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Van Gogh & Hokusai: Having a Chat

Van Gogh & Hokusai Having a Chat 2025
Van Gogh & Hokusai Having a Chat

Mixed Media on Board, 2025 (2 panels, 8x8x2 inches each)

“Your artistic vision is truly amazing. You brought these two together and made them look like they are two halves of a perfect whole. It will be hard to see either one alone now without feeling like a part is missing.” -Gail K.

What if two artists were in a studio, having a chat? What would that look like? Especially if the artists shared the same influences. I imagine myself being in that chat, like a moderator, sprinkling in a few notes of my own to help guide and illuminate the conversation.

Van Gogh collected hundreds of Japanese prints; he even copied some to better understand the style. He particularly admired The Great Wave; in a letter to his brother Theo, he described Hokusai’s waves as “claws, the boat is caught in them, you can feel it.” It’s believed Hokusai’s wave inspired the swirl in Starry Night, completed in 1889

Back in 1831, Hokusai trailblazed his own prints in Japan with use of the newly affordable cobalt blue – one of the principal colors in Starry Night. He also studied the Western use of light and shadows. The production of traditional ukiyo-e woodblock prints was itself expanding with multiple printings, new colors, and nature themes. As European trade opened up, Japonisme, the love of all things Japanese, including these prints, flourished from the mid-1800s onwards – influencing Van Gogh, Monet, Degas, Klimpt, and the Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Art Nouveau movements in general.

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Video of Van Gogh & Hokusai

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