Bouquillard, Jocelyn

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Bouquillard, Jocelyn

PERSONAL:

Male.

CAREER:

Writer and curator. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, curator in the photography and prints department.

WRITINGS:

La Résurrection De Pompéi: Dessins D'archéologues Des XVIIIe Et XIXe Siècles, Anthese (Arcueil, France), 2000.

Hokusai, Les Trente-six Vues Du Mont Fuji, Seuil: Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris, France) 2007.

Hokusai's Mount Fuji: The Complete Views in Color, translated by Mark Getlein, Abrams (New York, NY), 2007.

(With Christophe Marquet) Hokusai Manga, Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Seuil (Paris, France), 2007.

(With Christophe Marquet) Hokusai, First Manga Master, translated by Liz Nash, Abrams (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jocelyn Bouquillard is a curator at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and an expert in Japanese prints, especially landscapes. He and Christophe Marquet, an art historian, are the authors of Hokusai, First Manga Master. In their book, the authors examine the work of a master Japanese engraver named Katsushika Hokusai, whose style is considered a precursor to the modern style of Japanese manga comics that have become popular throughout the world. Known for its beautiful, strange, and sometimes surreal sketches and caricatures, Hokusai's work includes studies of facial expressions and postures, from the mundane tasks and duties of everyday life to otherworldly ponderings. In his landscapes, Hokusai shows his compassion for the peasants, farmers, and artisans, while often inserting the absurd into his landscape work. For example, his artwork may demonstrate a common scene in life with the addition of ghosts and gods in the picture, or portray a fanciful depiction of mice wearing kimonos. In their book, Marquet and Bouquillard present a condensed editorial of a series of works by Hokusai that were originally released in Japan in fifteen serial volumes over forty years between 1814 and 1878. Rob Vollmar, in a review of the book on the Comics Worth Reading Web site, noted that the book "is, at once, a copious sketchbook left by one of the 19th century's most influential artists, an encyclopedia of Japanese visual culture before Westernization, as well as the supposed precedent for one of the world's now dominant narrative art traditions." Vollmar went on to write in the same review: "Hokusai, First Manga Master is a fascinating and multi-layered overview of the Manga that will yield new treasures with each subsequent reading."