Of japanese art

Traditional art fascinates me. I really like how every culture develops a solid system of shapes and colors and sounds and all elements that make that art really unique and spicy. Japanese art, for example, is the one that lately has been getting a lot of my attention.

In fact, there are a lot about Japan's mindset that I prize a lot, such as their ability to see meaning in everything. As Van Gogh himself said, "If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying Bismark's policy? No. He studies a single blade of grass.". But it's their principle of asthetics that quite truly quite rings with mine.

As I've read, asymmetry is a quality very dear to them. Hacho is their term for intentional uneveness.And Kabuki, the traditional form of theater in Japan, comes from the word kabuku, which describes a state "not standing straight up but leaning", used to describe actors living out of a normal way of life. Even in at-first symmetric structures, the asymmetry is found. It's the case of the Torii arches, as the higher beam is curiously bend. It feels "poetic" because asymmetry it's not only a matter of one side mirroring the other.

Seriously, why would they bother themselves bending it curvy like that?

But I see the true representation of accidentality in the writing of the kanjis, when most of the time there's no trying to hide the signs of the brush striking the paper. They hardly make effort trying to make the lines balanced, even, equal.

You feel powerless to argue against this.

 I can see this element in traditional japanese art still present in, say, modern art, like animes and games. In fact, I really enjoy something I call "broken lines", which is used mostly in, just guess, random aesthetics, like lightnings, the folding of clothes, cracks and crashes.

In the end, thanks to them I'm discovering my true taste for the flawed, erratic, uneven. They see beauty in the accidents, which I hope I can develop fully in my art. I enjoy tasting japanese aesthetics because they seem to get the grasp that the balance between order and chaos is that make designs interesting. Its appeal comes from representing the struggle between man and nature, symmetry against asymmetry.

And I'll get back to japanese art when I come back to talk about colors. Just wait.