February 2018 – Dietmar Tallroth

Mono no aware

In Art & Photography

Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.
(Tears are at the heart of things and we are touched by transience.)
Virgil, Aeneid

Like “yūgen“, “mono no aware” is often seen as one of the core concepts of Japanese aesthetics. The term is variously translated as the “pathos of things” or an “empathy for things”. It reflects an aesthetic response to transience. But as we can see from the Virgil quote the response and the sentiment are not only part of Japanese culture. They are part of our common human heritage.

So let’s talk about transience.

(more…)

Sensibility

February 8, 2018 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography

Some words have a peculiar history. The term “sensibility” is among them. If we can trust Wikipedia (and we do, don’t we?) then the term was coined around the end of the 17th century to describe a scientific-philosophical concept were sensory input and ideas are connected. Then, the word and attitude became fashionable in the 18th century and young people detected their feelings. Finally, the term fell into disregard. In 1811 Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” was published in which sensibility was rebuked and ridiculed. Since then the term has never really recovered.Now it is used mostly in the plural form and not in an entirely positive way.

Still in the jungle of English terms regarding the senses, it remains one of the few terms describing the connection between our senses and our inner life.

(more…)

Quo Vadis

February 1, 2018 By Dietmar Tallroth With 0 Comment

In Art & Photography / Lose thoughts

2018-01-14-Mäntysuo-0031.jpg — Quo Vadis

“As for landscape, its material form exists, but its flavour is incorporeal.“
Zong Bing (around 400 C.E.), Preface on Landscape Painting, transl. James Cahill

Earlier I have written about the mood of a landscape much in the way Zong Bing talks about its “flavour”. What both terms mean is an inherent quality of a landscape, something that the artist detects, not something he or she adds to it. What the artist attempts is to become a conduit for the character, mood or “flavour” of a landscape.

During the history of landscape art this has been one of the major approaches to the subject, often called something like the “objective” school of landscape art. Whenever such a school became dominant, however, a counter-movement, a “subjective” school, was sure to follow.

Instead of searching for the flavour of the landscape, the subjective school imbues the landscape with a “flavour” or a message that is not inherent, but a reflection of the artists mind and mood. I paint this in a rather broad brush and these schools actually were at times difficult to distinguish. As a further disclaimer, generally I am certainly closer to the objective school and don’t want to sound too negative regarding the subjective approach. Everything in art is equally legitimate.

(more…)