S I M P L I C I T Y A N D B E AU T Y: T H E I N F L U E N C E O F KO R E A N A E S T H E T I C S O N J A PA N ' S FOLK CRAFT MOVEMENT - TAASA Review September 2016

S I M P L I C I T Y A N D B E AU T Y: T H E I N F L U E N C E O F KO R E A N A E S T H E T I C S O N J A PA N ‘ S FOLK CRAFT MOVEMENT – TAASA Review September 2016

UNLOCK THIS ARTICLE

This article was originally found in the September 2016 edition of TAASA Review (Volume 25, Issue 3, Page 4).

The full article is available for free to TAASA Members.

Penny Bailey No art has ever opened my heart to the extent of Korean art…When I think about it, the impetus for the great love I feel for Korea and its people is derived from their art.

Yanagi Setsu (Letter to My Korean Friends 1920:42) A rt critic and philosopher Yanagi Setsu (18891961) established Japan’s Folk Craft Movement in the mid-1920s with the support of his close friends, potters Hamada Shji (1894 1978), Kawai Kanjir (18901966), Tomimoto Kenkichi (18861963) and Bernard Leach (18871979).

To describe the genre of objects central to the movement, Yanagi, Hamada, and Kawai coined the term mingei (folk craft), a contraction of minshteki kgei meaning crafts of the people'...