Japanese Design
Art, Aesthetics & Culture
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
**Winner, Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title 2015**
This Japanese design book presents the arts, aesthetics and culture of Japan with over 160 stunning color photos and extensive historical and cultural commentary .
The Japanese sensibility often possesses an intuitive, emotional appeal, whether it's a silk kimono, a carefully raked garden path, an architectural marvel, a teapot, or a contemporary work of art. This allure has come to permeate the entire culture of Japan--it is manifest in the most mundane utensil and snack food packaging, as well as in Japanese architecture and fine art.
In Japanese Design, Asian art expert and author Patricia J. Graham explains how Japanese aesthetics based on fine craftsmanship and simplicity developed. Her unusual, full-color presentation reveals this design aesthetic in an absorbing way. Focusing on ten elements of Japanese design, Graham explores how visual qualities, the cultural parameters and the Japanese religious traditions of Buddhism and Shinto have impacted the appearance of its arts.
Japanese Design is a handbook for the millions of us who have felt the special allure of Japanese art, culture and crafts. Art and design fans and professionals have been clamoring for this--a book that fills the need for an intelligent, culture-rich overview of what Japanese design is and means.
Topics explored in Japanese Design include:The Aesthetics of Japanese DesignThe Cultural Parameters of Japanese DesignEarly Promoters of "Artistic Japan" 1830s-1950s
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Japanese art aficionado Graham's (Tea of the Sages: The Art of Sencha) overview of Japanese design tracks the evolution of Japanese art in this lavish, eloquent, and succinct four-color album. Opening with a visual survey of the culture's aesthetics, Graham defines basic terms associated with the understated style, such as wabi-sabi, which refers to a rustic, withered aesthetic that first captivated Westerners nearly a century ago, or ma, which is used to describe the elegance of empty space. Next, Graham delves into the ways in which religious values inform design elements. She concludes her inquiry on an international note with 28 pithy bios of the early promoters of Japanese aesthetics who helped import and popularize the style in the West. Among those profiled are journalists, art critics, art dealers, and artists, such as architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The book covers a wide spectrum of examples from 16th-century folding screens and the Katsura Imperial Villa near Kyoto to contemporary resin installations and hotel interiors and offers a valuable primer on the range of Japanese style. 160 color photos.
