Art Japanese Art; Zen Painting and Calligraphy

Japanese Art at the Fogg till Dec. 12

Zen Painting at the MFA till Dec. 20

WE CAN NOW share the enthusiasm the French Impressionists had for Oriental Art when we look at Boston's two exciting shows: Traditions of Japanese Art at the Fogg and Zen Painting and Calligraphy at the Museum of Fine Arts. As each member of the Impressionist group acquired something different from Oriental Art, so can each of us, whether by contemplating nature or appreciating the simplicity in Oriental interpretations of form.

Viewing Oriental Art without understanding its Buddhist antecedents is like viewing Western art with no understanding of Christianity. Yet, lack of understanding of Buddhism or its influence does not preclude the viewer's appreciating the sensitivity and sense of taste in Oriental art.

The Fogg has not limited its Japanese exhibition to Buddhist art-art that "reveals to the Japanese the state of perfection," art "motivated by an awareness of the inconceivable and invisible sources of all being in Buddhist metaphysics." For more than ten years, Kimiko and Johen Powers have been assembling their private collection, incorporating Buddhist works as well as secular works of Japan's decorative and literary styles. Whereas Buddhism documented the sutras (the Buddhist scriptures purporting to contain the words of the Historical Buddha) or created images of its religious pantheon, the decorative and literary styles drew from everyday activities that were less significant in terms of religion.

In the exhibit's first few glass display cases (handsomely arranged) are indigo scrolls in gold and silver ink illustrating episodes of the sutras. One can't escape the richness of their age since they are placed next to eroding bronze containers dating from 1090. And in Lake and Mountains at Daybreak, Summer, an early 19th century painting of the literary style, one can see how Van Gogh borrowed from the Japanese method of using rows of short vertical lines to illustrate grass or fields.

Those people who demand relevance in an exhibition would probably demand that we juxtapose a Van Gogh next to Lake or that we put a Manet that uses patches of color next to a colored screen. But to bring in the Impressionists or Van Gogh would dilute the pure Oriental quality of this exhibit.

As far as the Fogg show and MFA show being similar, it would be stretching the comparison to say more than that they both deal with Oriental art. In fact, the Fogg show is limited to Japanese art whereas the Zen show includes Chinese (Ch'an) as well as Japanese (Zen) works.

Introduced to Japan from India by way of China, Zen is a sect of Buddhism. Zen's rejection of the written doctrine differentiates it from the other schools of Buddhism. Studying the sutras is part of the process in attaining Nirvana (Enlightenment) for most Buddhist followers, but the practitioner of Zen seeks to attain enlightenment through meditation and contemplation excluding study of the sacred writings. The Sixth Patriarch Tearing up a sutra (only on exhibit till November 25 due to its fragility) graphically depicts this rejection.

By rejecting the sutras, Zen Buddhism asserts that the Buddhist Truth is realized through direct contact of teacher with student, starting with the Buddha himself; Truth was and continues to be transmitted from mind to mind. In Zen, says the catalogue, "Enlightenment was a dramatic, sudden event that came unannounced," and not gradually through study. As a result of this belief, there is the constant effort of the teachers (Zen masters) to "shock and shake their pupils into realization of the Truth." This effort is reflected in the masters' eccentric questions, paradoxical retorts, and bizarre tricks, all of which are potential parts of the ethos of unusual circumstance under which the student often achieved Enlightenment.

The Zen assertion, which implies that slamming someone's foot in the door or that twisting someone's nose might help that person to achiever Enlightenment, did not reject the written word, only the written doctrine. The other Buddhist sects looked at words for content, i. e., Buddha's words in the sutras which always begin, "Thus I have heard, and the Buddha spoke...." The Zen sect composed words to express the spirit of the man who wrote them. Calligraphy was believed to express the total personality of the writer. By contrasting the abstract characters of Heaven and Earthly Calligraphy with the unembellished characters of Calligraphy Presented to the Jotenji the conservative strength of the latter artist's personality is seen in comparison to the eccentricity of the former.

THIS SPIRIT or personality that the Zen Buddhists tried to infuse in their writing is the same spirit they tried to infuse into each subject of their art. Portraiture ( Chinso in Japanse), "the core of Ch'an art which reveals the essence of Ch'an more directly than any other type of painting," is closely related to the Zen idea of doctrine transmission: each pupil who had achieved Enlightenment was given a portrait of his master with an inscription written by the master. The portrait's physical likeness and inscription both capture the spirit of the master; by looking at the painting and inscription, the student could see "straight into his teacher's heart." The portrait was a transmission from mind to mind.

Portraiture is the only form of Zen art that has a clearly defined function. Other paintings in Zen art, whether representations of eccentric poets or recluses, of sparrows or herons, of encounters, visits, or dialogues, have a purpose but no yet-discovered function. Paintings on the whole were not used as tools for instruction in Enlightenment; themes dealing with Nature might be looked at from the point of view of the Ch'an painter's awareness of "a single reality underlying the phenomena of nature." But, as the catalogue states, "the most obvious criterion for establishing what Ch'an art is lies in its subject matter."

In order to understand what Zen art is see the Museum of Fine Arts Zen show first. Then you can observe the Zen in context of other Oriental art at the Fogg show. The MFA has captured the spirit of the Oriental. Like the Japanese who hang a single painting in the tokonoma (a small alcove in the house), the MFA has hung a single aspect of Oriental art: Zen art. The Fogg has taken a Western perspective and shown the Oriental from prehistoric times through the 19th century.