Viewing Hokusai--Note on Method

Visitation at the Orsay Video Pioneer Douglas Davis

Viewing Hokusai--Note on Method

Metaphor arises when fields collide.

One point pings in several planes at once—

A dust mite from one angle, from another, life.

This painting sits where the Buddhist path

Crosses the floating world, this beautiful illusion.

Uki is floating, yo’s the world, and this print, e,

One of the first consumer graphics, paid for

By merchants rising, daimyo’s switching

From castle to inn or factory, and rich peasants.

Ukiyo-e!

In Hokusai, Chinese mists blot out

Landscapes so detailed and almost real

That tourists have looked for the spots he sat,

Just to compare the picture to the present.

Loyal and proud, he painted the national icon

In perspective borrowed from the Dutch. Trade

Opened his eyes, and earned his rice. Popular,

he fitted humans into a large, wet land—

Dots in the distance, each distinct.

Flat, but deep, his art quotes

Other art, but looks convincingly strange,

Like a photograph: then, as we examine

A tower, or tree, we see the real dissolve.

The print’s an almost mechanical device

Switching us from one plane to another so fast

We become, stroboscopically, aware

Of all and everything, vibrating,

And we hear his voice, laughing like an angel,

Waking us from the nightmare of nationality and tribe,

Sheer soul sound, despite the Edo accent.

Other images in this series:

In this project, we take off from each picture in Hokusai's 36 Views of Mount Fuji, plus the extras he added when customers asked for more. We look at each original, then offer a visual and textual exploration of questions such as:

What was Hokusai getting at? How was he working? How did this practice align with his spiritual growth?

Please skim down this set of thumbnails to spot a picture you might want to explore, then click through. Or get the complete set in the book, Viewing Hokusai Viewing Mount Fuji.

View through the waves off the Coast of Kanagawa

1 View through Waves off the Coast of Kanagawa

2 Morning after Snow in Koishikawa

3 Ejiri in Suruga

4 Sekiya Village on the Sumida River

5 View from Senju in Musashi Province

6 Hodogaya on the Tōkaidō

7 Lake Suwa in Shinano

8 Cushion Pine at Aoyama

9 At Mishima Pass in Kai

10 Ushibori in Hitachi

11 Tama River in Musashi

12 Sunset across the Ryōgoku Bridge from Sumida

13 Sea Lane off Kazusa

14 Off Tago Beach in Ejiri on the Tokaido

15 Tsukada-jima in Musashi Province

16 Bay of Noboto

17 Fujimigahara in Owari

18 Yoshida on the Tōkaidō Highway

19 Sazai Hall, Temple of the 500 Arhats

20 Watermill at Onden

21 In the Mountains of Tōtōmi

22 Tatekawa in Honjo

23 Hongan-ji Temple at Asakusa

24 Mitsui Shop at Suruga-chō in Edo

25 Under the Mannen Bridge in Fukagawa

26 Nihonbashi

27 Crossing the Ōi River at Kanaya

28 Shichiri Beach in Sagami

29 New Fields at Ōno Shinden

30 Hills at Gotenyama above Shinagawa

31 The Lake at Hakone in Sagami

32 Misaka in Kai

33 Kajikazawa in Kai Province

34 Nakahara in Sagami

35 The Inume Pass in Kai Province

36 Shimo Meguro

37 Tea Fields at Katakura in Suruga

38 Sōshū Enoshima in Sagami

39 Surugadai in Edo

40 Senju in Musashi Province

41 The Fields of Umezawa in Sagami

42 A Fine, Breezy Day

43 Storm Below the Summit

44 Dawn at Isawa in Kai Province

45 The Other Side of Mt. Fuji, from Minobu River

46 Climbing Mt. Fuji

About the BookViewing Hokusai Viewing Mount FujiISBN-10: 0-9719954-7-8 ISBN-13: 978-0-9719954-7-576 pages, full colorThis series and the accompanying book serve as a meditation on Hokusai, taking apart the prints in the series, 36 Views of Mount Fuji, zooming in digitally, assembling a 21st century interpretation of his practice, as he celebrates the natural landscape of a nation coming up with a new idea of itself.
Each image starts with one of Hokusai’s views, disassembles it, constructs a new picture out of the pieces, as a visual critique, and adds floating text chunks—brief observations, snippets of poetry, stray thoughts.
Thumbnails of the originals let you compare the before-and-after, gauging Hokusai’s wood-block print against the pixelated, sliced, and diced collage, and the scattered writings that reflect on his drive for immortality, his exploitation of newly available pigments, his fondness for the interplay of text and image, and his love for the ordinary workers and travelers out in the country.
An Afterword discusses the path that the artist and poet, Jonathan Reeve Price, took to this homage to Hokusai. He sees parallels between Hokusai’s art practice and the functions available in software such as Photoshop, tactics that he has adapted to our century—zooming, revising, layering, making depth hard to read, indulging in bright blocks of color. Hokusai created more than a thousand images combining poetry and imagery, and Price points to those artworks as justification for his own mixing of language, line, and color in his responses.
In 19th century Japan, the number 36 might have reminded literate customers of the number of the immortals—the classical poets of Japan and China. But when Hokusai’s series of 36 prints sold well, he added another 10 pictures. So this book offers a total of 46 digital images, followed by a critical essay, and an FAQ about the author’s background. Holding this book in your hand may not make you live forever, but, who knows, it might bring you some of Hokusai’s spirit.

Viewing Hokusai Viewing Mount Fuji

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