Fujisawa 1810

"Fujisawa" is a woodblock print made by Katsushika Hokusai around the 1830s. The composition layers figures and landscape in a complex interplay of lines and planes. The foreground is dominated by the strong horizontal line of what seems to be a square box or low building, grounding the composition. Note how the artist uses color sparingly to define form and space. The reddish hues draw the eye and set off against the cooler greens and earth tones. We see a playful disruption of perspective, typical of ukiyo-e prints, which challenges traditional notions of depth and space. The figures in the print are arranged in a manner that deconstructs the classical pictorial space. This print doesn’t just represent a scene; it also invites us to question the very nature of representation and how we perceive and categorize the world around us. Hokusai uses formal elements to challenge fixed meanings.