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few moments explaining why i ve been busy at work for more than two years researching how to view suiseki stones it has been a passion that has taken a great deal of my free time i have read hundreds of papers research articles and books on aesthetic with a special focus on japanese aesthetic through this process a discovery was made for me at least that there is no true universal definition of aesthetic between cultures and often even between similar groups of people most aesthetics focus on the concept of beauty however even in this definition beauty can be defined in so many ways what i have discovered is that most aestheticians link beauty with truth rising early to watch the sun break brilliantly across distant mountain tops standing in the late afternoon on the rocky shores of the ocean seeing and hearing the waves break below or watching the inherent beauty in a small child asleep and at peace there is not only beauty but real truth in these scenes at some future point it is my hope that all of this research will be gathered and focused into a book that will help its readers to begin to define their own aesthetic regardless of the artistic outlet be it stones painting or something returning to the story of gillian one can only imagine the loss to the world had the doctor not intervened to declare there was nothing wrong with gillian she is just a dancer how many artist dancers writers photographers comedians have been lost to the world simply because they were viewed as different and tragically so treated as if they were broken let s juxtapose for a moment ourselves into the world of suiseki for a moment how often have we stood before a beautiful stone asking someone what they see and before they can even respond we admonish them in what we see in it if you take note you might see a small frown appear on the other person s face how often do we see people courageously describe what they see in the stone for the expert to immediately bark at them that what they are seeing is wrong that it is not a but their viewpoint b how many new participants in our art form have we driven away because we haven t allowed them to participate and for them to have an opportunity to express what they see it reminds me of when masahiko kimura created this now famous bonsai upon its initial release this was frowned upon by the bonsai world it wasn t bonsai it didn t follow the accepted practices of the time surely there were other forest plantings but they were in a pot or slab that was horizontal to the ground this design broke the conventional rules over time it became recognized as a master work of design expressive beautiful and now often mimicked by others anytime there is a major change in an art style such as realism to impressionism the holders of the standard fight to maintain that hold and thus feel inclined to reject the new i caution each of us to allow others to see what they see attempt to understand what they are expressing through either their display or their interpretations as relayed in the earlier story but gillian wasn t a problem child she didn t need to go away to a special school she just needed to be who she really was in the same way who knows the very person who seems to be breaking the rules today may very well be creating a new form of art tomorrow su shi 蘇軾 chinese poet 11 tuesday dec 2018 posted by sam edge in art auction 4 comments tags chinese scroll su shi introduction su sh i simplified chinese 苏轼 traditional chinese 蘇軾 8 january 1037 24 august 1101 courtesy name zizhan chinese 子瞻 art name dongpo was a chinese writer poet painter calligrapher pharmacologist gastronome and a statesman of the song dynasty portrait of su dongpo by zhao mengfu su shi was born into a literary family in 1037 at the age of 19 he passed the highest level civil service examinations with flying colors and was marked out as a rising star within the world of officialdom his lucid eloquent essays greatly impressed emperor renzong 1010 1063 and by the time the young emperor shenzong 1048 1085 ascended to the throne in 1067 su shi was a respected figure among scholar officials at court during the song dynasty a period of unsurpassed refinement in the arts in china su shi had a brilliant and staggeringly varied career explains art critic alastair sooke a poet politician writer calligrapher painter and aesthetic theorist su shi was the pre eminent scholar of the song dynasty he was so prolific in so many different fields that it is very tempting to think of him as a proto renaissance man says sooke even though he was born four centuries before leonardo su shi was exiled to provincial huangzhou where he lived in relative poverty he built a farm in the foothills of what became known as the eastern slope dongpo and began to call himself master of the eastern slope su dongpo for all the hardships he experienced in exile it was during this period that he produced some of his most well known verses one of 12 leaves from the album stories of su dongpo by zou yigui 1686 1772 showing su shi when he was 66 years old sold for hk 437 500 on 28 may 2012 at christie s in hong kong today su shi is recognized as one of the eight great prose masters of the tang and song and one of the four song masters of calligraphy his poems including at red cliff cherishing the past and prelude to the water melody have become embedded in chinese culture inspiring landscape paintings and poetic illustrations throughout the ming and qing dynasties his calligraphy has been copied studied and collected for centuries note the movie red cliff by director johnathan woo is in our top 10 movies of all time it is a two part four and one half hours film everything about this film is stellar from the story line casting music and production we cannot more highly recommend this film click here if you want to purchase a copy be sure to purchase the international version as the us version as seen on netflix is a cut down 2 hour version that ruins the film frankly su shi s ideas on what it was to create an image and the relationship of the image to the internal psychology of the painter were revolutionary and can be seen as a launchpad for painting as a non representational psychologically driven process it was su shi who first began to explore concepts of artistic practice as the outward expression of the artist s interior experience similarly revolutionary was su shi s approach to brushwork other contemporary painters pursued a representational style that involved great detail and strong delineation but su shi s brushwork is impressionistic and spare writing on the principles by which to judge the highest class of painting su shi once declared if one discusses painting in terms of formal likeness one is no different from a child for him there was painting in poetry and poetry in painting there is a saying in chinese art history that ink has five colors says zhou ink has all that you need to depict the external world and to express yourself and whatever your artistic impulses have to say wood and rock is a true embodiment of the artist s state of mind at the time which you can see so palpably in the painting note similarly english painter lawerence stephen lowry born in 1887 used only a five color pallet for his paintings his use of ivory black vermilion prussian blue yellow ochre and flake white su shi 1037 1101 wood and rock handscroll ink on paper painting 26 3 x 50 cm 10 x 19¾ in overall with mounting 27 2 x 543 cm wood and rock is inscribed with the poetry of su shi s friend mi fu 1051 1107 which was probably added at a later date like su shi mi fu was a celebrated poet calligrapher painter and statesman for su shi expressing affinity through the giving and exchanging of painting and verse in the form of calligraphy was a means of building networks of cultural capital the ink traces on this scroll offer insights into abstracted ideas of how su shi and mi fu thought and conceived of art but also illuminate how these exceptional men of the 11th century understood each other they are therefore tangible representations of the relationships between cultural giants of the distant past mi fu s verse on the scroll interprets his friend s painting of a withered tree as an intimate expression of oneself at an old age the pathos in mi fu s lament certainly resonates with what is known of su shi s experiences in exile in mi fu s other writings he speaks of how su shi condensed his emotions in the turns of his brush and the construction of his rocks and trees inset of the scroll entitled wood and rock this 1 000 year old scroll was recently auctioned at christie s in hong kong it sold for hk 463 600 000 or approximately 59 million usd kokan shiren 虎関師錬 1278 1347 31 wednesday oct 2018 posted by sam edge in suiskei 2 comments kokan shiren 虎関師錬 1278 1347 japanese rinzai zen patriarch and celebrated poet in chinese was the son of an officer of the palace guard and a mother of the aristocratic minamoto clan kokan studied under the celebrated chinese monk yishan yining their relationship can be regarded as the beginning of the golden age of the literature of the five mountains in japan he studied calligraphy under an additional chinese master huang shangu a portrait of kokan shiren is in the kaizoin of the tōfuku ji temple in kyoto japan the japanese monk kokan shiren dated 1343 painted by wang zhiweng our interest in kokan is for the similarities that many of us experience today when sharing our stones suiseki with friends his experience was recorded in his essay entitled rhymeprose on a miniature landscape garden take a few moments to read a portion of his essay and see how well it resonates with your own experiences what i liked to do for fun when i was a child was to gather up sacks of stones and pile them on a table near the window high and free when i reached middle age i felt ashamed of doing this and so i stopped becoming like any other ordinary person obtuse like a brick finally i have reached decrepit old age and i particularly dislike the sound of children s games in the summer so i had the children gather up stones in the corner of the wall i brushed them off and washed them preparing a green celadon tray with white sand on the bottom the result was poetry that would lighten your heart the landscape lent a coolness to the air and dispelled the heart a visitor saw it and exclaimed okay okay but it seems a little bald doesn t it i responded you see a pile of stones and fail to see the mountains the marvelous thing about miniature landscape gardens is that they are imitations of mountains and streams the base is made to look flowing waves and the cliffs are made to seem covered with vegetation sometimes you can see miniature gnarled pine or knobby plum you might see unusual blossoms or strange new shoots from their trimmed branches of course you will discover the utter vexation of your creations withering and wilting due to carelessness of slow watering and tending if you fail to exert yourself then you will simply fail to fashion a magnificent mountain and a smaller world among the smaller mounds and hills years ago i climbed to the top of mt fuji the climb took three days for two days i passed through areas of great trees and forests but on the third morning there wasn t a blade of grass to be seen at that point there were only great boulder like cliffs and purplish red stones it was like this for a number of miles until i reached the peak itself of course mt fuji is not unique in this respect as all peaks are without vegetation people who climb mountains do not dislike the so called baldness rather the love the sense of height these stones then just a number of inches tall and this tray roughly a foot across they are nothing short of a mountainous island rising from the sea jade green peaks penetrate the clouds and are encircled by them a blue green barrier immersed in water is standing straight up there are caves as if carved in the cliff sides to hide saints and immortals jetties and spits flat enough and long enough for fishermen the paths and roads are narrow and confined yet woodcutters can pass along them there are lagoons deep and dark enough to hide dragons so is it not fitting that i guard against weeds carefully watching and laboring over the thing taking delight in its total subtlety do you dislike the baldness of the small mounds and hills am i oblivious to the bareness of just the peak i sometimes pick a flowering branch and place it in a peak or in a ravine the alternations of plant life their blooming in the morning and fading in the evening are the splendor of the four seasons with their countless transformations and myriad changes so therefore i say that it doesn t have to be bare and it does not have to be lush another thing do you think this miniature landscape is big do you think it is small i will blow on the water and raise up billows from the four seas i will water the peak and send down a torrent from the ninth heaven the person who waters the stones sets the cosmos in order the one who changes the water turns the whole sea upside down those are the changes in nature which attain a oneness in my mind anyway the relative size of things is an uncertain business why there is a vast plain on a fly s eyelash and whole nations in a snail s horn a chinese philosopher has told us well what do you think my visitor got up from his seat and made his excuses he saw that these stones purified my senses and purified my intellect he realized that events are really not what they seemed and yet they enriched me i told him that he only understood what he perceived with his own eyes and did not understand my point of view at all i asked if he wouldn t like to sit for a while longer and study the matter afresh he said he would but there were no waves for him he said nothing more and i was silent after a while my visitor left without another word saihokushu ch 1 pp 1 2 an example of a miniature landscape garden kasuga gongen genki the miraculous tales of the deities of the kasaga shrine the kasuga gongen genki by court painter takashina takakane in 1309 is one of the earliest examples of the usage of stones and trees together to create contemplative art as seen from the following black and white insert from this painting an close up of the miniature garden in the painting kasuga gongen genki we can see what appears to be a pine a deciduous flowering tree and stones along with another stone in a pot above and to its right note as well the handles on this portable wooden tray thus allowing it to be moved about perhaps to be seen better from inside the home during this period kokan is describing his experiences in creating these miniature landscape gardens and what his viewing experience does for him personally it becomes clear very quickly that kokan and his friend see his display very differently a visitor saw it and exclaimed okay okay but it seems a little bald doesn t ...
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