is even the basis of Zen and art. Nature and art for the Japanese are like yin and yang. It is the theme in paintings, Zen, martial arts, and all other forms of Japanese art and living. Nature is the unifying theme in all of Japanese art. Without nature, there is not much to expose the world to the Eastern

In The Great Wave it is framed by the massive curves of the wave and the front of one of the fishing boats. The front of the waves looks as if its claws are waiting to grab the fishing boats. The small droplets of the foam that’s coming off of the wave makes it look as if it's sprinkling the mountain with snow. In The Inlet of Nobuto, Mount Fuji is framed by the larger of the two toriies. A torii is thought to be a boundary between the human world and spirit world or a stopping and starting point from a secular space to a religious space. In the great wave it also looks as if the white tips of the crest of the wave could be the beaks of white birds ready to snatch the boats or the fishermen out of the boats. In the Inlet of Nobuto the larger of the torii frames the mountains. It’s been said that tori have a connection between white birds and the souls of the dead or even just death in Japan and birds in general. Katsushika Hokusai had a self-described mania about depicting things he saw in daily life. He was restless and therefore constantly sketched what he saw. Whether it was people, places, or landscapes, Hokusai developed a style unique to himself at the time. He made his own path in his style of ukiyo-e, away from the common depictions of