Thirty–Six Views of the Bay Bridge
South Wind, Clear Sky,
Katsushika Hokusai
I
n the 1830’s Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai published
Thirty–Six Views of
Mount Fuji, a series of woodblock prints. Hokusai depicted the mountain
as both a dramatic subject and as the incidental backdrop to life around it. He broke
with tradition by showing ordinary people and locations as worthy subjects of art. Hokusai was
inspired by Dutch painting, and in turn his style
and subject matter influenced the French impressionists.
The Barges, Henri Rivière
Henri Rivière’s
Thirty–Six views of the Eiffel Tower, a series of woodblock prints
produced at the end of the 19th century, was a reinterpretation of Hokusai’s theme. Some
of Rivière’s views feature details of the Eiffel Tower’s construction, in others
the tower
fades into the life of the city around it. Rivière’s series was published in 1902
using chromolithography. Like woodblock printing which uses a carved block for each color,
chromolithography uses separate plates, resulting in a similarly limited palette.
Evening Hour at the Ferry Building,
Cardinell Vincent Co.
At the turn of the 20th century, images
of familiar scenes and landmarks became widely available in the form of postcards
printed with the “Photochrom” process which photographically transfered each color for an image
onto a printing plate.
These were colorized versions of black and white photographs. The colorizations and
the printing process gave these images a distinctive look. Photochrom is the bridge between
woodblock printing and modern color photograph reproduction.
East of Treasure Island,
David Garnick
Thirty–Six Views of the Bay Bridge features the tower of the eastern span of the San
Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge. The visual style of this series references the reduced
palette and romanticized landscapes of Hokusai, Rivière, and the Photochrom
postcards of the early 20th century. The
sweep of the span’s cables mimics the slopes of Mount Fuji, and the central tower echoes the
Eiffel Tower in its constructed verticality. The tower of the Bay Bridge is an iconic form,
in some places dominating the landscape, and in others barely discernible.
The title of each photograph is the location from which it was taken.
Article in Berkeleyside:
Berkeley photographer channels Hokusai for ‘36 views of the Bay Bridge’
All photographs in the series are available for purchase as signed limited edition prints.
Contact the artist at info@davidgarnick.com
