Contribution to Book
Daoist Aesthetics of the Everyday and the Fantastical
Artistic Visions and the Promise of Beauty: Cross-Cultural Perspectives
(2017)
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the classical Daoist text, the Zhuangzi, an extremely important text for sources and influences on Chinese art and aesthetics. It explores several metaphors and images in the text in order to think through Daoist aesthetics in terms of the everyday, the mundane, and the ordinary, and in terms of the fantastical, the bizarre, and the extraordinary. It then discusses these aesthetic ideas in connection with Daoist practices of self-cultivation, including especially a focus on the use of art practices such as calligraphy as forms of cultivation. This theme is developed further by thinking through ways in which Daoist aesthetics evoke the idea of an artful life, rather than art qua art.
Keywords
- Chinese aesthetics,
- Zhuangzi,
- Aesthetic integration,
- Cook Ding,
- Wheelwright Bian,
- Calligraphy,
- Tao Yuanming
Disciplines
Publication Date
January 1, 2017
Editor
Kathleen Higgins, Shakti Maira, Sonia Sikka
Publisher
Springer Press
ISBN
978-3-319-43891-7
DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-43893-1_19
Citation Information
Sarah Mattice. "Daoist Aesthetics of the Everyday and the Fantastical" 1stArtistic Visions and the Promise of Beauty: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (2017) p. 251 - 265 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sarah-mattice/2/