Today's New York Times on a collector of Japanese art who died on December 8th—
In 1954, she made her first trip to Japan. The visit had been suggested by the architect Walter Gropius, whose disciple Benjamin Thompson was designing a modernist house for her in Oyster Bay, on Long Island.
Gropius, a titan of the Bauhaus school, was deeply influenced by the Japanese aesthetic and wanted her to experience its clean, spare lines firsthand.
See Dec. 8th in this journal for the following clean, spare lines:
Japanese character
for "field"
Related material: Looking Deeply and Field.