Art and the Philosophies of East and West

"Malraux speaks always of the artist ‘conquering’ his medium as our explorers and scientists also speak of conquering mountains or conquering space. To Chinese and Japanese ears these are grotesque expressions. For when you climb it is the mountain as much as your own legs which lifts you upwards, and when you paint it is the brush, ink, and paper which determine the result as much as your own hand” (Alan Watts “The Way of Zen” 175).

The art of Eastern cultures could be said to be qualitatively different from that of the West. While the artforms themselves are broadly the same, the style, execution and purpose is often distinctly different: “Western musical forms are based on western ideals of logic. These ideals may differ from eastern ideals of logic. The East has its own ideals…” (Dan 217).

Where such differences arise is from contrasting conceptions of reality as either fundamentally mystical or fundamentally anthropocentric (Pipa 366). In Western culture, the human has long been seen as the epitome of the universe, be it Italian renaissance philosopher Manetti or more recent philosophers such as Kant or Hegel, “the position of a philosopher is basically the same” (367). In contrast, in India, China, Japan and other place where might be found elements of Hinduism, Taoism, Buddhism or Confucianism, “we find it free in general of Western anthropocentrism… the world is a principle much wider and deeper than humanity” (367). From this fundamental philosophical point of distinction, these two cultures historically moved in different directions.

Western aesthetics as manifest in the Classical music tradition have changed substantially over time, and possesses a large variety of clear, distinct, sub-styles, but some themes might be broadly said to remain true, particularly those of personal/emotional expressiveness and/or cleverness and precision. Western cultures tend to view consciousness intellect, control, form, and structure as valuable both in the act of creation and in the experiencing of the artwork by its audience, in Japan "their absence signifies a truthful work of art” (Athanasiadis 14). The idea of personal expressiveness represents broadly the fundamentally anthropocentric perspective that Pipa mentions, while the issues of control and cleverness might be viewed as a display of conquest over nature, where the composer has taken sounds and with his or her mastery of them, created something believed to be greater. This is a perspective that closely aligns with the observations of Lieberman that "the history of Western society and its technology has been the story of man’s long struggle to control nature” (Lieberman).

The Eastern perspective, however, which does not see man as distinct from or above nature but instead a part of it, finds that its aesthetic philosophies emphasise different qualities:

_“[Eastern] Aesthetic experience aims ultimately to establish a system of correspondences between moods of consciousness and modes of being, translatable into each other, thus creating the condition for the only endurable form of human happiness: the harmony of the human being with Being in general” _(Pipa 369).

For me, the philosophy of Zen Buddhism in particular has offered an alternative perspective that I have come to explore in my own music making. This Zen is a uniquely Japanese form of Buddhism, which has been influenced by the Japanese mystical teachings of Taoism, and to some extent, Shintoism. An outgrowth of the Mahayana Buddhist teaching, according to Dumoulin, “…Zen underwent new developments in Japan and achieved a maturity that made it possible to open a path to the West” (3). This Zen Relgio-philosophy and its companion, Taosim, have had an enormous influence on trasitional Japanese culture shaping the way Japanese people lived, worked, and made things, be it a painting, a musical work or the buildings they live in. In such workings, the division between the anthropocentrism of the West and mystic-naturalism of the East can be plainly see. For example, consider the following comparisons below (see fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Top: Leonardo da Vinvci’s 15th century painting, The Mona Lisa; Bottom: An early 16th century work of Hasegawa Tōhaku, Shōrin-zu byōbu (“Pine Trees”).

It is immediately obvious upon viewing these two works that they have contrasting priorities. Davinci’s focus and mastery is on the subtleties of depicting the form of a human woman, while Tōhaku’s Shōrin-zu byōbu is entirely devoid of humanity, focusing instead on the subtle sense of space (Ma or 間) created by the interplay of the trees and the mist.

It is, of course, not so simple to point to such a division in present times as globalisation has led to a substantial mingling of cultures. For example, Japanese artist Hokusai’s artwork was much respected by Vincent Van Gough, and Hokusai’s famous painting The Great Wave Off Kanagawa inspired Debussy’s work La Mer. The 20th Century bore witness to many of these sorts of cultural exchanges making it impossible to extrapolate these distinction easily into modern times. Nonetheless, contrasting aesthetic values can be observed between virtually all examples of traditional Japanese and Western aesthetics of the same time.

Japan has it’s own unique idea of aesthetics that is called _Wabi Sabi _. Some, like Koren, distinguish between the aesthetics and ideology of western aesthetics and Wabi Sabi as follows:

(Compiled from Koren 26-29).

Architecturally, Locher explains that “nature is at the heart of traditional life in Japan, just as it is the foundation for the architectural forms and construction materials of traditional Japanese buildings… that humankind cannot be seperate from nature lies at the very core of Japanese beliefs.” (Chapter 4, p. 1). Traditional Japanese architecture makes use of natural and local materials, particularly wood but also reeds, bark, clay and stone (Young et al.) - Basic Materials) and there is a “distinct preference for a natural setting” (Young et al.).

The Zen Garden also shows a aesthetic departure from the sensibilities of the West. The garden will typically consist of raked rocks and larger boulders which are placed ‘just so’ and with varying degrees of other elements. As can be seen in the following example (see fig. 2) the placement of the rocks is generally asymmetrical and the space between is often unembellished.

Fig. 2. Ryōan-ji (late 15th century) in Kyoto, Japan, a famous example of a zen garden.

In terms of the creation of works of art, Juniper in Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence explains that in traditional Japanese artforms, the “role of the artists is that of a medium rather than an individual… it is the supreme achievement of an artist to reach the levels where conscious effort and thought are abandoned to the dictums of the unforeseen forces that guide out lives” (72). In this way, much of the aesthetic pursuits of traditional Japanese artists are reflections of an inwards pursuit, not of construction of an artwork in and of itself. Further more, the idea of importance and imperfection play substantial roles in Japanese aesthetics through Wabi Sabi which “seeks beauty in the imperfections found as all things, in a constant state of flux, evolve from nothing and devolve back to nothing” (1).

In the creation of Wabi Sabi artworks, naturalness, decay, texture and unevenness, asymmetry or irregularity, the use of “diffuse and murky” colours, simplicity (lack of embellishment), space, intimacy, and impermanence (Juniper 82-91) are all important pursuits. In accessing and conveying this sense of mystery and sublimity, the musical process of these works pursues Wuwei (無爲), which is one of the central ideas of the Taoist religio-philosophy, and is present in the aforementioned Japanese aesthetics via the influence of Zen Buddhism and Taoism of traditional Japanese culture; Wuwei embodies the idea of naturalness and with-nature-ness of Japanese art. This concept of Wuwei is often simplistically translated as “non-doing” but this does not capture the full, complex meaning which Liu explains:

_“With close reading, we can readily see that Laozi does not promote “doing nothing.” Wuwei instead is a negation of not all action, but only actions based in “common knowledge and practice,” such as control, coercion, competition, exploitation, oppression, strife, and impulsiveness, namely, all actions that run counter to the principle of Dao and civilized naturalness” _ (Liu 85).

The pursuit of this ‘civilised naturalness’ by turning away from a desire to control or coerce the music into a particular structure or set of aesthetic conventions, and away from a technical-theoretical construction approach, is a challenging pursuit to realise. The suggestion is not complete freedom (not ‘strife, and impulsiveness’) but the emergence of a spontaneous naturalness that is in harmony with both the order and chaos of the (natural) world.

There are several examples of Western composers who have explored both the philosophies and aesthetics of Zen. A notable example is John Cage who stated that “…without my engagement with Zen (attendance at lectures by Alan Watts and D. T. Suzuki, reading of the literature) I doubt whether I would have done what I have done” (Cage xi). Cage explorations manifested in an attempt to deliberately undermine the relationship between the composer and the music in his works through a variety of mechanism of aleatory. This was Cage’s way of reconciling music with the Zen philosophy that he came to by way of Suzuki and Watts, however, Cage did not always always have an easy relationship with Zen. Early on, Cage and Watts were friends of a sort, but as Cage pursued indeterminacy further in his work, Watts criticised Cage of using the Zen philosophy to “justify the indiscriminate framing of simply anything” (Watts “This is it…” 94). Nonetheless, for cage, “engagement with Zen brought to fruition various aspects of his aesthetic, such as impersonalism, and the belief that modern music could help reconcile listeners with modern life; it urged on the working through of his ascetic tendencies” (Revill 118).

Cage’s works like 4’33, whereupon the pianist sits in complete stillness at the piano for four minutes and thirty-three seconds without playing a single note, certainly draw the listener’s awareness towards a connection with the moment and towards the experience of non-judgemental awareness, and of the transience of the moment. His aleatoric works similarly can be thought to direct one’s listening towards a non-judgemental appreciation of reality as it is, without categorising. In this way, Cage’s music might be viewed as a prompt for Zen-inspired introspection and contemplation. Cage was also aware of the idea of Wuwei even if he never mentioned it in such terms. This is refelected in an interview where the composer states “this highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature in her manner of operation” (Cited in Revill 189). Cage continues on this topic saying that “while it is true that Zen emphasises spontaneous unmediated experience, and puts intellectualising firmly in its place, discipline is never rejected; enlightened spontaneity comes only from the most thorough training and preparation” (189). For Cage, this training and contemplation was tantamount to entering a meditative state.

Alan Watts, one of the most well known writers and speakers on Eastern religions to Western audience, offers a word of caution, however, on this idea of unfettered spontaneousness:

“…when you start acting spontaneously, you’re not used to doing it. And therefore your responses are unintelligent and inappropriate. But when you become used to doing this, and it becomes second nature to you to act in the state of Mushin - no mind, or no deliberation — then your behaviour has matured, and you find you’re accustomed to respond quite appropriately…” (Watts “Mushin…”).

Whether or not Cage’s response to Zen is truly an expression of a complete and mature understanding, it was nonetheless a remarkable one which resulted in much music that falls outside of the usual aesthetic ideals of the Western classical tradition, cutting away anthropocentrism through the implementation of indeterminacy and the handing over of the process to the broader processes of the chance and the universe.

Another twentieth-century Western composer influenced by Zen to an unknown degree was Italy’s Giacomo Scelsi, who experienced a “strong resolution to resolve the gap between the ‘zen spontaneity’ of improvisation and the long and detailed tablework of occidental composition” (Bernardini 169) and turned instead to a compositional approach relying on improvisation and early recording technology (Hope, James and Vikery 1).

Prior to this, Scelsi had pursued composing within the evolving, and at the time Modernist, Western tradition. He studied formally with a pupil of Schoenberg’s, Walther Klein, and was initially a proponent of twelve-tone serialism. However, after travelling broadly, and coming in contact with Eastern philosophies and Existentialism, his music underwent a transformation, and indeed, some have argued that this change made Scelsi and his work “the strangest part of this past century’s music history” (McHard 251).

Scelsi’s contact with Eastern philosophy led essentially to one major change in his thinking, that “sound became the central focus, overshadowing method” (McHard 253). He abandoned his dodecaphonic roots and turned instead to improvisation as a means of getting at his “mystical intuitions” (McHard 261). His improvisations, which were performed with an ondiola, an early vacuum-tube synthesiser (with a surprising timbral range), and were recorded and overdubbed, would be passed along to a transcriber to turn into a score. This approach, however, was viewed as scandalous by some members of the more academically-orientated composition community who were, according to Bernardini, “entirely devoted to the abilities of composers to control their activities down to the most minute” (169), and Scelsi’s works suffered prolonged ostracism and condemnation, most notably at a round-table discussion by composers on Scelsi’s music (after his death) in which most participants were dismissive of his music due to the process of its creation (See Sciannameo and Pellegrini 2-3).

Scelsi’s music, despite both being exposed to Eastern philosophies, was enormously different from Cage’s. Where Cage was led to relinquish much or all of his control in the composing process, Scelsi pursued spontaneousness in the composition process itself abandoning compositional techniques and turning to improvisation. The sound of their works are aesethic vast distances apart. Where Cage’s music tended towards the absurd, Scelsi’s music is deeply serious sounding sound world that generally shifts and evolves around a single, central pitch.

Further afield, one must now also mention the work of Takemitsu. While Cage and Scelsi came to the Zen philosophy and its aesthetic consequences from a Western Perspective, from the other direction Japanese composer Takemitsu might be said to have approached Western aesthetics. Oddly, Takemitsu was himself strongly effected by John Cage’s work, representing another example of the curious cultural exchanges that occurred through the 20th Century, which Burt describes as creating a kind of “…‘feedback loop’ whereby ‘Eastern’ ideas are reimported from the West to their point of origin, as had happened half a century earlier with Debussy’s music” (Burt 96). While Takemitsu initially wished to escape from the nationalistic music of many Japanese composers of the time, turning instead to the Western classical tradition, the reappearance of familiar Japanese ideas within the Western context allowed Takemitsu to grow more comfortable with his own cultural heritage to some extent. In his music, many of the themes and influences of the Zen-Inspired Japanese aesthetics emerge. In fact, for me, Takemitsu represents a seemingly perfectly balanced expression of the intersecting aesthetics and philosophies of the Western Classical tradition and Japan.

Takemitsu alludes to this desire to reconcile the two seemingly opposing ideas, that of the anthropocentric and that of the natural-mystical:

“Although I think constantly about the relationship of music to nature, for me music does not exist to describe natural scenery. While it is true that I am sometimes impressed by natural scenery devoid of human life, and that may motivate my own composing, at the same time I cannot forget the tawdry and seamy side of human existence. I cannot conceive of nature and human beings as opposing elements, be prefer to emphasize living harmoniously, which I like to call naturalness" (cited in Rothberg 294).

Musically, the blending seems apparent. His music contains and adheres to, perhaps instinctively, many of the Japanese aesthetics of Wabi Sabi — “Takemitsu uses his instinctive awareness of the Japanese tradition as a tool for an interpretive refinement” (Athanasiadis 43) — but the musical language it draws upon often contains the characteristics of the Western Modernist traditions, drawing especially from the work of Messiaen. Athanasiadis who explored the role of Wabi Sabi aesthetics in Takemitu’s works (as well as his own) explains that “In November Steps Western musical tradition and the eastern aesthetics of wabi sabi are placed side by side. Their co-existence is not a matter of competition but of mutual respect and consideration.”

This blending creates a musical sonority which is greatly appealing to me and these Eastern aesthetics and values show up in my own works in a variety of ways, both subtle and obvious. In the following chapter I will discuss and define further these Wabi Sabi aesthetics, and begin to explore some of their technical manifestations.

Japanese art is not just a repository of tradition, it contains “not only artistic themes and skills but philosophical understanding… Each of the arts is a pathway, a road… In short, each of these arts, if seriously engaged in, is itself enlightenment in some form… There is nothing like this understanding in the West, which does not employ its arts and crafts, or its sports, to teach the deepest religious and ethical truths of its culture” (Carter 3-4).

Citations

Athanasiadis, Basil. The Japanese aesthetic of Wabi Sabi and its potential in contemporary composition. Thesis. 2008.

Bernardini, Nicola & Scelsi, Fondazione. (2007). Recovering Giacinto Scelsi’s Tapes, http://www.academia.edu/download/33711726/paper.pdf

Burt, Peter. The music of Tōru Takemitsu: influences, confluences and status. Durham: The U, 1998.

Cage, John. Silence: Lectures and writings by John Cage. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan U Press, 1973.

Carter, Robert Edgar, and Eliot Deutsch. The Japanese arts and self-cultivation. Albany, NY: State U of New York Press, 2008.

Dan, Ikuma. “The Influence of Japanese Traditional Music on the Development of Western Music in Japan.” Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. 8, no. 3, 1961, pp. 201–217.

Hope, Cat, A/Prof, Stuart James, and Lindsay Vickery, Dr. “Sogno 102 - Revisioning Compositional Processes of Giacinto Scelsi.” Sogno 102. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.

Koren, Leonard. Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers. Imperfect, 2008.

Lieberman, Frederic. “Zen Buddhism And Its Relationship to Elements of Eastern And Western Arts.” Zen Buddhism and Art. University of California Santa Cruz, n.d. Web. 14 Feb. 2016. http://artsites.ucsc.edu/faculty/lieberman/zen.html.

Locher, Mira, and Ben Simmons. Traditional Japanese architecture: Exploration of elements and forms. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2010.

McHard, James L. The future of modern music: a vibrant new modernism in music for the future. Livonia, MI: Iconic Press, 2006.

Pipa, Arshi. “Some Remarks about Western and Eastern Aesthetics.” The British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 8, no. 4, 1968, pp. 365–372.

Revill, David. The Roaring Silence: John Cage: a Life. Simon and Schuster, 2014.

Rothenberg, David, and Marta Ulvaeus. The Book of Music and Nature: an Anthology of Sounds, Words, Thoughts. Middletown: Wesleyan U Press, 2013.

Sciannameo, Franco, and Alessandra Carlotta Pellegrini. Music as Dream: Essays on Giacinto Scelsi. Scarecrow Press, 2013.

Takemitsu, Toru, Yoshiko Kakudo, and Glenn Glasow. Confronting silence: selected writings. Berkley, CA: Fallen Leaf, 1995.

Watts, Alan. The Way of Zen. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011.

Watts, Alan. This Is It: and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011.

Liu, Xiaogan. Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy. Springer, 2016.

Young, David E., et al. The Art of Japanese Architecture: History, Culture, Design. Tuttle Publishing, 2019.