JULIAN OPIE, VIEW OF MOUNT FUJI WITH DAISIES FROM ROUTE 300, JAPANESE LANDSCAPES, SIGNED MIXED MEDIA, EDITION OF 50, 2009
View Of Mount Fuji With Daisies From Route 300 is a print from Julian Opie’s Japanese Landscapes series (2009) that was created from photographs taken by the artist on a trip 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.
The print shows an image of Mount Fuji across a road and lake, with four daisies in the very close foreground, creating an unusual and dynamic composition. Opie uses two graphic strips of calligraphy to contextualise the print for the viewer and set the work in a tradition of Japanese woodblock prints.
The prints in this series closely reference Japanese art history, specifically ‘pictures of the floating world’, that is, paintings and prints of the Ukiyo-e school. Opie takes inspiration from Utagawa Hiroshige and Kitagawa Utamaro for his Japanese Landscapes series, whose work shows an apparent simplicity that obtained through an underlying complexity. View Of Mount Fuji With Daisies From Route 300 is indicative of Hiroshige’s sparse, ideal compositions, that play with unconventional perspective and cropping techniques to contrast foreground motifs with the backdrop to dramatic effect.
Read more about Japanese Landscapes by Julian Opie.
ABOUT JULIAN OPIE
British artist Julian Opie challenges traditional approaches to portraiture through his digitally designed and seemingly contradictory, depersonalised works. Working also with landscapes and cityscapes, Opie’s highly stylised work involves the reduction of photographs or short films into figurative reproductions created using computer software. The hallmarks of his artistic style are portraits and animated walking figures, rendered with minimal detail in black line drawing. Learn more about Julian Opie.
