“An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.” J.D.Salinger
(photo: TimeMagazine cover, 1961)
Archive for January, 2010
Farewell, Salinger
Sunday, January 31st, 2010Wabi-Sabi
Wednesday, January 20th, 2010
(Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, by Leonard Koren)
Wabi-sabi is the essence of Japan. The art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity of nature. It means accepting the life cycle – growth, decay and death. It is simple. It is slow and pure. It reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi are all the changes that appear on things with time and use – crack, crevices, rust, spots, frayed edges. Marks of time are are kind of quiet beauty – beauty that waits to be discovered.
It is a fragmentary glimpse: the branch representing the entire tree, shoji screens filtering the sun, the moon 90 percent obscured behind a cloud. It is a richly beauty that is striking but not obvious. For Japanese it is the difference between kirei – just pretty – and omoshiroi, the interestingness that kicks something into the realm of beautiful (Omoshiroi literally means “white faced”, but it’s meanings range from fascinating to fantastic).
D.T. Suzuki described wabi-sabi as “an active aesthetical apprectation of poverty”, with “poverty” having more romantic meaning like being satisfied with the little hut, a room of two tatami mats, like the log cabin of Thoreau. Wabibito means a person free at heart. Simple, unmaterialistic, humble by choice and in tune with nature.
Wabi stems form the root wa, which refers to harmony, peace, tranquility and balance. A common phrase used in conjunction with wabi is “the joy of the little monk in his wind-torn robe”:) A wabi person is free from greed, indolence and anger and understands the wisdom of rocks and grasshoppers. Sabi by itself means “the bloom of time”. It connotes natural progression-tarnish, hoariness, the extinguished gloss, the understanding that the beauty is fleeting. It is a gift of time, an aching poetry in things that carry their years with grace.
Lecture on nothing for the Year Twenty.Ten
Sunday, January 3rd, 20101950 now-famous “Lecture on Nothing” by John Cage exemplifies his outlook on art and music. Cage inspired artists such as Rauschenberg and Kelly, whom he made friends with in 1949, to approach their art without preconceived ideas and with great openness. Actually, it was probably mutual influence taking into consideration “White Paintings” by Rauschenberg (below) and 4’33” by Cage.
At the beginning of this lecture, Cage tells the listener that the lecture has no point and will go nowhere :) “I am here and there is nothing to say. If among you are those who wish to get somewhere, let them leave at any moment” (Cage Silence 109). He implores the audience to enjoy each and every moment of the lecture even though he admits that it is pointless. Asks why are we the Westerners forced to see value only in things seeming to have deep meaning or that have eventual goals or aims? “Our poetry now is the realization that we possess nothing. Anything therefore is a delight (since we do not possess it) and thus need not fear its loss” (Silence 110). Openness to new things, pure openness, I just love his way of thinking and feeling.
But it is a below excerpt I wanted to dedicate to the New Year Twenty.Ten:
“I begin to hear the old sounds – the one that had thought worn out, worn out by intellectualization – I begin to hear the old sounds as though they are not worn out. Obviously, they are not worn out. They are just as audible as the new sounds. Thinking had worn them out. And if one stops thinking about them, suddenly they are fresh and new.”
Well, I wish you all the ability to see old things in fresh perspective, not worn out.
