Name: View Of The Mountains From The Nihon Alps Salada Road
Brand: Julian Opie
Rating: 5 (236 reviews)

Track auction value trend

The value of Julian Opie’s View Of The Mountains From The Nihon Alps Salada Road (signed) is estimated to be worth between £2,100 and £3,200. This mixed media artwork, created in 2009, has an auction history of two sales since its entry to the market on 13th December 2016. In the last five years, the hammer price has shown consistency, with an average annual growth rate of 3%. This work is part of a limited edition of 50.

Meaning & Analysis

Taken from Julian Opie’s Japanese Landscapes series from 2009, View Of The Mountains From The Nihon Alps Salada Road shows a mountainous landscape in the distance, with a road, lake and pond weed in the foreground. The image is depicted from a low perspective, as the viewer has to peer through the pondweed to see the view.

Closely referencing Japanese art history, Opie uses strips of calligraphy on either side of the landscape to make clear his inspiration from the woodblock prints of Utagawa Hiroshige. Interestingly, Opie incorporates these strips into the scene itself, showing the pond weed covering the strip on the left and the strip on the right is reflected in the water.

Created using computer drawing programmes to manipulate digital photographs, these prints were inspired on a trip taken by the artist around Mount Fuji in Japan. These landscapes were originally displayed as a series of animations based on double and triple LCD screens, representative of the way in which Opie tries to defy traditional art boundaries through his work. Opie has spoken of this saying, “Our attitude towards art history, towards schools, styles, and ‘isms’, was quite aggressive. We wanted to manipulate them, to use whatever style we wished.”