[Joseonggwan's Global Humanities Journey] Ando Tadao's Apple and Goethe's Youthful Spirit

Museum SAN in Wonju, Gangwon Province, held the "Tadao Ando - Youth Exhibition" from April to October last year to commemorate its 10th anniversary. At the entrance of the "Tadao Ando - Youth Exhibition" hall, a large green apple greeted visitors for seven months. Its color alone looks so sour that just looking at it makes your gums cringe.

Ando symbolized the exhibition theme of "youth" with an unripe apple. If you look closely at the green apple, you will see Tadao's signature along with this phrase: ‘永遠の靑春へ’

Tadao Ando

Translated, it means "To eternal youth." As a living master of architecture, why did Ando choose "youth" as the theme for his exhibition? At a press conference held before the exhibition opened, Tadao said this:

"To maintain hope, I walk 10,000 steps a day and take 30 minutes for each meal. I read books every day and make sure to study for one to two hours daily. Ah, and I touch my 'green apple' every day. To live while maintaining youth, such efforts to pursue newness are absolutely necessary. We live in an era where people live to 100 years old. To live that long, intellectual stamina, physical stamina, and above all, hope must always be present."

The world praises him as a master, but Ando says his architectural world is incomplete (未完成). He emphasizes that there is no other way but to constantly challenge himself until he reaches perfection. The incomplete state moving toward perfection is youth.

Painters generally like to paint red apples. Among domestic painters, there is one who paints large apples. After seeing the green apple at Museum SAN, I often take out the image of Ando's green apple saved on my phone whenever I feel bored.

An apple at the entrance of the Tadao Ando - Youth Exhibition held last year at Wonju Museum SAN.
Photo by Seonggwan Jo

Though a distant memory, I ate green apples once or twice in my childhood. While playing with friends catching fish by the stream, I picked up a green apple floating down the floodwaters, took a bite or two, and then discarded it. Green apples often float down the stream after heavy rain.

Green apples are sour. Amid the sourness, there is also an astringent taste. That taste makes your body cringe. Because they are unripe, they have no real flavor. Or rather, the concept of flavor transcends existence. Green apples are not a color that makes your mouth water, yet strangely, their afterimage does not fade from my mind.

Thinking about the image of green apples, the first person who came to mind was Isaac Newton (1642?1727). Strangely, it was not Steve Jobs but Isaac Newton. I do not know why.

In London's theater district, the West End, there is Leicester Square. Around the small park in Leicester Square stand busts of British figures who changed the world. These statues represent people who changed world history from Britain. The first person to catch my eye there was Newton.

Portrait of Isaac Newton from 1689.
[Photo by Wikipedia]

Before Newton came into the world, how many humans had visited this planet? People living in temperate zones must have bitten into apples at least once or twice. They must have also seen apples fallen from apple trees.

Only Newton wanted to understand why apples fall. Only Newton questioned the falling apple.

Why does it fall?

Why doesn't it stay hanging on the branch but falls?

Humans are never free from the influence of gravity even for a moment in their lives. Falling off the bed while sleeping, eyelids drooping with age, spilling rice grains while eating?all are due to gravity. Botox and filler treatments are human resistance to the law of gravity. Without gravity, humans could not walk upright. Humans would not be human.

Earth is the only known planet in the universe (so far) governed by gravity. Without Newton's gravity, or if someone like Newton had appeared later, humanity's understanding of the world would have been very different.

Maurice Denis (1870?1943), a French painter and writer, is regarded as an important figure in the transition from 19th-century Impressionism to modern art. As a writer, he contributed to laying the foundations of Cubism and abstract art. Denis left a famous remark in his critical essays titled "Theory":

"Eve's apple, Newton's apple, and C?zanne's apple changed human history."

We will omit Eve's apple here. What about Paul C?zanne's (1839?1906) "apple"? More precisely, Paul C?zanne's "Still Life with a Basket of Apples and a Bottle" (1904).

'Still life with bottle and apple basket'.
Photo by Shikigo Art College Collection

Since the Renaissance, Western art has been governed by three laws. These three laws constrained Western painting for over 2,000 years. First, the object or subject is depicted beautifully; second, mathematical perspective is applied to create a fixed viewpoint; third, chiaroscuro is used to create volume in the subject. Let’s carefully examine "Still Life with a Basket of Apples and a Bottle." Perspective is thoroughly ignored.

Artists who made a mark in art history and created new genres all challenged the fixed ideas that constrained Western art. Pablo Picasso, who led Cubism, and Henri Matisse, who led Fauvism, both showed rebellious attitudes toward Western art conventions. Picasso's remark, "Paul C?zanne is the father of us all," encapsulates everything.

Paul C?zanne was a childhood friend of novelist ?mile Zola. A film has been made highlighting their relationship. C?zanne took a long time to gain recognition for his work. He almost failed to be appreciated during his lifetime because he did not conform to established styles and challenged things in his own way. His artistic philosophy was an attitude of dissatisfaction with himself and a refusal to be submissive to himself and the world.

Georg Baselitz, a German Neo-Expressionist master famous for his upside-down paintings, admires the Japanese Edo period ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760?1849). Baselitz confessed in an interview that he thinks of himself like Hokusai.

"Hokusai is said to have never been satisfied with his work until late in life. Because he was rarely satisfied, he could start new works repeatedly."

Returning to Ando, when people think of Ando, they inevitably think of exposed concrete. Anyone seeing Ando's exposed concrete for the first time without prior knowledge might feel this way:

"Huh, why did they stop finishing it halfway?"

Why did Ando attempt exposed concrete that looks unfinished? He combined Japan's traditional aesthetic of wabi-sabi (侘び寂び) with modern architecture. Wabi-sabi is an aesthetic concept emphasizing unadorned purity and pursuing the beauty of imperfection. It is a phrase often used by Japanese guides when explaining Kyoto's Ry?an-ji (龍安寺) or Ginkaku-ji (銀閣寺).

The Karesansui garden of Ryoanji in Kyoto.
Photo by Seongkwan Cho

Prague novelist Franz Kafka admired and privately studied the writer Goethe from Weimar. Kafka surrendered to Goethe:

"What I struggled to realize, Goethe already said."

Goethe left many gem-like quotes. Among them, a phrase similar to Ando's apple theory is this:

"If you want to achieve something great, you must remain young even as you grow old."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.