On Halloween we watched a lecture different from ones we've seen before - this one was about an artistic idea rather than the journey of an artist/person otherwise involved in art. Adams talked about what made up Japanese aesthetics (including three important aspects: wabi, sabi, and yugen) and how the West reacted to it. She also discussed how the West influenced Japan (making Japan want to "modernize" itself) and the differences between traditional Japanese and modern Japanese culture and aspects. Prominently featured in this analysis was a novelist called Tanizaki, who lived during the Japanese transition from traditional to modern, and his opinions on said transition.
I was fascinated and somewhat horrified at how excitedly Japan seemed to leap into a modern era, and it made me wonder how much direct influence the West had over that process. However, while I do not feel that traditional Japanese culture should be entirely thrown away, I do believe that modern conveniences such as electricity changed Japan for the better and should not have been bemoaned so much by Tanizaki. On that note, he seemed strangely attached to the texture of his teapots and the wood of his toilets (that last one is just all kinds of bad ideas...and smells), as well as candles (as opposed to electricity). I can understand his being upset that Japan is so willing to change to fit the West (I don't like their willingness to throw away much of their culture and tradition as the price to that change). With all that being said, I have to wonder if he ever got used to electricity replacing candles and non-absorbent substances for toilet seats replacing wood, and I hope Japan re-adopted some of their older traditions while he was still alive, if for no other purpose than to keep their pre-mid-19th-century culture alive. I very much liked the tradition that an imperfect object was better than a perfect object. It seems to show the object's journey as a whole rather than the finished product at the very end. (This is kind of what our recent figure drawings had, where a viewer could conceivably see the searching lines from the very beginning in the final product.) I'm not sure how I would use this in my art, but one day I would like to.
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AuthorMolly Goodman Archives
May 2019
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