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ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the image of the monkey in the paintings of two prominent monk-painters of the Edo period, Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768) and Sengai Gibon (1750-1837). The paper shows that although Hakuin and Sengai’s paintings are part of the Zen ink painting tradition, which began following the importation of Zen Buddhism from China at the beginning of the Kamakura period, at the same time they express an emancipation of this tradition. At the base of this free attitude stands the idea of breaking rules, conventions and conceptions, an idea that originated in Zen Buddhism. As a manifestation of this attitude, as I will claim, Hakuin and Sengai's paintings express a freedom from the common conventions of the ink painting tradition. This freedom is reflected in their painting through an amateurish and playful expression resulting in less concern with depicting paintings that are technically highly skilful, as the traditional early paintings were. The precedence of the religious world over the world of art is expressed in Hakuin and Sengai’s artwork and biographies. Accordingly, as well as undertaking an investigation of their paintings, through both the formalistic origins of the image of the monkey and its iconography, the examination is supported further with some biographical facts about Hakuin and Sengai. These clarify their relations with the world of art and distinguish them from earlier Zen painters.
The Art Bulletin
Of Modes and Manners in Japanese Ink Painting: Sesshū's Splashed Ink Landscape of 14952012 •
This article offers an extended visual analysis of the Zen master Dōgen’s (1200-1253) Universally Recommended Instructions for Zazen, arguing that Dōgen’s calligraphy is a carefully orchestrated performance. That is, it does precisely what it asks its readers to do: it sits calmly, evenly, at poised attention in a real world field of objects. The brushstrokes, and the entire aesthetic layout of the manuscript, enact seated meditation. Most analyses of Dōgen’s text have focused on its use and adaptation of Chinese source material, its place in the foundation of the new school of Sōtō Zen in Japan, and the ramifications of its doctrinal assertions for our understandings of the development of Japanese religious history. Drawing attention, instead, to the material, aesthetic, art historical, and performative qualities of the text represents a completely new approach, one which foregrounds the ways in which the visual and material qualities of this Buddhist artifact are closely intertwined with its efficacy as a religious object. In pursuing this line of analysis, this article participates in the broader ritual turn in Buddhist studies, while also seeking to make a particular intervention into art historical qualifications of Zen art.
Impressions, no. 35 (Spring 2014), pp. 96-135.
“The Stuff of Dreams: Kawanabe Kyōsai's Nirvana Painting of Matsuura Takeshirō" (2014)“The Stuff of Dreams: Kawanabe Kyōsai's Nirvana Painting of Matsuura Takeshirō.” Impressions, no. 35 (Spring 2014), pp. 96-135.
Following the introduction of Buddhism to Japan in the sixth century, the faith quickly became a defining feature of Japanese civilization, in large part because of the diverse and abundant visual culture it engendered that both reflected and shaped its religious practice. Although Japanese Buddhism remains a vital living tradition, until the last twenty years, its visual culture created after the 16th century has received little attention by scholars. Since then, Japanese and Western language studies on focused aspects of Buddhist paintings, sculpture, and architecture, with most addressing the early modern period (ca. 1600–1868), have proliferated but until the publication of Patricia Graham’s Faith and Power in Japanese Buddhist Art, 1600–2005 (2007), no survey of materials spanning this long time period had been attempted. This brief essay does not summarize Graham’s broad analysis of the thread of change over time and the plurality of later Buddhist practice in Japan manifest in its abundant visual culture. Instead, drawing on the examples presented in Graham’s study, it introduces significant and representative sites of worship from the 17th century to the present to highlight the ways the faith became transformed in tandem with changes in Japanese society, manifested in the convergence of patronage, image production, and religious devotion at these sites. Discussion is presented chronologically in four parts beginning with an overview of studies on Japanese Buddhism’s recent visual culture. This is followed by three sections on the sites and related imagery: Buddhist sites of worship in the early modern period, Buddhist sites of worship in the modern period before World War II, and Buddhist sites of worship in the modern period after World War II.
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