WabiSabi

In Japanese wabi means taste for the simple and quiet; sabi means elegant simplicity. Together, they comprise the Japanese aesthetic. In the west, proportionality has been a governing principle.

The Japanese integrate the object with the universe. The western world separates the object from the universe and mounts it in a frame or on a pedestal. This separation sometimes makes western art inaccessible. Japanese art is always accessible.

Socrates was a stone carver before he became a philosopher. The aesthetic at the time was proportionality. His preference was truth over beauty. He did not want poets in the Republic. He felt that except for Homer they confused truth and beauty. For him, truth and beauty could be bounded, quantified and had no real relationship to each other. Beauty was impermanent and truth was eternal. This has subtly influenced western culture.

Japanese culture is grounded in animism. The spiritual pervades nature. There are no boundaries. The aesthetic is not framed in a western sense but is rather framed by the rest of the universe.

Around 1850, the west began to influence Japanese Art and Japanese Art began to influence Western Art. The Smithsonian has a wonderful collection that illustrates this. Landscapes and Seascapes became prime subject matter in the West.

My personal preference is for the stark, simple and elegant. This does not mean that I would discard western visual art. There has been a cross-fertilization in art between the two cultures since the end of the Tokugawa government.