Week XIII: Part 2

TRADITIONAL JAPAN: ZEN ART

Key Work:

  • Sesshu, "Winter Landscape" (La Plante, Figure 25.7, 25.8)
  • Sesson, "Wind and Water"

    READING: La Plante, Asian Art, pp. 231-244.

    HISTORY:

    TERMS:

    TIME LINE: (c. 1500 A.D.)

    FURTHER READING: Tanaka, I. Japanese Ink Painting: Shubun to Sesshu, Tokyo, 1972.

    NOTES: What arts are important to the Zen religion? Why?

    THE ART OF ZEN

    During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a period of civil disorder in Japan, one could find islands of repose and tranquility in many bustling urban centers. As one stepped through the gate into the precinct of a temple or teahouse, one was le ad from the ordinary world to another completely devoted to repose and beauty. Into the teahouse, the host invited friends of like artistic tastes not only to partake of tea, but also to enjoy an inspired choice of art objects. The ceramic and lacquer w ares used for serving the tea, scroll paintings, and the garden contributed to the harmony of the experience. With the changing season and mood, this experience could never be recaptured in quite the same way again. The animating spirit of the age was Z en, a meditative sect of Buddhism, which inspired the arts. It was the religion of the samurai who were patrons of the arts associated with the art of tea (cha no yu).

    The Zen sensibility for beauty is primarily concerned with inner form, as opposed to outer form. This meant that the object had to speak directly to the heart or fulfill the spirit. Recognition of inward form required mental discipline which was ba sed on the ephemeral, or the transiency of life. Zen taught that there was no Buddha except the Buddha in one's own nature and only through meditation could you realize your own Buddha-nature. One achieved enlightenment when you realized unity with ones elf and all things--it was an intuitive identification of spirit and object. Zen doctrine was simple and direct and appealed to the pragmatic military samurai, the appeal was immediate. Certain arts were inspired by the Zen apprehension of spiritual ide ntity of all things, by an appreciation of direct, intuitive perception, and aesthetic standards which stressed subtlety, allusiveness and restraint. The tea ceremony and its related arts, monochrome landscape painting, and garden architecture were espec ially favored by Zen artists and patrons.

    Tea was brought to prominence by monks who went to China to study Zen Buddhism in the twelfth century. Tea functioned as a stimulant to aid their study and meditation and was considered a medicinal beverage. Tea made its way into the society throug h the teachings of Zen and became the focus of gatherings of the nobility and the samurai, and eventually the common people.

    The most famous and revered Zen tea master, Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591), developed a set of aesthetic ideals which became the basis for Japanese etiquette and taste as part of the tea ceremony. The were four requirements for the ceremony: harmony, resp ect, purity, and tranquility. Two all-important tea ceremony qualities were sabi (reticent and lacking in the assertiveness of the new--Sadler) and wabi (quiet simplicity). The choice of unadorned, unpretentious tea utensils represented a pursuit these qualities in material form. The goal was to recognize and appreciate (or create) with discriminating taste the inherent characteristics of all things associated with tea. The makers of these objects were some of the most talented artists of Japan.

    At eleven Sesshu (1420-1506) entered a Zen monastery and was ordained early as a priest. He moved to Kyoto where he lived in a Shokoku-ji (Zen temple) and became a student of the Zen priest-painters, Josetsu and Shubun. He went to China in 1468 for a year where he studied Chinese landscape painting and was honored as a Zen priest. From 1481 to 1484 he made pilgrimages all over Japan to study landscape. His paintings gained him a wide reputation in Japan and differ both in temperament and effect f rom the Chinese paintings which he knew so well. Sesshu's paintings are spontaneous and natural and he deemphasized complexity with the result that "Winter Landscape" is both direct and simple. His brushstrokes are firm, bold, and animated with the spir it of transience so essential to the Zen conception of spirit (life).

    Japanese gardens were attached to private homes as well as monasteries and were planned to correspond to the essentials of Zen beliefs. Because they were a means for Zen self-examination, spiritual refinement, and ultimate enlightenment, they were n ot created for idle viewing or simple pleasure. The one represented here is a temple garden.(see La Plante, Fig.25.9) The great painter, poet, and practitioner of broad aesthetic knowledge and talent known as Soami (?-1525) was engaged to design this dr y garden at the Daisen-in (a sub-temple of the Kyoto temple Daitoku-ji). The site of the garden is a small space on the east side of the building, and from the edge of the veranda, from where one could meditate upon it, to the clay wall opposite it, ther e is a depth of no more than three meters. Stones and gravel represent a course of water falling over a waterfall, then racing along a mountain riverbed, and finally flowing into a broad river. It was thought to preserve an individual, spontaneous expre ssion and, therefore, could never be copied or even approximated. It was an object of meditation.

    Gardens associated with homes and areas surrounding the teahouses, come from a similar impulse, but they are "wet" gardens. Guests could wander through them, appreciating the qualities of nature most emphasized in the design, and eventually arrive a t the rustic, intimate house where tea would be served. All such arts required an expression of restraint, vitality and intimacy which captured the "inner form" of life's spirit so essential to the core of Zen thought and practice.

    FROM: Linduff, K.M., "The Art of Zen," in Art Past/Art Present, by D, Wilkins, B. Schultz, and K. Linduff, New York, 2000, 4th ed.