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An essay on the overwhelming beauty of the Earth world
The twenty-four seasons provides the public with a close-up view of the kimono, a clothing system unlike any other in the World. Almost fifty years and three generations have passed since the kimono system was replaced by western attire. Once an every-day clothing system, the kimono today survives exclusively for cerimonial occasions in its native Japan. But behind the kimono lies a vast textile culture which still sustains both the creative instinct of Japan’s fashion designers as well as a class of consumers who are highly sensitive to the qualities of cloth as indicator of good taste. The “overwhelming beauty” of the japanese kimono is not only a matter of aesthetics: its roots lie in the unconditional respect which the japanese attribute to the making of the cloth itself, a respect bordering on veneration. The kimono then is a module, a way of preserving the textile rather than the cut of the garment. By using a minimum of cuts, so that the cloth can be both sew-up or taken apart as needed. The width of the woven cloth already standarized for centuries, is about 34 centimeters and corresponds to the manual force needed to throw the shuttle from the side of the warp of the simple hand loom. The kimono, to the japanese eye, communicates on every level of fabrication. Unlike the patterns and prints of western design, which are chosen at random to indicate special areas of taste, the decoration of the kimono is strictly a custom-made affair. Its form, material and coloring as well as its patterings narrate the person wearing it. The dress (and not the weather) declines the nature of the event taking place-work, study, shopping, visiting, holiday or entertainment. The literature of the kimono therefore proposes a complete world view, an unspoken philosophy that transcends time. It is a philosophy woven on the earth, where rivers and stones, trees mountains and mist, insects and snowflakes stand for hidden divinities, that populate the rotating seasons In this way, the kimono is a text that makes sense out of the confusion of every day human life. The ancient agrarian calendar we use as text to this exhibition was used not only to predict the seasons of sowing and harvesting but also to celebrate and enjoy the earthly paradise we still inhabite. The exhibition then provides an occasion to “walk through” the traces of the twenty-four seasons, in this fashion the visitors can read the passage of the seasons while enjoying not only the beauty of the kimono but the meaning of its painted signs and colors: a multisensorial experience of the sights, sounds, touches and pleasures of the overwhelming beauty of the kimono world. Nancy Martin |
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