The Basara aesthetic: New considerations on the history of Japanese art
Keywords:
Basara, Tenmyouya Hisashi, Okamoto Tarō, japanese aestheticsAbstract
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the contemporary artist Tenmyouya Hisashi got the aesthetic concept Basara back. Throughout this concept, which was developed in his BASARA. The Japanese art theory crossing borders (2010), Tenmyouya suggested an alternative Japanese history of art which could get out of the classic historiographies. In his opinion, these had selected and enhanced only some features of the Japanese art and had left some important ones out. In this way, taking into account some of the claims of the avant-garde artist Okamoto Tarō, he framed a creative and innovative point of view. From this new perspective, the heterogeneous world of the Japanese art became accessible through different art pieces, artists and theories, which had gone unnoticed for the Japanese and Western public for decades. This proposal acknowledged that it is impossible to talk about a unique and homogeneous ‘Japanese art’, but about a complex organism formed by diverse trends that prove its complexity.
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