Talk:Hokusai

Note: The first two sections of this discussion page were imported from the Textop wiki.

Quick draft

Like I said, this article is not yet carefully fact-checked and copy-edited; I just threw it together from some material I had already written, plus a few dribs and drabs from the existing Wikipedia entry. This is kind of what I'd like to see CZ aspire to: as it is, it's already much better than the Wikipedia entry on this important artist. If you look at the Wikipedia entry, not only is it short, but what is there contains a lot of repeated material, with multiple instances of several observations/facts scattered across the article - showing yet another problem with it, the lack of any good overall organization for the content. If anyone needed any proof that "drive-by" editing doesn't produce good content, that Wikipedia entry is a prime example. Noel 20:00, 5 October 2006 (PDT)

Well, it is now copy-edited. I still have to go through and fact-check it (the article was mostly written some years ago using Hillier, which is now rather dated, as Forrer contains later scholarship), but it's pretty good. Comments welcome (and humbly solicited :-).

And a very big tip of the Hatly Hat to Terry, for a large amount of help with the copy-editing! Noel 08:22, 6 October 2006 (PDT)

I suggest that we do not have notes about the articles themselves, a la Wikipedia. Such notes really belong here, on the talk pages. There will, instead, be a catch-all warning at the top of every unapproved article that says the article may contain errors, etc. The only pages that will not have such a warning will be particular versions of articles approved by editors. I do not say this to legislate it, but it is something that has long bothered me about Wikipedia--clearly, by putting such notices at the tops of articles, almost randomly as far as I can tell, collaborators are writing for themselves, and using the templates as bludgeons on each others--the templates are not for the public's consumption, really. Folks will deny this, of course, but I ain't buyin' it. --Larry Sanger 22:49, 20 October 2006 (PDT)

Ah, I never intended that these comments go in the article; I don't remember where I had them on Textop, but if they were in the article, that was just because the whole Textop situation was so.. temporary, with no set rules. I 100.000% agree they belong on a text page. J. Noel Chiappa 09:27, 25 February 2008 (CST)

Copy edits

I've made some further copy edits, hopefully improving the flow. It's a nice article; it makes me want to know more! I also added ISBN and/or OCLC numbers to the book references at the bottom, as such IDs make it (slightly) easier for people to get a copy of the material. Let me know if any of this is objected to. JesseW2 00:20, 27 October 2006 (PDT)

This comment was from me. I also made some changes to the article, which have gotten lost, due to the textop copy being copied, not imported. We really need to get the history fixed up, here and elsewhere. Just having the random last Wikipedia editor listed is, er, not very good. JesseWeinstein 01:38, 16 November 2006 (CST)

This was not an imported Wikipedia article. I wrote it offline, using mostly printed sources (although I did take a few dribs and drabs from Wikipedia), and then uploaded it to Textop, from whence it was cross-loaded to Citizendium. This (extensive) text has never appeared on Wikipedia. J. Noel Chiappa 09:23, 25 February 2008 (CST)

Style

Great information. I hope that the article can be edited to have a more narrative style of prose. I realize that large block paragraphs are a pain to read online, but at the moment most paragraphs have only one or two sentences, many of which begin with "In 1777..." or "Around 1796...". It's almost like a timeline or list of facts. The article probably doesn't need so many specific dates. --Eric Winesett 21:59, 9 May 2007 (CDT)

I'm having a bit of a hard time understanding what you mean by "a more narrative style of prose"; I thought that's what I had achieved (and, moreover, had the text copy-edited by someone who's a professional artist and writer). In particular, I separated the content into a basic bio (i.e. events in his life), and a section on his artistic evolution, in an attempt to provide two 'mini-narratives', one in each important focus. Can you provide an example, to help me understand?

I take your point about the short paragraphs, but I tried to give each major phase of his life and/or important subtopic (e.g. his name-changes) its own paragraph. Let me ponder that one.

As to the dates, they mostly occur in the "Biography" and "Artistic career" sections, and I'm trying to provide as much data as I can in a short and coherent article (as opposed to the sprawling biographys in the books listed under "Further Reading"). My goal is to provide a 5-10 minute (i.e. fairly quick) read that can leave the reader who essays the entire article (as opposed to just the intro, which is the quick 1-2 minute version for someone who only wants the 'executive summary') with a very good handle on this guy - almost as good as you'd get in a college course on Asian art, say. Yeah, I could have said "next", instead of "in 17<mumble>", but why use a noise-word when you can put in real data? If people don't care about the dates, they can skim them - but if they aren't there, if they want them, people will have to go locate a book and dredge through it to find them. Maybe I'm confused about some of the fine points about what an encyclopaedia article should be, but I thought this was what would be wanted for something in the 'artistic bio' line. Am I misguided? J. Noel Chiappa 10:13, 25 February 2008 (CST)

Hokusai and the creation of landscape prints

I changed the text back from "effectivly created" to "made [it] a major division" because the former wording would give the naive reader what I believe would be an incorrect impression.

Landscapes had been part of the woodblock oeuvre from the earliest days, and a number of other woodblock artists had done significant numbers of landscape prints; moreover, some were even known for it, prior to Hokusai. E.g. Toyoharu, in the 1760s and 1770s, who is known as an artist himself (as opposed to in his role as a founder of the Utagawa school) principally for his perspective landscapes (uki-e); and his pupil Toyohiro (Hiroshige's master), who produced many fine landscapes in the 1800s and 1810s, and is generally agreed to have exerted a profound impact on Hiroshige.

Indeed, Lane (in Images from the Floating World) goes so far as to say "Toyoharu created almost single-handedly the new popular interest in landscape prints" and "he might well be considered the father of [landscape prints]" (pp. 150).

However, the fact remains that landscape prints didn't become as wide-spread a part of the total output of ukiyo-e (and therefore sales, since it was after all a commercial art form) until Hokusai's work - although undoubtly the artistic vacuum left by the era of 'the Decadents' made the public ready for 'the next big new thing', which he fulfilled.

Hence my description of his contribution as 'making [it] a major division'. J. Noel Chiappa 10:44, 25 February 2008 (CST)