Comments on: Nature, culture, creation and the Japanase garden

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:34:43 +0000

Chinese painters and Chinese garden designers were concerned with the ‘essence’ of a scene and were no more inclined to outdoor painting, except as aides memoires, than pre-Romantic European painters. A Chinese landscape painter asked ‘Until I knew the shape of the Hua mountain [Huashan], how could I paint a picture of it? But even after I had visited it and drawn it from nature the “idea” was still immature’. Like Japanese garden designers, the Chinese were concerned with the Nature of nature – not with nature itself. Try a Flickr search on Huashan: http://www.flickr.com/search/?ss=2&w=all&q=huashan+mount&m=text ]

By: christine

christine — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:13:26 +0000

Many important trends in modern art including

1. the elevation of contemporary subjects
2. the rejection of illusionism
3. the emphasis on the act of painting

are said to have emerged with the landscape paintings of the 1800-1900s.

It is interesting how with the introduction of plein air landscape painting in the Western tradition, rather than studio painting, the artists’ focus changed from one where “art was no longer the bearer of ideas” but instead sought to represent ‘truth’. [http://www.artsmia.org/mirror-of-nature/open-air.cfm?lng=0]

Until the French painters introduced plein air painting in the 1830’s landscape painting languished near the bottom of the heirarchy of genres.

The French Impressionists it is said, “abandoned traditional techniques of perspective, chiaroscuro, and modeling in order to record their experiences as directly as possible. Even their most heavily worked paintings retain the appearance of spontaneity.” http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/lafr/hd_lafr.htm%5D

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 06:47:11 +0000

Thank you for a great quotation from Chang Ch’ao. I tried to find out more about him and found more quotations in: Lin Yutang – The Importance of Living By Lin Yutang.

By: christine

christine — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:43:31 +0000

The Buddhist concept that human beings are part of their environment is known as Fuudosei. This is a speech given by the Dalai Lama in 1992 on ‘The Buddhist Concept of Nature’. [http://www.dalailama.com/page.88.htm]

It is said that up to and within the Meiji Era, the Japanese considered Western art as inferior. This assessment was because based on Western art’s reliance on single viewpoint perspective: it placed the observer outside the landscape.

“There are landscapes on earth,
Landscapes on paintings,
Landscapes in dreams
And there are landscapes in the mind.
The beauty of landscapes on earth
Lies in the depth and irregularity of contour.
The beauty of painted landscapes
Lies in the freedom and richness of the brush and the ink.
The beauty of dreamed landscapes
Lies in their strangely changing views.
And the beauty of landscapes in the mind
Lies in that everything is in its place.”
Chang Ch’ao

There seems to be a post post modern re-evaluation of this cosmic ontological relationship occurring (partly) because of the demands of sustainability.
[http://www.design.upenn.edu/arch/news/Human_Settlements/ont.html]

By: Tom Turner

Tom Turner — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 07:32:05 +0000

The Nature (with a capital ‘N’) which inspired Japanese garden design before the Meiji Era, was understood through Shinto, Taoism and Buddhism. It was not the same as the nature (with a lower case ‘n’) which is interpreted by modern science. Similarly, the Art to which David and Michiki Young refer is Religious Art. It is not Modern Art in any of its ‘-isms’. One needs to beware of the tendency of Japanese garden historians to ‘boast’ that their gardens respected nature while western gardens sought to dominate nature. The reason for the requirement to be wary is that ‘nature’ has so very many different meanings.

The name Sanzenin is interesting. See http://hcbss.stanford.edu/research/projects/sztp/translations/shobogenzo/translations/zazengi/pdf/Zazengi%20notes.pdf “Studying Zen is zazen” (sanzen wa zazen nari): The term sanzen refers to training in the Zen form of Buddhism. The common term zazen (“seated dhyåna” or “seated meditation”), though sometimes particularly associated with the Zen tradition, is widely used in East Asian Buddhist texts for the practice of meditation; it has no exact equivalent in the Sanskrit.“A quiet place” (jøsho ): In traditional meditation literature, the term is defined as a mountain fastness, an isolated forest retreat or a pure monastery.