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Wabi-sabi

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Re: Wabi-sabi

#21

Post by askar_yu »

britta wrote: post #4
dccoolgai wrote: post #2

I love how the East codifies aesthetics like this. My favorite is shibui which loosely translated (i'm told) means that every single detail of the object is simultaneously both useful and beautiful.

Sort of weird to lump a whole region together. I'd agree though that traditional Japanese aesthetics include a lot of great descriptive terms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics

Saw your first sentence coming. Just getting past read the generalization "East" in the parent comment and thinking "Oh, somebody is gonna finger point and get up in arms about it!", then I see your comment :)

Re: Wabi-sabi

#23

Post by Pamar »

jmduke wrote: post #16

See also, an Italian analogue: sprezzatura. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura

I am Italian, I have at least a vague idea of what Wabi Sabi is (I study ShoDo with a Japanese teacher), and you are wrong: the two terms are not even close, sorry.

Re: Wabi-sabi

#24

Post by Theodores »

swatkat wrote: post #15

This reminds me of BMW's asymmetric design concept car X-Coupe [0]. I remember reading something like "a little bit of asymmetry is more beautiful than perfect symmetry" in an auto mag back in 2001. [0] http://www.netcarshow.com/bmw/2001-x_coupe_concept/

er... no!

Said car is so not wabi-sabi on so many levels it is hard to begin. It has no character, as in the character that an object develops over time. It is not natural or made from materials that are on their way back to nature. Sure it is asymmetrical but all cars are - the exhaust pipe, the petrol cap and the steering wheel.

If you want an automotive analogy, I would look a lot further back, to those cars you find in Cuba, to that Fordson tractor abandoned in a field or a Soviet era truck somewhere in East Europe.

Re: Wabi-sabi

#25

Post by kvnwng »

jmduke wrote: post #16

See also, an Italian analogue: sprezzatura. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprezzatura

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent.

-Tadao Ando

It's another way I guess about looking at fashion and what you wear without care (or a little bit of care at least).

Re: Wabi-sabi

#26

Post by patio11 »

twelvechairs wrote: post #6

"Wabi sabi" is a not a commonly used (or known) term in contemporary Japan, although it has been popularised in western art circles to exemplify a Japanese art. A more used term in Japan (as far as I have been told - I am not Japanese myself) which has a related meaning is 'mono no aware' ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware ). [edit] to plug a book on Japanese culture (as it was, rather than as it is now) to…

Mild disagree on your first sentence: It has featured prominently in several TV profiles of local artists, including in self-aware commentary by artists about the aesthetic values they are aiming for. It's entirely possible that a Japanese person might not be familiar with it, in the same manner that baroque might be a baroque reference to many Americans, but my impression is that it is well within the realm of 常識. My wife (Japanese) was surprised when I asked her to confirm that.

I do agree that it gets thrown about as The Essential Guide To The Monolithic Japanese Art Tradition quite frequently on the other side of the Pacific, though. (Those are sarcasm caps.)

Re: Wabi-sabi

#27

Post by elemeno »

hboon wrote: post #11
wozniacki wrote: post #8

I just read this yesterday in the New Yorker piece about JD.[1] When he was a teen-ager, Dorsey told me, he read a book about tea ceremonies and was impressed by the Japanese precept of wabi-sabi, which holds that the greatest beauty comes from organization with a dash of disorder. “The monks rake up leaves, then they sprinkle a few leaves back,” he explained. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/10/21/131021fa_fa…

From the timestamp and the URL — Oct 21 — was it published too early?

It's not abnormal to see time stamps like that with print publications - they often publish to the web in advance of the print edition coming out, but it makes sense to use the print edition as the 'reference' edition when it comes to dating articles.

Re: Wabi-sabi

#28

Post by britta »

askar_yu wrote: post #21
britta wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of weird to lump a whole region together. I'd agree though that traditional Japanese aesthetics include a lot of great descriptive terms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics

Saw your first sentence coming. Just getting past read the generalization "East" in the parent comment and thinking "Oh, somebody is gonna finger point and get up in arms about it!", then I see your comment :)

Hm? Not up in arms, just politely noting an inaccuracy. It seemed unnecessary to pull out the Edward Said quotes.

Re: Wabi-sabi

#30

Post by zhemao »

ttflee wrote: post #13
derefr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is "pithy four-word idiom," in Chinese, a pithy four-word idiom?

Yes, if "四字成语" counts.

So it's not an idiom and the word "pithy" isn't in there, so it isn't quite as recursive as TLA.
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