Origami Aesthetics: Opening

Recovering slowly from the opening of the Tikotin show... According to the Museum’s final count, 594 people packed themselves into the exhibition halls in the two hours of the opening on mid-day Friday; I’m told they haven’t seen such crowds in many years.

All of this initial success can be credited neither to the quality of the show (which no one knew about beforehand) nor to the publicity (which was pretty slight). Rather there must be a great pent-up curiosity in the public about origami. Now however that the exhibit's been seen I expect the numbers only to climb as word of mouth spreads.

The dignitaries came too, of course, and warmly congratulated each other. I was moved however to hear Tikotin's daughter Ilana tell about that funny little man, Yoshizawa, who would come to their home in Japan, and who would never stop folding.

The night before the opening I went round & counted how many discrete objects there were (a herd of horses counts as six objects, a work of modular origami as one). My total came to 162. The number of “installations” or “sensible groupings” (a herd is one object, a pair of birds another)--which is more subjective--varies between 60 and 100.

Here is a very modest sampling. Click on the images for a higher-res view.

Saadya

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"Treasures of Origami Art", works by 25 world-leading origami artists, showing now through the end of the year at the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art, 89 Hanassi Avenue, Haifa, Israel. Please call the Museum for hours: 04-838-3554.
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Robert Lang's Cervids

Linda Mihara's Connected Crane Quilt

Yoshizawa main table

Yoshizawa Swan family

Top: Giang Dinh's fine wet-folded series, "The Dance". Below it is Yoshizawa's Elephant, one of the works that was in the original 1955 Amsterdam exhibit arranged with the help of Felix Tikotin.