Leonard Koren (born January 4, 1948) is an American artist, aesthetics expert and writer.
Leonard Koren (born January 4, 1948) is an American artist, aesthetics expert and writer.
Leonard Koren was born in New York City in 1948, and raised in Los Angeles. In 1969, he co-founded the Los Angeles Fine Arts Squad, a mural painting group. He attended UCLA, graduating with a master's degree in Architecture and Urban Planning in 1972. [1] After graduation, Koren worked as an artist in Los Angeles, where his work focused on bathing environments.
In 1976, Koren founded WET Magazine – a periodical dedicated to gourmet bathing, [2] which was influential in the development of postmodern aesthetics. [3] In 1981, WET magazine ceased publication, and Koren moved to Japan, where he wrote several works on aesthetics. From 1983 through 1986 produced a column on Cultural Anthropology for a Japanese magazine. In particular, Koren wrote Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers, which helped bring the Japanese concept of Wabi-Sabi into western aesthetic theory. [4] [5] Currently Koren lives in San Francisco. [1]
In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘び寂び) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" in nature. It is prevalent in many forms of Japanese art.
Japanese art consists of a wide range of art styles and media that includes ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, bonsai, and more recently manga and anime. It has a long history, ranging from the beginnings of human habitation in Japan, sometime in the 10th millennium BCE, to the present day.
The monokini was designed by Rudi Gernreich in 1964, consisting of only a brief, close-fitting bottom and two thin straps; it was the first women's topless swimsuit. His revolutionary and controversial design included a bottom that "extended from the midriff to the upper thigh" and was "held up by shoestring laces that make a halter around the neck." Some credit Gernreich's design with initiating, or describe it as a symbol of, the sexual revolution.
Nilo Cruz is a Cuban-American playwright and pedagogue. With his award of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Anna in the Tropics, he became the second Latino so honored, after Nicholas Dante.
Iki is a Japanese aesthetical ideal of subdued displays of taste and/or wealth, with an emphasis on belying, on first glance, the efforts taken to appear stylish. It is thought to have originated amongst the merchant classes of Edo in Edo period Japan, subverting class through an expression of material wealth that formed an aesthetic language specifically aimed at one's peers.
Richard Dean Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, casual, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line. His works span a range of formats, from sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, and artist’s books to installation and furniture. He lives and works in New York City, Abiquiú, New Mexico, and Mount Desert, Maine.
The Higashiyama culture is a segment of Japanese culture that includes innovations in architecture, the visual arts and theatre during the late Muromachi period. It originated and was promoted in the 15th century by the shōgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa, after he retired to his villa in the eastern hills of capital city Kyoto.
Japanese aesthetics comprise a set of ancient ideals that include wabi, sabi, and yūgen. These ideals, and others, underpin much of Japanese cultural and aesthetic norms on what is considered tasteful or beautiful. Thus, while seen as a philosophy in Western societies, the concept of aesthetics in Japan is seen as an integral part of daily life. Japanese aesthetics now encompass a variety of ideals; some of these are traditional while others are modern and sometimes influenced by other cultures.
WET: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing was a publication of the 1970s and early 80s. Founded by Leonard Koren in 1976 it ran thirty-four issues before closing in 1981. The idea for the magazine grew out of the artwork Leonard Koren was doing at the time—what he termed 'bath art'—and followed on the heels of a party he threw at the Pico-Burnside Baths.
Shibui (渋い) (adjective), shibumi (渋み), or shibusa (渋さ) are Japanese words that refer to a particular aesthetic of simple, subtle, and unobtrusive beauty. Like other Japanese aesthetics terms, such as iki and wabi-sabi, shibui can apply to a wide variety of subjects, not just art or fashion.
The Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco, California, is a popular feature of Golden Gate Park, originally built as part of a sprawling World's Fair, the California Midwinter International Exposition of 1894. Though many of its attractions are still a part of the garden today, there have been changes throughout the history of the garden that have shaped it into what it is today.
Ruth Aiko Asawa was an American modernist artist known primarily for her abstract looped-wire sculptures inspired by natural and organic forms. In addition to her three-dimensional work, Asawa created an extensive body of works on paper, including abstract and figurative drawings and prints influenced by nature, particularly flowers and plants, and her immediate surroundings.
Ralph Rucci is an American fashion designer and artist. He is known in particular for Chado Ralph Rucci, a luxury clothing and accessories line. Rucci's clothing designs have appeared in a number of major exhibitions, and he has won some significant fashion-industry awards. He is the subject of a recent documentary, and he and his clothing have received positive critical response in the fashion press.
Kintsugi, also known as kintsukuroi, is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. The method is similar to the maki-e technique. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.
Heath Ceramics is a B Corp certified American company that designs, manufactures, and retails goods for tabletop and home, and is best known for handcrafted ceramic tableware and architectural tile in distinctive glazes.
Heiko Müller is a German painter.
Henry Paul Dunay was an American goldsmith and jewelry designer, best known for his fine scratched surface technique known as Sabi.
Craig Taro Gold, known as Taro Gold, is an American author, entertainer, singer-songwriter, and entrepreneur. He is the author of several New York Times best-selling books including Open Your Mind, Open Your Life and Living Wabi Sabi. He is the co-author with Tina Turner of the Atria Books release Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good. He is also the co-founder of a number of technology companies including eVoice, Teleo and other business ventures.
Stephen Laub is an American artist who works in performance, video, and sculpture.
Miho Kajioka is a Japanese photographer, living in Kyoto. In 2019, she received the Prix Nadar for the book So it goes.
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