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Book Description
A simple and provocative book offering a revisionist photo-essay on the ever-popular Japanese "dry landscape" or "rock" gardens. Not Zen, possibly art, more like "meta-gardens," gravel and sand compositions reject nature, yet are made of omnipresent natural dust. Quick to crumble, they are defiantly maintained by priest/rakers. Credited with philosophical profundity, their origins are murky, their meanings uncertain but immediate. Koren deliberately ignores "celebrity" rocks, moss, and foliage to demystify and explore a most peculiar human enterprise. Beautifully illustrated with duotone photographs of gravel and sand gardens in Kyoto.
About the Author
Leonard Koren, who was trained as an artist and architect, writes books about design and aesthetics. Among his most popular books are WABI SABI: For Artists, Design, Poets & Philosophers and Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement.
"Featuring over 30 photos of graval and sand gardens taken in Kyoto, Japan, this thin paperback underscores the importance of 'experienceing the garden as garden.'" -- The Tri-County News
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Mearl Cooper
reviewed Gardens of Gravel and Sand on June 25, 2015
Gardens of Gravel and Sand
In half an hour, looking through this book and reading Koren's text will have you rethinking what you think you know about rock gardens. It is a pragmatic look at gravel and sand as "possibly art," and while that may not seem very enticing, it is arguably a more valuable exploration of these gardens than all the new age, Zen, and run-of-the-mill garden books put together. Koren argues that many of the gardens "were not even designed or constructed by Zen practitioners at all by by gardeners/garden designers who were of the lowest social class; there is nothing Zen-like or "spiritual" about them." (32) While his arguments may not impact the integration of said gardens into modern Zen practice, it is refreshing to find new ways of seeing these spaces that are not cliché and rhetorical.
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Add Gardens of Gravel and Sand, Book Description A simple and provocative book offering a revisionist photo-essay on the ever-popular Japanese dry landscape or rock gardens. Not Zen, possibly art, more like meta-gardens, gravel and sand compositions reject nature, yet a, Gardens of Gravel and Sand to the inventory that you are selling on WonderClubX
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Add Gardens of Gravel and Sand, Book Description A simple and provocative book offering a revisionist photo-essay on the ever-popular Japanese dry landscape or rock gardens. Not Zen, possibly art, more like meta-gardens, gravel and sand compositions reject nature, yet a, Gardens of Gravel and Sand to your collection on WonderClub |
