wabi-sabi
December 14th 2006 20:52
My lovely mother gave me this book, Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, by Leonard Koren. Its opening lines are:
Wabi-Sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete
It is a beauty of things modest and humble
It is a beauty of things unconventional
Koren explains wabi-sabi as a traditional Japanese beauty with roots in the Japanese tea ceremony and simplicity at its core. It is a rustic aesthetic, comfortable with ambiguity and contradiction – a worldview where everything is seen as either devolving toward, or evolving from, nothingness. New things emerge from nothingness and go back to nothingness: “if we didn’t know differently we might mistake the newborn baby boy – small, wrinkled, bent, a little grotesque looking – for the very old man on the brink of death.”
Beauty is dynamic and contextual, and can be coaxed out of ugliness. Things wabi-sabi record natural processes and the vulnerability of material things to weathering and human contact. They are indifferent to conventionality and good-taste. They are unpretentious and unassuming, they do not demand attention, and coexist with their environments They have a vague, blurry, attenuated beauty – as they approach nothingness or come out of it, colours are faded, edges blurred and textures softened.
All things are impermanent and all things are imperfect. When looked at close enough, the flaws in anything are evident and as things approach their primordial state they become
even more irregular. Wabi-Sabi has little to do with the western ideal of great beauty as an enduring spectacle or monument. It is about the minor and the hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral, the subtle and evanescent that are invisible to vulgar eyes. The notion of completion has no basis in wabi-sabi because all things are either evolving or devolving: “is the plant complete when it flowers? When it goes to seed? When seeds sprout? When everything turns into compost?”
The book is nicely published with some thoughtful images and makes for a quick, compelling read. Koren resides in the US and Japan. He studied architecture and photography and in the 1970s created the avant-garde art magazine WET. He is the author of a number of books covering topics such as Japanese pop culture; Japanese design and aesthetics; Japanese fashion; meditation; gardening, and the Japanese bath.
Wabi-Sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete
It is a beauty of things modest and humble
It is a beauty of things unconventional
Beauty is dynamic and contextual, and can be coaxed out of ugliness. Things wabi-sabi record natural processes and the vulnerability of material things to weathering and human contact. They are indifferent to conventionality and good-taste. They are unpretentious and unassuming, they do not demand attention, and coexist with their environments They have a vague, blurry, attenuated beauty – as they approach nothingness or come out of it, colours are faded, edges blurred and textures softened.
All things are impermanent and all things are imperfect. When looked at close enough, the flaws in anything are evident and as things approach their primordial state they become
Black Bamboo, by Jeffrey Dale
The book is nicely published with some thoughtful images and makes for a quick, compelling read. Koren resides in the US and Japan. He studied architecture and photography and in the 1970s created the avant-garde art magazine WET. He is the author of a number of books covering topics such as Japanese pop culture; Japanese design and aesthetics; Japanese fashion; meditation; gardening, and the Japanese bath.
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Comment by Adrian
Philosophy Blog
I personally much prefer a Japanese garden to an English one. The former at least pretends to be in touch with nature. The latter is the organic equivalent of concrete.
Comment by LaurenD
Fantastic lead. Thank you. I'll look for this. It's my kind of book and I know a few others who would enjoy... in fact, I think you just bailed me out of an Xmas shopping dilemma.
LaurenD
Comment by Always Eighteen
Always Eighteen
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
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Esoteric Bookshop
Merry Christmas Ag,
Lilla...
Comment by ag
Eat French Bread
Adrian - nice observation. The rigidity of the English aesthetic certainly has less character and appeal for me too.
ag