Sand As Medium: The Tradition
Plays of wind and gravity with sand (1)
(2) (3) (4) (5).
This happens even on Mars (6).
Tracks of the sand gopher and the sidewinder
snake on the north american desert dunes.
The timeless involvement of man, scratching on clay or the surface of
the earth, is witnessed by sites such as Abydos (5,000 BPE; South
Egypt), Avebury (4,500 BPE; Wilshire, England), Peebles (2,800 BPE;
Ohio, US) or Nazca (1,700 BPE;
Peru).
Natural play of children in the sand of beaches and sandboxes.
Traditional rakings of cold hibashi ashes in Japanese homes.
Then there are Navajo sand
paintings, and Tibetan sand
mandalas (along with cairns and gyanamani, the walls
of mani stones)...
The Japanese Karesansui tradition.
"Japan a great stone garden in the sea." (Gary Snyder, Riprap).
Kare/san/sui
- Kare: The trees shedding their leaves (bare)
- San : The mountain (the stones)
- Sui : The water (the sand)
In the river of time (according to François
Berthier):
- 612 First record of a Japanese symbolic garden : a rock in a pond
- 620 A symbolic island in a pond
- 1052 Byödö-in Monastery garden
- late XIth earliest treatise on the art of garden making
- 1141 Mötsuji Temple garden
- 1339 Saihöji Temple garden restored
- 1342 Tenryüji Temple garden remodeled
- 1397 Golden Pavilion
- 1482 Silver Pavilion
- 1488 Ryöanji rebuilding; 1499, construction of the rock garden
- Late XVth Jöeiji, Yamaguchi Temple garden
- 1513 Daisen-in, Daitokuji Temple garden
- Early XVIth Taizö-in, Myöshinji Temple garden
- Early XVIIth Shödenji Temple garden
- 1655 Katsura Imperial Villa garden
- Early XVIIth Katsura Family garden at Höfu
- Early XIXth Tökai-an, Myöshinji Temple garden
- 1960 Gyokudö Museum garden at Öme
In the spirit of Zen: gardens of dry
sand and stones:
Ryöanji, Daitokuji,
Ryosokuin, Daisen-in, etc...
Some images: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10).
Related texts and references
- "Ulysses", by Sonja Servomaa (2002)
- "Sand Tracing, Impermanence and Buddhist Wisdom", by Jean-Pierre Hébert (The Tricycle Winter 2000)
- "Reading Zen in the Rocks: The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden", by François Berthier (University of Chicago Press, 2000). Originally "Lire le zen dans la pierre" (Adam Biro 1987, 1997)]
- "The Role of Rock in the Japanese Dry Landscape Garden", by Graham Parkes (University of Chicago Press, 2000)
- "Sound of Stones", by Sonja Servomaa 1997 (pdf)
- "Designing the Earth", The Human Impulse to Shape Nature, by David Bourdon (Abrams 1995)
- "The Ocean in the Sand", Japan: From Landscape To Garden, by Mark Holborn (Shambala, 1978)
- "Zen and the Fine Arts", by Shin'Ichi Hisimatsu (Kodansha, 1971)
The contemporary Land Art tradition
Works by Cecile Abish, Herbert Bayer, Andrea Di Castro (Artwork with Global Technologies) , Carl Cheng, Richard Fleischner, Andy Goldsworthy (Fine dry sand, 1989), Lloyd Hamrol, Michael Heizer (Rift, 1968), Ho (Sisyphus I, 1998), Ned Kahn (Rift Zone), Richard Long (Vaeltava ympyrä, 1988), Laura Kurgan (You are here: Museu), Robert Morris, Isamu Noguchi (Sculpture to be seen from Mars, 1947), Gabriel Orozco (Sand on Table 1992), Nobuo Sekine, Gerry Smith and Bernahard Huwiler ("D" for Drawing, 1997), Robert Smithson, Antonio Tapies, James Turrell, Osmo Valtonen (Circulograph, 1983), Bill Vazan, etc...
Scientists do it with sand too, and one can think of Ernst F. F. Chladni's plates (1787), of Jules Antoine Lissajou's figures from a sand pendulum (1873), or of Nitin Sahwney and Chris Dodge (Sandscapes, 1996).
Even Earthquakes had a try at this (28/02/2001). And satellites too.
