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A washing machine molded out of dirt. Thirty thousand red tulips mashed and squeezed into a bloody-looking pulp. A sweater woven of vines and a towering mountain of radishes. What do these have in common? They're all works of modern art--always startling, often beautiful, at times self-indulgent or absurd. And all are considered ikebana.
Indeed, ikebana has come a long way from its origins as offertory flowers for the gods or its more recent stereotype as a mainly feminine practice often learned as part of a Japanese woman's preparation for marriage. The word "ikebana" is deceptively translated into English as "flower arrangement," connoting a decorative craft practiced at garden club meetings rather than a consequential 500-year-old art form. Contemporary ikebana artists have no doubt that what they practice is an art, as serious and significant as abstract painting or sculpture. Their critics in the ikebana world counter that their work may be art, but is it ikebana?
In general, most works of contemporary ikebana break with convention in a few important ways. They usually do not use flower containers--vases, basins, baskets--but stand on their own, as their own containers. And the works have ventured out from the tokonoma to occupy unlimited space. Like sculpture, contemporary ikebana can be appreciated from any angle, and like modern art installations, it has left behind the sterile confines of an exhibition space to climb building walls, flap in the outdoor breeze, or occupy an entire room in a gallery. Unlike traditional arrangements, contemporary ikebana is integrated with its surroundings.
Many contemporary works include other common elements. For instance, in a departure from the basically naturalistic forms pursued in traditional ikebana, contemporary ikebanists flout all conventions governing style and technique. Petals are often removed from flowers, crushed or applied to walls as a kind of living tapestry, and floral materials can be tightly bound and bled or mashed together until they are no longer recognizable. The ikebana may be combined with lighting or environmental arts, or it may be integrated into dance or musical performances. The artist's objective differs from that of traditional practitioners, which is to communicate the essential character of living floral materials by removing them to a new environment, where they are cut and shaped to become...