Stamp - Japan-France Joint Issue - Ginkaku-ji Temple

The art of the garden is inseparable from the representation of the world that underlies it. that underlies it. And, in Japan as in France, it reflects the essence of the culture that produces it. Just take a stroll through the garden of Ginkaku-ji, the temple of the on the outskirts of Kyoto, to perceive the restraint of the gesture to perceive the restraint of the gesture that presided over its design, the role of the layering of planes, and perspectives, the interplay of concealment and gradual revelation the dialogue between full and empty spaces, vegetation and water, symbol of purification, with the buildings. The ensemble was composed in 1482 during the Muromachi period (1336- 1573), the apogee of Japanese garden architecture, by Soami, one of its masters, for the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa. Inspired by Zen Buddhism, the garden emphasizes the expression of beauty through the serenity, inviting meditation, and is famous for its sandy parterre decorated with a symbolic representation of Mount Fuji. The site became a temple on the death of the shogun and was rebuilt after a fire in the mid-16th century. Vaux-le-Vicomte, on the other hand, embodies another tradition, another of nature and its magnificence. Here, perspective does not play with illusion, it imposes itself with geometric rigor, it draws embroidery of shrubs, pruning, cutting and terraces, water features in basins, just as they did in Renaissance Italy. symbolizes man's rationality and power, his manifest destiny, which manifest destiny that determines social order. Far from blending into nature nature, the buildings impose themselves on it. At Vaux, Louis XIV's superintendent of finances, Nicolas Fouquet, invited the greatest names in classicism, including gardener Le Nôtre Nôtre, who also designed the gardens of Versailles, to create one of his most one of his most brilliant creations.

Création Manon Diemer.