Japan, Hokusai's Great Wave becomes a large Lego brick sculpture

TheGreat Wave of Kanagawa, the circa 1830-1831 masterpiece by Katsushika Hokusai (Edo, 1760 - 1849), the celebrated woodcut (made in the ukiyo-e technique) part of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series and preserved, in its various copies, in many of the world’s most important museums, has become a Lego work: it is the work of Jumpei Mitsui, the only officially recognized professional Lego sculptor in Japan, who put together the unique work with 50.000 Lego bricks in 400 hours of work.

Hokusai’s work took the form of a large Lego construction in the halls of theHankyu Brick Museum in Osaka, Japan, a museum all about brick statues-Mitsui’s sculpture is now on permanent display at the institution. “I had been planning to do this work for many years,” said Mitsui, “and finally now I have succeeded in making it. It is a three-dimensional work, so now the wave can be enjoyed from different angles.” It took several hours of study to make the work, and not just for the execution of the sketches: in fact, Mitsui spent several hours studying real waves, to understand how they develop in three dimensions (“when I was a child,” he said, “I lived in a house with a view of the sea, so I saw a lot of real waves”).

This is not the first time that The Great Kanagawa Wave has been “translated” into Legos: an artist, Koffiemoc, had created a similar work last year, but nowhere near as impressive as Mitsui’s work. Now, as the museum presentation states, thanks to Mitsui’s work, “the powerful wave motion, the movement of the boat on the wave, and Mount Fuji in the background are expressed three-dimensionally. Moreover, the work pays special attention to the vibrant splashes of the waves and reproduces them vividly, making it a work that can offer different sensations than an ukiyo-e.”

Japan, Hokusai's Great Wave becomes a large Lego brick sculpture

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