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 visual arts, music and other media, minimalism is an art movement that began in post–World War II in Western art, most strongly with American visual arts in the 1960s and early 1970s. Prominent artists associated with minimalism include Donald Judd, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Carl Andre, Robert Morris, Anne Truitt and Frank Stella. The movement is often interpreted as a reaction against abstract expressionism and modernism; it anticipated contemporary postminimal art practices, which extend or reflect on minimalism's original objectives.
In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) 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 covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, 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, 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 concept thought to have originated amongst the merchant classes of Edo in Edo period Japan.
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 the 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.
April Greiman is an American designer widely recognized as one of the first designers to embrace computer technology as a design tool. Greiman is also credited, along with early collaborator Jayme Odgers, with helping to import the European New Wave design style to the US during the late 70s and early 80s." According to design historian Steven Heller, “April Greiman was a bridge between the modern and postmodern, the analog and the digital.” “She is a pivotal proponent of the ‘new typography’ and new wave that defined late twentieth-century graphic design.” Her art combines her Swiss design training with West Coast postmodernism.
Shibui (渋い) (adjective), shibumi (渋み) (noun), or shibusa (渋さ) (noun) 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 sculptor. Her work is featured in collections at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. Fifteen of Asawa's wire sculptures are on permanent display in the tower of San Francisco's de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, and several of her fountains are located in public places in San Francisco. She was an arts education advocate and the driving force behind the creation of the San Francisco School of the Arts, which was renamed the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts in 2010. In 2020, the U.S. Postal Service honored her work by producing a series of ten stamps that commemorate her well-known wire sculptures.
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 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 Dunay is 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.
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