“research Wabi-sabi to understand its actual principle”…that’s a lifetime study of Japanese aesthetics. For an excellent overview of Japanese visual aesthetics (and really cool pictures) see if you can dig up a copy of Forms in Japan (Yuichiro Kojiro/Yukio Futagawa, transl. Kenneth Yasuda. 1965, East-West Center Press, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. Powell’s sometimes has it, probably in their rare book room.)

Traditional Japanese carpentry, a very precise craft with a rigorous love of square forms, and joints which meet at 90 degrees with all connecting parts carefully concealed, also made a point of including rough and natural forms: an entire treetrunk as beam or column, unfinished except for stripping bark, unfinished bamboo, rough-textured stucco.

Is this something of what you are getting at?

HmmmÉ it’s a more deliberate breaking than a combination of texture, though I do find that appealing. I confess I need more time to research Wabi-sabi to understand its actual principle.

But, hey, you just got your degree in architecture so maybe you can help me here. I was first introduced to this concept in a study of architecture, I think a particular building. I can’t remember which. My mind keeps going to the Taj Mahal, but I know that’s not right–the story here is the killing of the master builder so he couldn’t build anything more lovely.

David-

“This is picture of a beautiful flower. The end.”

Which may be why the picture doesn’t appeal. The End. As a cartoonist, as a storyteller you think in moments, captured pieces of progress.

Mmmm, that’s partly it, I think. But I am content not knowing exactly what or what part of the story the picture represents. For me, there has to be a story or something that inspires a story even if it is as abstract as a loose connection of emotional responses. Or, again an opinion on the subject matter.

My cheeky use of “the end” is actually me saying that I saw no story to begin with. Or after. Your average still life has no appeal for me, for example. They are usually (though not always) bereft of story or opinion. Just examples of technical skill or color spots on the wall. They have their uses I suppose, but actually don’t become Art with a capital “A”.

And it’s not that I can’t take pleasure from something simply pleasing to the eye, but I won’t necessarily accept it as Art.

Thanks, you two, for helping me ramble to more thoughts on this!

- Which may be why the picture doesn’t appeal. The End. As a cartoonist, as a storyteller you think in moments, captured pieces of progress. You might have an end in mind for the story but for most storytellers “the end” doesn’t mean that nothing ever happened to the characters after that point, it just means that that’s where you stopped telling the story.

The art that most appeals to me is the stuff that seems to be part of a story. Something happened before. Something will happen after. The art that is nothing but Art leaves no impression on me.

Is this something of what you are getting at?

Pedantic notes: “wabi” is elegant rustic simplicity, an aesthetic which reached its height in the famous Soan teahouses. “Sabi” is the beauty that comes with aging, like a patina.

Japan is as earthquake-prone as the most earthquake-prone parts of California, and unframed stone structures do not stand long there. Old Japan was a world, mostly, of wood and paper. Ideas of perfection in Japan have more to do with perfect execution of patterns (kata).

And any further ponderings and insights are more than welcomed–I’m still feeling out the extant of this.