KOREN, LEONARD - Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers

Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 1994. Paperback. 1880656124; Trade Paperback. Very minor edge wear on the clean, sound binding. Flyleaf's upper fore corner is creased. Contents are almost like new. ; 8-1/2" Tall, 95pp. Paper covers are reinforced by self-flaps. ART. "I first learned of wabi-sabi during my youthful spiritual quest in the late 1960s. At that time, the traditiional culture of Japan beckkoned with profound 'answers' to life's toughest questions. Wabi-sabi seemed to me a nature-based aesthetic paradigm that restored a measure of sanity and proportion to the art of living. Wabi-sabi resolved my artistic dilemma about how to create beautiful things without getting caught up in the dispiriting materialism that usually surrounds such creative acts . Wabi-sabi - deep, mullti-dimensiional, elusive - appeared the perfect antidote to the pervasively slick, saccharine, corporate style of beauty that I felt was desensitizng American society.. The term 'wabi-sabi' makes a perfunctory appearance in practically every book and magazine article that discusses the tea ceremony or other arcane things Japanese.. Perhaps now is an auspicious cultural moment to get beyond the standard definitiions, to dive a little more deeply into the murky depths. In this spirit I have searched for the various pieces of wabi-sabi - tarnished, fragmented, and in disrepair though they may be - and have attempted to put them together into a meaningful system.. Reading between the lines, matching intention to actuality, I have attempted to grasp the totality, the holism of wabi-sabi, and make some sense of it. " 27 pages of full-page b/w photos.. Very Good- .