DAVID HOCKNEY (bn. 1937)
Fujiyama / 富士山 (3, 776 m -12,389 ft)
Japan
Fujiyama / 富士山 (3, 776 m -12,389 ft)
Japan
In Mount Fuji and Flowers, 1972, acrylic on canvas, 152.4 x 121.9 cm T
The MET museum (not on view)
About this painting
"After his breakup with Peter Schlesinger in the summer of 1971, Hockney traveled to Japan with his friend Mark Lancaster. Made in London after his return and assuming multiple painterly manners, this work references the delicate, dripping washes of color-field painting in the treatment of Mount Fuji, while the white jonquils in the foreground are rendered in a hard-edged style. The image itself is also a composite: Hockney worked from a postcard of Mount Fuji and a flower-arrangement manual, rather than direct observation— perhaps an ironic response to the commercial culture he found in Japan, which contradicted his expectations of an unspoiled and bucolic landscape."
MET Museum notice
About the mountain
Mount Fuji (3, 776 m -12,389 ft) is located on Honshu Island and is the highest mountain peak in Japan at 3,776.24 m (12,389 ft). Several names are attributed to it: "Fuji-san", "Fujiyama" or, redundantly, "Mt. Fujiyama". Usually Japanese speakers refer to the mountain as "Fuji-san". The other Japanese names for Mount Fuji, have become obsolete or poetic like: Fuji-no-Yama (ふじの山 - The Mountain of Fuji), Fuji-no-Takane (ふじの高嶺- The High Peak of Fuji), Fuyō-hō (芙蓉峰 - The Lotus Peak), and Fugaku (富岳／富嶽), created by combining the first character of 富士, Fuji, and 岳, mountain.
More about Mount Fuji
The painter
David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draughtsman,
printmaker, stage designer and photographer. An important contributor to
the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most
influential British artists of the 20th century.
At the Royal College of Art, Hockney featured in the exhibition Young Contemporaries—alongside
Peter Blake—that announced the arrival of British Pop art. He was
associated with the movement, but his early works display expressionist
elements, similar to some works by Francis Bacon. When the RCA said it
would not let him graduate in 1962, Hockney drew the sketch The Diploma
in protest. He had refused to write an essay required for the final
examination, saying he should be assessed solely on his artworks.
Recognising his talent and growing reputation, the RCA changed its
regulations and awarded the diploma. After leaving the RCA, he taught at
Maidstone College of Art for a short time. A visit to California,
where he subsequently lived for many years, inspired him to make a
series of paintings of swimming pools in the comparatively new acrylic
medium rendered in a highly realistic style using vibrant colours. The
artist moved to Los Angeles in 1964, returned to London in 1968, and
from 1973 to 1975 lived in Paris.
Hockney has a home and studio in Kensington, London and two residences
in California, where he has lived on and off for over 30 years: one in
Nichols Canyon, Los Angeles, and an office and archives on Santa Monica
Boulevard in West Hollywood, California.
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2020 - Wandering Vertexes...
by Francis Rousseau