The Rain Pavilion stands in the park of the Castle of ’s Gravenwezel, since 1984 the home of the family of the art connoisseur Axel Vervoordt. The hut is a very modest sukiya. The sukiya, the tea room, was called by Kakuzo Okakura “the dwelling of the void”. Since the Muromachi period (1393-1573), art literature has commonly identified the traits of austerity, rigor, rusticity as the inspiring principles of wabi – “an active aesthetic appreciation of poverty” according to Suzuki Daisetsu – associating with it the specific sense of solitude and fleeting beauty that in Japan as early as the twelfth century the pilgrim poets called sabi. Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that this inflexible expressive concision, yohaku, does not consist in the discrediting of the material substantiality of the thing, which is never reduced or mortified by the purism of the design. The essential, in this realm of meaning, can never abstract itself from the unique substantiality of that sign, that shade of color, that timbre of sound, that smell, that transparency or opaqueness, that corruption: in all this lies the secret of the radical intimacy and com-passion that pervade innerness.This in an appropriate name also for the Rain Pavilion and, more generally, for the unadorned elegance, sosō, of many spaces arranged by Vervoordt. Polysemy of the experience of emptiness: it is a prevalence of dimmed, diffused light, bearers of degrees of darkness from which rare, isolated objects emerge and dissipate; it is the washed-out tint of the countless shades of gray of surfaces worn by the seasons; it is the not-said, the not-complete, the not-perfect that can never be changed; it is giving oneself up to the web of relations and mutual dependences that, following mysterious paths, weave the fabric of reality; it is the care for what “like a dream” does not last, the in-stans, the here and now that is already gone, ichigo-ichie; it is pause, invitation to be attentive and vigilant; it is the space between, the interval, openness to hospitality and shelter; it is the condition, the base, the power from which the action springs and the richness, quiet and unobtrusive, to be grasped and preserved. In harmony with the most certain of Buddhist insights is the common birth of being and non-being.

Stenografie del vuoto. Axel Vervoordt Tatsuro Miki / F. Arrigoni. - In: FIRENZE ARCHITETTURA. - ISSN 1826-0772. - STAMPA. - 1/2012:(2012), pp. 38-47.

Stenografie del vuoto. Axel Vervoordt Tatsuro Miki

ARRIGONI, FABRIZIO FRANCO VITTORIO
2012

Abstract

The Rain Pavilion stands in the park of the Castle of ’s Gravenwezel, since 1984 the home of the family of the art connoisseur Axel Vervoordt. The hut is a very modest sukiya. The sukiya, the tea room, was called by Kakuzo Okakura “the dwelling of the void”. Since the Muromachi period (1393-1573), art literature has commonly identified the traits of austerity, rigor, rusticity as the inspiring principles of wabi – “an active aesthetic appreciation of poverty” according to Suzuki Daisetsu – associating with it the specific sense of solitude and fleeting beauty that in Japan as early as the twelfth century the pilgrim poets called sabi. Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that this inflexible expressive concision, yohaku, does not consist in the discrediting of the material substantiality of the thing, which is never reduced or mortified by the purism of the design. The essential, in this realm of meaning, can never abstract itself from the unique substantiality of that sign, that shade of color, that timbre of sound, that smell, that transparency or opaqueness, that corruption: in all this lies the secret of the radical intimacy and com-passion that pervade innerness.This in an appropriate name also for the Rain Pavilion and, more generally, for the unadorned elegance, sosō, of many spaces arranged by Vervoordt. Polysemy of the experience of emptiness: it is a prevalence of dimmed, diffused light, bearers of degrees of darkness from which rare, isolated objects emerge and dissipate; it is the washed-out tint of the countless shades of gray of surfaces worn by the seasons; it is the not-said, the not-complete, the not-perfect that can never be changed; it is giving oneself up to the web of relations and mutual dependences that, following mysterious paths, weave the fabric of reality; it is the care for what “like a dream” does not last, the in-stans, the here and now that is already gone, ichigo-ichie; it is pause, invitation to be attentive and vigilant; it is the space between, the interval, openness to hospitality and shelter; it is the condition, the base, the power from which the action springs and the richness, quiet and unobtrusive, to be grasped and preserved. In harmony with the most certain of Buddhist insights is the common birth of being and non-being.
2012
1/2012
38
47
F. Arrigoni
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Utilizza questo identificatore per citare o creare un link a questa risorsa: https://hdl.handle.net/2158/651389
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