Katsushika Hokusai@260

#KatsushikaHokusai260 

'Woman Looking at Herself in a Mirror, 1805'

Artist:Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)

Christopher Benfey, NYR, July 2015:

“....The woman admiring herself in the mirror in an early hanging scroll seems to have her mouth slightly open, as though she’s about to speak. But if you look closely—and you always have to look closely at Hokusai’s work—you’ll see that she’s holding a tiny fruit (the hoozuki, or ground cherry, a symbol of summer) in her mouth, and perhaps making a sound with her tongue on its hollow skin, adding auditory detail to visual. “Hokusai’s beauty may be whistling softly to herself as she admires her red lipstick,” (Sarah E.) Thompson writes, “with a green shimmer on the lower lip where it is applied most thickly, and teeth neatly blackened for maximum contrast with her white-powdered face.”...”