Peter MacMillan

Peter MacMillan is a print artist, poet, translator and academic. His Thirty-Six New Views of Mount Fuji fine art prints take their starting point from Katsushika Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, a series of color woodblock prints that depict Mount Fuji from thirty-six different perspectives. The prints draw upon Hokusai’s motifs and those of other Western and Japanese artists and juxtapose an idealized historical view of Mount Fuji and Japanese culture with the actual reality of contemporary society. The images constitute a social critique while simultaneously posing a series of questions related to sustainability in our society.
By comparing the often humorous and witty disparities between the original and the recomposed images, Seisai (MacMillan’s artistic name) invites viewers to examine the differences between traditional and contemporary Japanese culture. Edo-period Japan was actually a formidable consumer society, but it was also based on an impressive model of sustainability. By contrast, contemporary consumer society cares too little for sustainability, and its reckless use of the earth’s resources has been destroying our environment. The images are not just about Japan but rather the world in general.