The Wave, from "L'Estampe Originale"
Henri Gustave Jossot French
Publisher André Marty French
Not on view
Caricaturist and poster designer Jossot contributed this print to the avant-garde portfolio "L’Estampe originale" (1893–95). His composition pokes fun at the craze over Japanese art among artists and collectors at the time, known as Japonisme. Here, in a parody of Hokusai’s "Great Wave," an immense swell knocks a painter along with his easel and canvas out of a boat. The work satirizes compositional devices commonly adopted by Japoniste artists, such as a plunging perspective and radical cropping, by toppling the figure from the boat and cutting off his upper body with the lower edge of picture plane.
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