11Story

22 January 2010

Hokusai

 

Gaifu kaisei (South Wind, Clear Sky [‘Red Fuji’]), from Thirty-six views of Mt. Fuji, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Japan, circa 1830 Photograph. Original woodblock print on paper. 26.1 x 38.2 cm © Trustees of the British Museum 1906, 1220, 0.525

A representation can be a portrait of almost anything to the extent that it isolates, holds constant, or magnifies its subject to explore some aspect of its varied appearance or, according to some conventions, its mood or character.   In Japan, Mt. Fuji has not only long been a popular subject for artists but is popularly related in a kinship idiom to other, subsidiary volcanoes across the country. Some published descriptions of Hokusai’s celebrated picture shown here echo this animism by referring, for example, to the clouds above the summit parting to create a ‘halo’ or its slopes ‘veined’ by remnants of snow. Mt. Fuji is not an inanimate object.

 
 

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