Yanagi Sōetsu
What is Pattern?
Handicrafts and Sesshu
Okinawa's Bashofu
A Painted Karatsu as Food for Thought
Recently there is a tendency to pursue distortion in art, but in the case of this jar, natural deformation has raised distortion to the level of spontaneous beauty.
Woodblock Prints
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuIt seems to me that many printmakers are suffering under a delusion. Looking at current trends, it appears that recent prints are simply copying fine art and painting. Some printmakers are working in the nanga style of painting. Others are attempting to reproduce the effects of oil. Some cleverly contrived prints are often difficult to distinguish from paintings done with a brush. The question arises: Why are these printmakers working in the medium of woodblock printing at all?
For prints to follow in the footsteps of painting has very little meaning. The art of the brush and palette should be left to the brush and palette.
Seeing and Knowing
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuThe results of intuition can be studied by the intellect, but the intellect cannot give birth to intuition.
The Japanese Perspective
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuGenerally 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.
The Beauty of Kasuri
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuThe Characteristics of Kogin
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuThe Beauty of Miscellaneous Things
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuWashi
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi SōetsuHandmade washi (traditional Japanese paper) is replete with appeal. Looking at it, touching it, fills me with an indescribable sense of satisfaction. The more beautiful it is, however, the more difficult it is to put to use. Only a master of calligraphy could possibly add to its beauty; it is exquisite just as it is. This is wonderfully strange, for it is merely a simple material. Yet plain and undecorated as it is, it is alive with nuanced beauty. Good washi makes possible our most ambitious creative dreams.
What is Folk Craft?
An Essay from The Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi Sōetsu
On Motivation
I’ve had this (semi-vague) idea that I want to write about what keeps us excited to work on Are.na, on the occasion of its 10th (yes 10th) birthday. While writing generally is a tricky process for me, this subject motivation is even trickier.
In turning this subject around in my mind, and thinking about all the people and things that have been influential, I have some idea about what keeps us going.
Nodal points
I started thinking about all the other important “nodal points” (I don’t know what else to call this) of people, places, books, albums, websites, etc. that all played a part in shaping who I am as a person and what I think is important. These points are a combination of seeking things out myself and getting a recommendation that felt like it was actually for me. A mixture of both passive and active knowledge acquisition.
ultimately, it's the totality of those “nodal points” that indicate one’s own unique perspective. It doesn’t matter if you specifically sought out the nodal point or not, it’s the recognition that counts. When you encounter a piece of life-changing information (no matter how large the change part is), you are simultaneously discovering and creating “yourself,” becoming incrementally more complete. Your perspective (where your gaze is directed) is made up of a meandering line through these points. Learning (or maybe some precursor to learning) is a lot about developing the intuition to recognize when something you find in the world is going to be a nodal point for you.
Infinite varieties of contexts
Over the course of 10 years of using Are.na, I have fully adopted the view that any piece of information can be important to a person given the right context. And on Are.na, pieces of information can be arranged in infinite varieties of contexts – their respective meaning shifts as the proximate information shifts. In other words, the more connections a block has, the more opportunities it has to be a nodal point.
A lifelong project
One question that is still hard to answer after 10 years of working on Are.na is “what is the long term vision?” This is difficult for a few reasons.
One reason is that we have to calibrate our definition of long term with the person who is asking the question. Are.na is a lifelong project. Our ideal outcome as a company is not becoming the next Facebook (god forbid), it’s becoming the next Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, a hot spring hotel in Japan, and one of the world’s oldest businesses (founded in 705 AD).
Growing in the correct way
It often feels like Are.na itself has its own needs and desires—that Are.na has its own personal intuition. And that we (you and I) are figuring out what it wants to be together. We (the organization that works on Are.na) have a very defined sense of how things should be done and why building Are.na is important, but we try not to be overly dogmatic about what exactly it should evolve into.
…We’ve long had the sense that it’s possible to cultivate an experience on the Internet that is more calm, thoughtful, and introspective. And we’ve long had the view that this is possible not from a technology-oriented approach, but from an approach that is more soft, more personal, and more intuitive.
…If we are the blade, what is the shield? I think it’s speed: The dominant model for online platforms (especially social platforms) is speed and scale at all costs. But to us, growing Are.na in the correct way is more important than growing it quickly.