View Of The Mountains From The Nihon Alps Salada Road

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.”