You are invited to an opening at the The Workroom featuring Cosmic Order Ceramics and local artists. Thursday, December 1st | 4 - 7 pm. 8 & 11 Locust Avenue, Mill Valley.
The inspiration for this series is based on an essay named The Japanese Perspective, written by Soetsu Yanagi in 1957, included in The Beauty of Everyday Things
So what does Japan have to offer the world from its corner of Asia? There are many aspects to this question, but in my opinion the most significant offering we can make is the Japanese aesthetic, its eye for beauty backed by a long history of development. This ability to see through to the underlying beauty of things should receive much more attention. Generally speaking, the Western perception of art has its roots in Greece. For a long time its goal was perfection, which is particularly noticeable in Greek sculpture. This was in keeping with Western scientific thinking; there are no painters like Andrea Mantegna in the East. I am tempted to call such art 'the art of even numbers'. In contrast to this, what the Japanese eye sought was the beauty of imperfection, which I would call 'the art of odd numbers'. No other country has pursued the art of imperfection as eagerly as Japan. I once read a discourse on art by Wassily Kandinsky in which he took a highly favourable interest in the Japanese word e - soragoto (' art [ picture ] is fantasy '). The word refers to the quest for truth that goes beyond truth; it refers to the art of imperfection, the art of odd numbers.
