Aesthetic of Imperfection:

Discovering the Value of Discontinuity and Fragmentation

Murielle Hladik
National Superior School of Archtecture of Saint-Etienne

Abstract
Through my contribution, I would like to raise the question, how the “aesthetic of imperfection” was admit-
ted into the realm of Western collections of Oriental Art? While the great European collections of Oriental art were
focussing on Chinese ceramics by paying tribute to the values of perfection and symmetry, during the last decade
of the nineteenth and even more at the beginning of the twentieth century, a very different aesthetic value made
its way into the mindset of connaisseurs and art collectors. By a detailed survey, this paper will trace the arrival of
Japanese pottery and ceramics in European collections. The values of discontinuity, fragmentation and imperfec-
tion, deeply anchored in tea ceremony, were expressed in Okakura Tenshin’s writings (The Book of Tea, 1906). This
most seminal book had been translated into German in 1919 and into French in 1927. It contributed to a change
of vision, a shift of paradigms. In my paper, I will investigate into the conditions of a new and surprising apprecia-
tion of Japanese taste, which can only be understood through the preparation of a specifically European desire for
imperfection. This desire, as I will show, relies on a sensitive substrate, elaborated and introduced by new visual
experiments of avant-garde groups. By adopting the values of discontinuity and fragmentation, the artists of the
avant-garde develop, in their own visual language, a new type of ceramics, Arts & Crafts, design and architecture,
governed by the idea of indetermination and je-ne-sais-quoi. During the early Modernist time, East and West able
to agree upon a common, yet different reference to value of imperfection that helped them to identify themselves
through mutual projections.

Discontinuity and Fragmentation

If the great European collections of Oriental art were focussing on Chinese ceramics (valuing perfec-
tion and symmetry), in the last decade of the nineteenth and even more at the beginning of the twentieth
century, a very different aesthetic value made its way into the mindset of connaisseurs and art collectors. Fur-
thermore, I would like to show, how the “aesthetic of imperfection” was admitted into the realm of Western
collections of Oriental Art.
In the realm of Oriental ceramics, we can notice a shift of taste at the very end of the nineteenth centu-
ry, leading to a different perception of Japanese aesthetics. During the last decade of the nineteenth century,

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the first ceramics related to the Tea Ceremony (chanoyu) were imported into Europe. Already in 1883, the
book of Louis Gonse on Japanese Art, L’art japonais,1 offered an introduction to Japanese ceramics. On Louis
Gonse’s request, the chapter on ceramics was written by the great art dealer and collector Siegfried Bing.
In France, the place and role of art collectors and connaissors during the nineteenth century, such as Louis
Gonse (1846–1921), Emile Guimet (1836–1918), Henri Cernuschi (1821–1896) or Edmond de Gon-
court (1822–1896) as well as art dealers such as Siegfried Bing (1838–1905) and Hayashi Tadamasa 林忠
正 (1853–1906) should not be underestimated2. Art dealers provided the European market with ceramics,
block-prints or other artwork. Bing and Hayashi acted as “ferrymen” between East and West: they decisively
contributed to the transfer of both objects and knowledge. In this same period, European artists discover a
fictional ‘Japan’ as a radical ‘otherness’ corresponding to the request of an imaginary world. This exchange
between East and West gave birth to a new European fashion, which has been extensively studied under the
label of “Japonism.” 3 The imported far Eastern culture is adopted by European artists who consider Japan as
a kind of cliché offering a surface of projection for exotic otherness.
How was it possible that an elitist knowledge, primarily accessible only to small groups, was dissemi-
nated within Western societies? I would like to emphasize on the “reception” and the question: how was a
negative assessment—the rustic appearance, and even ‘vulgar’ character of ceramics—transformed into a
positive value of imperfection and fragmentation, which constitutes a major feature of the aesthetics of tea?
At the end of the nineteenth century, the great exhibitions contributed to spreading to a wider public
the awareness and taste for a so-called ‘Japanese style’, which arose first among the small circle of avant-garde
artists. In Paris, the collections of Siegfried Bing and Philippe Burty (1830–1890) were displayed at the
Exposition universelle of 18784. Then later on, the 1900 Exposition, held in Paris, was marked by a strong
Japanese presence. Both events were decisive for the new appraisal of Japanese aesthetics.
Emile Guimet, after whom is named the famous Parisian Museum, visited the Philadelphia exhibition
in 1876,5 before travelling through Japan, China and India between 1876 and 1877. Since Guimet had a
strong interest in the history of Asian religions, he met, during his journey, a large number of Buddhist and
Shintō priests. Guimet was accompanied by the French painter Felix Régamey (1844–1907). When the Gui-
met Museum in Paris was inaugurated in 1889, a tea ceremony was celebrated by the Japanese Ambassador

<１ Gonse, Louis, L’art japonais, Paris: A. Quantin, 1883.

2 See, Imai Yûko, “Changes in French Tastes for Japanese Ceramics”, Japan Review, 2004, 16, pp. 101–127. Imai Yûko
identified 26 main French Collectors, specific to the reversal of taste of this period.
3 The reciprocal influence on Western mind to Japanese aesthetics arose (See Inaga & Miura as well as research conducted
by The Japonism Society).
4 Inaga Shigemi, “Arts et métiers traditionnels au Japon face à la Modernité occidentale (1850–1900): à l’écoute d’Henri
Focillon” (Maison franco-japonaise à Tokyo, nov. 2008). Morever, as it is shown by Inaga Shigemi, the Trocadero exhibition
in 1878 displayed Tea instruments: “Un changement drastique commence à s’opérer aux alentours de l’Exposition universelle
à Paris de 1878.”
5 Some of the Japanese objects related with the Tea ceremony displayed in the 1876 Philadelphia exhibition are now in the
collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

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in honor of Leon Gambetta (1838–1882) and Emile Guimet6.

Cernuschi’s collection is based on a real critical knowledge of historical developments in ceramic tech-
nology. While Cernuschi was in possession of a huge collection of Japanese ceramics, very few items were
actually displayed to the public. Thus, these Japanese collections remained partly ‘invisible’ for a few de-
cades.7 The reason for this might be found in the prevailing preference for Chinese ceramics. During all
the nineteenth century, in order to correspond to Western taste, Japanese potters even specially produced
porcelains in Chinese style which were mainly destined for exportation.

Mutual Projections
Through this vogue of porcelain, it is interesting and amusing to notice that a German chemist, Got-
tfried Wagner (1831–1892) played an important role in the transfer of technology into Japan especially in
relation to the use of (chemical) cobalt blue 8. While Japanese artists observe the European evolution in order
to renew their own production, Western artists start to look at Japanese art in a new way, allowing them to
overcome the constraints of academism. As a matter of fact, Japanese potters did not only produce objects
for export, they also created pieces, as, for example, imitations of Delft earthenware, by using the most con-
temporary modernist language.
Tea instruments, which played a central place in the process of understanding of this aesthetics of
imperfection, were first displayed during the Great Exhibitions and become part of national collections. Tea
instruments appeared in the great collection of Henri Cernuschi. They are mainly the legacy of Cernuschi
(1896). Two others objects which entered the collection more recently are the legacy of the French artist,
Colette Beleys (1911–1998). These two items were identified in 1880, through a notice of Ninagawa Nori-
tane 蜷川式胤 (1835–82), a renowned antiquarian and important art collector of Japanese ceramics, who
was in contact with the art dealer Siegfried Bing. Ninagawa was one of the founders of the Tokyo National
Museum and also served as an intermediary in the constitution of the collections of the British Museum.
In this vogue of Japonism, the painter Raphaël Collin (1850–1916) was well known for his collections
of ceramics in which many items of tea ceremony instruments could be found. Collin donated his collection
to the Musée des Beaux Arts of Lyon, which, later on, entered the collection of the Parisian Musée Guimet.
Beside his fascination for Japanese art, Raphaël Collin was also in direct contact with the one of the major
Japanese artists of the time in Paris9. Kuroda Seiki 黒田清輝 (1866–1924), introduced to him by Hayashi,

6 Maucuer, Michel, Céramiques japonaises. Un choix dans les collections du Musée Cernuschi, Paris: Musée Cernuschi, 2009,
p. 16.
7 cf. Maucuer, op. cit.
8 Wagner went to Nagasaki at the very first opening of Meiji (1868); he began to teach at Tokyo Institute of Technology in
1871. He was also actively involved in the Japanese participation in the World’s fair in Vienna (1873) and Philadelphia (1876).
Matsubara Ryûichi, “Les arts décoratifs japonais de 1900 à 1930. Entre tradition et changement”, In: Les arts décoratifs face à
la modernité 1900/1930 [catalogue d’exposition], Paris: Maison de la Culture du Japon à Paris, 2010.
9 “Raphaël Collin et le Japon”, In: Miura, Atsushi, Histoire de peinture entre France et Japon, Tokyo: The University of Tokyo.
Center for Philosophy, 2009, pp. 193–210.

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Murielle Hladik

works in his atelier. It is probably not a coincidence that Kuroda’s painting Lakeside (1897) was displayed at
the 1900’s exposition universelle held in Paris.

In Praise for Imperfection and the Unfinished

The values of discontinuity, fragmentation and imperfection, deeply anchored in Tea ceremony, were
first expressed in Okakura Tenshin’s writings (The Book of Tea, 1906). In the first opening lines of his Book of
Tea, originally published in English, Okakura already refers to the idea of imperfection when he reveals the
philosophical background of tea ceremony (chanoyu) to his Western audience:

“Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. /…/ Teaism is a cult founded on the
adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. /…/ It is a essentially
worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this
impossible thing we know as life”10

Okakura’s seminal book had been translated into German (Das Buch vom Tee) in 1919 and into French
(Le Livre du Thé) in 1927 (fig. 1) 11 and induced a change of vision,
a shift of paradigms in the representation of Japanese aesthetics. In
France, the translation made its way into in the private library of
Romain Rolland (1866–1944) who, through his knowledge of In-
dian culture, helped to spread the vogue of Orientalism. Romain
Rolland was also a close friend of the composer and Indian poet
Rabîndranath Tagore (1861–1941).
Moreover, I would like to explore the specific relationship that
had developed between Europe and Japan during the early years
of the twentieth century. When Western avant-garde groups and
crafts movements started their experimental investigations, similar
Fig. 1 Okakura Kakuzô, Le Livre du Thé, renewals took place in Japan. Indeed, one can observe a parallel pro-
(traduit de l’anglais par Gabriel Mourey),
Coll. Orientales, Paris: Delpeuch, 1927.
cess: within the European context, one can observe issues related
to handicrafts, the emergence of Arts & Crafts, and the ‘Gothic
Revival’ movement in England or the Deutscher Werkbund movement in Germany. On the Japanese side, a

10 “The cup of Humanity”, Okakura Kakuzô, The Book of Tea, New-York, Duffield & Company, 1912. [1rst publication,
1906].
11 Okakura Kakuzô, Le Livre du Thé, (traduit de l’anglais par Gabriel Mourey), Coll. Orientales, Paris: Delpeuch, 1927.
The French translation was published in only 150 copies and Romain Rolland was in possession of the Series I. Das Buch vom
Tee (Aus dem Englishen von Marguerite und Ulrich Steindorff), Leipzig: Insel-Verl., 1933 [first published in 1919]. These two
books were in possession of Romain Roland’s personal Library. Furthermore, the first German publication of Das Buch vom Tee
occured prior to the French one, already in 1919.

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 Aesthetic of Imperfection: Discovering the Value of Discontinuity and Fragmentation

similar interest occurs in the 1920’s when the avant-garde movements manifest their interest in the renewal
of handicraft work, which, from 1925 on, becomes a key issue of the mingei movement. This revision of
the past associated with the creation of new forms appears retrospectively as a fundamental step towards the
construction of “modernity” and even prepares the ground for the discourses on “national identity”.
In her introduction to Okakura’s book, The Ideals of the East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan,
Sister Nivedita of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda (alias Margaret E. Noble (1867–1911) highlights this relation-
ship:

“[…] We shall see in Japanese Art a recrudescence of ideals parallel to that of Medieval Revival of
the Past century in England. What would be the simultaneous development in China? In India? For
whatever influences the Eastern Island Empire must influence the others. Our author has been in
vain if he was not conclusively proved that contention with which this little handbook opens, that
Asia, the Great Mother, is for ever One.”12

These lines obviously echo the first words of Okakura’s book often cited:

“Asia is one. The Himalayas divide, only to accentuate, two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with
its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even
the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and
Universal, which is common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them from those
maritime peoples of the Mediterranean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to
search out the means, not the end, of life.”13

A Creative Reinterpretation of History: “Shadows of the Past”14

The refinement and detachment, as it was valued by the Tea Ceremony, can be primarily understood in
an unintentional beauty of nature (shizen no bi 自然の美). The notion of detachment and ordinary life was
especially encountered in the concept of wabi 侘び.15 It is said that an object previously used in everyday
life, like an ordinary Korean bowl of rice, has been used by Sen no Rikyû within the tea ceremony. While the
specific object has first been used for another purpose, through this displacement, the change of the object’s

12 Introduction, by Sister Nivedita, of Ramakrishna-Vivekânanda (Calcutta), p. xxiv). In: Okakura Kakuzo, The Ideals of the
East with Special Reference to the Art of Japan. Rutland, Vermond & Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle co. Publishers, 1970. [originally
published: New-York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1904].
13 Okakura, The Ideals of the East, op. cit. p. 1.
14 I borrow this title from the very incisive essay of Tankha, Brij (ed. by), Okakura Tenshin and Pan-Asianism: Shadows of the
Past. Kent: Global Oriental Ltd., 2009.
15 Kōshirō Haga, “The Wabi Aesthetics Through the Ages”, In: N. G. Hume (ed.), Japanese Aesthetics: A Reader. New York:
State University of New-York Press, 1995, pp. 245–278.

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Murielle Hladik

context offered a certain distance, which allowed aesthetic appreciation. It has been touched by many hands,
giving it the authenticity of the patina and traces of history. The value of an object, initially considered as
“common”, will be considerably extended and almost considered as a work of art. The beauty of imperfection
can be detected in objects or ceramics with irregularity or, even, missing parts.16
Furthermore, what is most interesting in Okakura’s writings, from The Book of Tea to The ideals of the
East, is his polemical and political reinterpretation of history. The updating of the Sen no Rikyū ideal cor-
responds to a creative re-appropriation of the past: in a word, the invention of a “myth”. This re-invention
of tradition will be the basis for the Japanese construction of modernity. As it has been emphasized by the
German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, in his Observations of Modernity, modernity was built on the basis of
a constant reinvention and the reactivation of the past:

« The problems of contemporary society are not problems in maintaining a heritage, whether in
education or elsewhere. Much more important problem is the constant creation of otherness ».17

Our Modernity is based on these differences and similarities between otherness and differentiation.
But what is “tradition” (dentō 伝統)? “Tradition” is always, for each given period of time, a kind of “re-
invention”. [On this topic, and the construction of history as a ‘fiction’, see David Lowenthal, The Past is a
Foreign Country]18. Inaga Shigemi also suggested to revisit tradition in order to use it as a still fertile ground
for contemporary creation.19
Even modernity (モダン) understood as an eradication of the past and a so-called tabula rasa (creation
of the ‘newness’), might be better described as a reinvented and revisited tradition. Furthermore, one may
quote in this context the attempt of the Kyoto School to ‘overcome’ Modernity. Okakura with his desire to
create an Asian identity thought Art (“Asia is one”) has been assimilated with this movement while his desire
was maybe based on a different level. As it was pointed out by Karatani Kōjin, the use of Okakura’s book
in the context of ‘Overcoming Modernity’ was not related to the author’s intentions, but rather, Okakura’s
writings were profoundly related to political meaning and the reinterpretation of the Indian philosophical
notion of Advaitism (non-duality) 20.
In the early twentieth century, this aesthetic of irregularity is described by Yanagi Sōetsu (Muneyoshi)
柳宗悦(1889–1961) in his book translated by his English collaborator Bernard Leach, The Unknown Crafts-

16 Hladik, Murielle, Traces et fragments dans l’esthétique japonaise. Wavres: Mardaga, 2008.
17 Luhmann, Niklas, Observations in Modernity, (trans. by William Whobrey), Stanford California, Stanford University
Press, 1998 [Beobachtungen der Moderne, 1992, Westdeutsche Verlag], p. 3.
18 Lowenthal, David, The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
19 Inaga Shigemi & Fister, Patricia (ed.), Traditional Japanese Arts and Crafts in the 21th Century: Reconsidering the Future from
an International Perspective, Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2005.
20 See, Karatani Kōjin, “Japan as Art Museum. Okakura Tenshin and Fenollosa”; In: Michael F. Marra (ed.), A History of
Modern Japanese Aesthetics, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001, pp. 43–52.

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man. Rediscovering the beauty in the banal objects of everyday life, whose clear lines are the work of anony-
mous craftsmen, gave birth to the artistic movement of Mingei art. The tea bowl (chawan 茶碗) called “Ido
Kizaemon” Ido chawan 井戸茶碗 or Kizaemon 喜左衛門 (Korea, Yi Dynasty, 16th century) is described by
Yanagi Sōetsu as a “model of beauty.” The name refers to Takeda Kizaemon, an Osaka merchant and former
owner of the bowl.21 Yanagi appreciated the irregularly shaped object with slight imperfections. It may be
noted, however that it is difficult to reproduce artificially this very particular beauty: a desire to create artifi-
cial irregularity would be doomed to failure. Yanagi warns us against the incomprehension of those who seek
to reproduce the irregularity unintentional. Its beauty would vanish.

A European Desire for Imperfection

If Japan can be seen from European eyes, in Karatani’s words, as an ‘aesthetic fiction’22, I would like
to investigate into the conditions of a new and surprising appreciation of Japanese taste, which can only be
understood through the preparation of a specifically European desire for imperfection.
While the colonial powers of the West exported their governmental and administrative systems to the
countries under their rule, Japan, a country which was not dominated by the West—but rather developing
it’s own colonialism in Asia—served as a model for radical otherness. The Western desire for imperfection
was certainly stimulated by this radical otherness found in Japanese culture and especially the value of tea
ceremony. This desire relies on a sensitive substrate elaborated and introduced by new visual experiments of
avant-garde groups. By adopting the values of discontinuity, fragmentation and asymmetry, the artists of the
avant-garde develop, in their own visual language a new type of ceramics, Art & Craft, design and architec-
ture governed by the idea of indetermination and je-ne-sais-quoi (Jankélévich). When perfection is shattered
by a slight imperfection then, in the words of the German philosopher Hannes Böhringer, it becomes “more-
than-perfect”: imperfection transcends perfection (Plum quam Perfectum).
It is essential to note that even before the introduction of Japanese ceramics at the end of the nine-
teenth century, a specific appreciation of imperfection can be found in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
tury painting. It is as if a “seed of imperfection” had been planted and would be dormant, germinating only
once the surrounding context is ready for the emergence of the new. My hypothesis is that “Japonism” and
the new appreciation for the ceramic’s imperfection beauty will be the determinant factor for further devel-
opment of the seeds.
What could be the relationships between the Japanese Muromachi period very famous painter Sesshū
Toyō 雪舟等楊 (1420–1506), the English eighteenth century crazy theoretician Alexander Cozens, who
published a Treatise on painting using the art of blots as A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing

21 Importance of the pedigree of the bowl can be observed in its former owners.
22 Karatani Kōjin, op. cit. p. 44. As Karatani noticed, Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) wrote in his letters that he “wanted
to look like a Japanese”. If European artists wanted to be able to look with ‘Japanese Eyes’, it corresponds to a shift of the gaze
[un ‘décentrement du regard’].

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Murielle Hladik

Original Compositions of Landscape” (1786) (Fig.

2), and the French nineteenth century writer
Victor Hugo? Belonging to radically different
historical periods, there is maybe no evidence
for any relation. Victor Hugo is well known as
a writer, less known as a painter and as a ‘Ruin
lover.’ He also wrote a fervent defense of the
Chinese Yuanming Yuan gardens (圓明園). In
1861, he wrote a letter, in which he deplores
the criminal and barbaric act of the destruction
of the famous Old Summer Palace.23 Whereas
there is no sign of evidence for any direct histori-
cal relation, there is a kind of similar wish or de-
sire for the Void: the beauty of the non-finished
and the blank space which slowly permeated the

Fig. 2 Cozens, Alexander, A New Method of Assisting the Invention realm of Western aesthetic.
in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape (1786). In the very modern poem of Mallarmé
“Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard”, first
published in 1897, again maybe no evidence of any Oriental or Japanese influence. But on this idea of blank
used as a system of respiration we could find parallels with the use of Void and dynamism of the “blank
space”—We could also find similar research for typology, accentuation of the void, diagonal and dynamism
in all the avant-gardes from the Russian School Vhutemas to the Bauhaus experimentations.—Paul Claudel
later describes Mallarmé’s poem and the verse as “a single idea isolated with white.” He also wrote, in an
incisive manner, “the poem is made of white that remains on paper”24 thus joining the notion of the white
space (empty) in latency to be filled (kūhaku 空白). Claudel even published in 1927 the Hyaku sen chō 百
扇帖, One Hundred Sentences Written on Fans (Fig. 3).25 As a very sensitive ambassador for Japanese culture,
Claudel referred directly to the history of calligraphy and poetry.
The French philosopher Jankélévich wrote on the concept of “accident” as an element of hazard and
chance that can enter into the process of creation, thus giving us a sense of “indetermination” and “passage
of time” characteristic of the process of creation and the art of the twelfth century.
Therefore, void, blank space, asymmetry and imperfection slowly permeated the realm of Western
culture (fig. 4). Japanese aesthetics helped to affirm and consolidate a Western appreciation of imperfection
which was already latently present in the history of Western art. But the blooming appearance of this phe-

23 The Yuanming Yuan Gardens were burned and looted by British and French troops in 1860.
24 Claudel Décrit le vers comme: «une idée isolée par du blac»; «de poème est fait du blanc qui reste sur le papier»
25 Claudel, Paul, Cent phrases pour éventails 『百扇帖』 (Hyaku sen chō), Tokyo, Ed. Koshiba (小柴印刷所), 1927.

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 Aesthetic of Imperfection: Discovering the Value of Discontinuity and Fragmentation

nomena (hana ga saki 花が咲き) was only possible in the late nineteenth
century. Ceramics associated with the tea ceremony were a decisive ele-
ment in this new appreciation for the rough, unfinished and imperfect,
allowing a radical renewal of artistic expression.

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