Date

2016

Edition Size

36

Media

Letterpress

Binding

Hand-sewn, Stab

Format

Artist Book

Location

Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

$ 3,200.00

Unavailable


Mount Fuji rising above the clouds is the symbol of Japan and has provided a spiritual basis for the Japanese since ancient times. This 3.776m high, dormant volcano is world-renowned for its symmetry and serenity. Nooteboom describes the Fuji from different perspectives, expressing his admiration. The 36 images are inspired by the fading gradations resembling the sky in the woodblock prints of Hokusai’s 36 views of Mount Fuji.

The book comes in a box containing five kitchen sponges in the shape of Mount Fuji, standing for one of the countless goods representing the national treasure.

Hand-printed color gradations from linoleum on mitsumata paper, letterpress print using polymer plates in German and Dutch on bicchu-ganpi paper. NT-Pairu-cover with silkscreened title. Japanese box made of empress tree (Paulownia tomentosa) with silkscreened title.

1
Here, on the dormant, serrated sides,
the wooded, red-brown so snow-white slope, with fine traces of priests and poets,
radiant or obscure in the world that surrounds it drifts or sails above spinning mists a shape without weight,
a mountain of light.

2
Here, armored with walls of ice, seen
through a child‘s eye among lucid blossoms;
in the black pocket of night, in the mirroring water,
from the dancing deck of a ship, against windows of cars and trains,
it stands on the lookout among airstreams and clouds invisible, visible, roams past through the skies like a migrating bird
or settles on land like a state.

3
›Here,‹ the traveler can say a thousand times to that flowing dream scene, ›here,‹ paints the painter, drowning in his double landscape,
›here,‹ whispers the fisherman patient on his footbridge of bamboo, ›here,‹ ›here,‹ and they always seeing something else
and with high butterfly sounds of oo and ee
their lips form the name of the mountain that runs the house there appearing and disappearing like a sun or a moon.

4
There, in Yamanaka etched like a fire under water,
under the silken rains of Baiu, in the hive of the summer, weathered like a statue resting with its feet in the sea
it blows to the clouds and storms on the flute of its craters. There, with the highest eye on its tower
it is the first to see goraiko, the purple airhole of morning,
the departure of the journeying sun, the high swirl of the heavens. All Japan hangs from it, a dream-laden basket
which it lifts and carries through the air
out beyond the region of time.
(translated by Scott Rollins)

 

The book comes in a box containing five kitchen sponges in the shape of Mount Fuji, standing for one of the countless goods representing the national treasure.