Paris, France — As Jeff Bezos takes us into space, The Gourmet Gazette humbly takes you on a journey into the singular world of the gardens of Asia. From Lahore to Kyoto, gardens in Asia have historically been an essential quest for harmony, a quest for the garden to be one with the sky. These are often spectacular creations, an idealized representation of nature. France’s National Museum of Asian Arts -The Guimet is hosting an exhibition devoted to these gardens through some 80 works emanating from the museum’s rich collection of Indian miniatures, engravings, photographs, textiles and ceramics. So if you can’t be in France right now, The Gourmet Gazette brings the show to you.

There are gardens for Buddhist temples, for princes and emperors, for scholars of Confucianism, tea gardens, gardens dreamed up by poets. Climate, typological and geological differences abound opening up the opportunity for comparisons, but similarities as well. There is an iris emerging from a rock, ladies in Japan admiring the blossoming of peonies, a raja in his garden, it is an exhibition that takes the visitor into a celebration of the garden.

These are all enclosed gardens bringing together water and architecture through pavilions, fountains, rocks, mountains and vast perspectives hiding secretive pathways. The garden is an aesthetic experience, but a spiritual one, too. These are places to find harmony, diverse corners of paradise be they Moslem, Taoist or Buddhist. They have been depicted in Indian miniatures, long painted scrolls in China, miniaturized on trays in Japan and evoked on a diverse array of objects ranging from vases to textiles. The exhibition is being presented until September 20th
©Trish Valicenti for The Gourmet Gazette
http://www.guimet.fr