Wabi-Sabi

An artist whose work I admire introduced me to the concept of Wabi-Sabi. A lot of her work is around Wabi-Sabi principles, and she lent me a book by Leonard Koren: Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.

What I needed really was Wabi-Sabi for Practical Yorkshiremen with Aspergers, but Leonard hasn't got round to that yet, so that book will have to do.

Basically, and clearly I am no expert, Wabi-Sabi is about the beauty found in impermanence, imperfection and incompleteness. In practice it is about rough edges, loose ends, intriguing gaps, and small Islamic errors, maybe the errors of nature.

Leonard Koren tells me it is loosely aligned with Zen Buddhism, but as far as I can see, it is much more to do with entropy and science around us.

Interestingly, one my friend's clients needs a plinth for a sculpture, and I am about to make it. What I do is never art, of course, but even at this level small imperfections are not to be welcomed. No good having the plinth wonky or with a chunk out of the bottom. Because it is to showcase a sculpture on the top, the plinth must have a sort of seamless invisibility. If anyone notices the plinth, it will have failed. The plinth should not be the centre of even fleeting attention. It is the lift-attendant of the art world.

I am trying to think of how Wabi-Sabi might influence my plinth, and am in danger of getting splinters through scratching my head.

Wabi-Sabi feels to me to have much in common with Dadaism, with found art, and I love the idea that there should be nothing there which is not necessary to the structure of an object. This shouts at me that it is the un-ornamented structure itself which is inherently beautiful.

Wabi-Sabi is no more than Occam's razor slashing at artistic endeavour. I love the idea that the best solution to a problem is often the most elegant, the most beautiful, the least baroque. It works for maths, it works for problem-solving generally. Why shouldn't it work for art, too ?

I have to admit that Japanese culture feels psychologically alien to me, and I am much more a sucker for personal development and self-realisation than for taking my place in an honorific hierarchy. But Wabi-Sabi does seem to chime with Thoreau's love of nature, his deeply unsentimental attachment to growth, blooming and decay.

Maybe the spare beauty of invisibility is a good thing. Maybe that's the lean goal for the plinth.

Watch this space. (Not that you will see anything in it.)