Humor may be the hardest genre to translate, but laughter speaks any language. Poet and literary translator Peter MacMillan's recent foray into visual art, "Thirty-Six New Views of Mount Fuji," delights with wry whimsicality, employing mixed-media print-making to reveal a multicultural drollery.
It's exactly the witty disparity you'd expect from a philosopher with a mischievous sense of play, a dedicated classics scholar from Ireland who has made Japan his home.
MacMillan approaches his many artistic endeavors with irrepressible energy. He started the year with an exhibition both inside and outside the iconic Sony Building in Tokyo's upscale Ginza district. Outside on the Sony Wall, its entire facade measuring 37.6 by 6 meters, he created a festive visual marvel, "The sun, the moon, and Fuji," as part of Sony Corp.'s annual charity event. Inside, he displayed the "Thirty-Six New Views," created under the artist's name Seisai (meaning, artist from the West or an artist with a studio in the west) a pun of homage to Katsushika Hokusai, the Edo Period ukiyo-e master whose original "Fugaku Sanjuroku-kei" ("Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji") series inspired MacMillan's creations.
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