Wabi- Sabi by Leonard Koren

Leonard Koren in his book Wabi- Sabi For Artists, Designers, Poets & Architects analyzes the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi. It's a small book filled with illustrations that accompany the aesthetic of this Japanese term. On the back cover, the author is described as an architect who ''never built anything- expect an eccentric Japanese tea- house- because he found large, permanent objects too philosophically vexing to design." The purpose of the book is to illustrate as clear as possible, the meaning of wabi-sabi which evades the philosophy of English language.

Going back to its historical roots, wabi-sabi originally derived from the philosophical ideas of Taoism and Chinese Zen Buddhism. As the writer states, wabi-sabi represented , ''the atmosphere of desolation and melancholy and the expression of minimalism in 9th and 10th century Chinese poetry and monochromatic ink painting.'' 'Over the years, it suffused into the practice of tea ceremony whence, they coalesced into each other. Tea ceremony in itself was a highly regarded social event where the practitioners had to execute a supreme infusion of "social skills, architecture, garden design, flower arranging, painting, food preparation, and performance". It was a means of showing off one's power and wealth. The first wabi-sabi tea master was Murata Juko (1423-1502) and he advocated for the use of both perfected Chinese tea utensils and rustic-looking Japanese ones in the tea ceremony. Following Juko, Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591) was the one who" unequivocally placed crude, anonymous, indigenous Japanese and Korean folkcraft- things wabi-sabi- on the same artistic level, or even higher than slick, perfect, Chinese treasures." With Rikyu the Japanese tea ceremony aesthetic obtained its essential philosophy.

The definitions of both wabi and sabi have been altered throughout the centuries. Originally, wabi connoted "the misery of living alone in nature, away from society", whilst sabi implied something "chill, lean or withered". However, by the 14th century wabi sabi came to portray the "appreciation of the minor details of every day life and insights into the beauty of the inconspicuous and overlooked aspects of nature" Having said this, wabi-sabi is a word view of its own. It encapsulates the various facets of human nature: spirituality, mentality, morality, materiality and metaphysics. Some of its values are included below:

1. All things are impermanent - "all comes to nothing in the end."

2. All things are imperfect - "when we look really closely at things we see the flaws".

3. All things are incomplete - "all things are in a constant, never- ending state of becoming or dissolving".

4. Greatness exists in the inconspicuous and overlooked details - "the minor and the hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral".

5. Acceptance of natural process -"all existence shares the same fate".

At its core wabi- sabi could be paralleled as an ode to the transient, imperfect, rusty elements of nature and humanity. It is a humble acceptance of the uncontrollable forces of life and the beauty of the broken within and without ourselves.

*Paintings by Shoda Koho.

#books