ABSTRACT
henri michaux remarks, in his book of travels, that the Chinese consider “la racine comme plus ‘nature’ que le tronc … Tout ce qui est tortueux dans la nature lui est une douce caresse”. This is not an oriental eccentricity; it is typical of an aesthetic that finds more power and significance in the generation of life than it its florescence. There is vitality in both root and branch, but the element that searches the earth, extending its form in opposition to hard particles of rock, by that very struggle seems to win a superior grace. By contrast, how banal seem to be those regular or symmetrical forms that have matured in the unresistent air.
