Page 319 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

utterance of the Buddha —when you see [it], CHANGING THE SUBJECT: The master's portrait was given to a pupil as
you are looking at Honen; when you hear its ZEN ICONOGRAPHY indispensable evidence that the transmission
words, you are listening to the discourse of had occurred, and the evidence then became, for
Amida" (Hall and Toyoda 1977, 347). To those Westerners who became interested in Zen adepts, an icon.
Still another and more direct example of this East Asian art from the end of the nineteenth The traditional Zen transmission chinso seem
folk leavening of traditional bread are the pic- century, traditional Buddhist painting in both even more icon-like when compared with occa-
torial scrolls used by etoki hoshi (male or female China and Japan offered few serious barriers to sional experiments by innovative artists dealing
"picture explainers") to illustrate their oral appreciation. The collectors and curators of with unusual subjects. Bunsei's Yuima (S:
(spoken or sung) recitations. These might be Buddhist painting —Ernest Fenollosa and Vimalakirti; cat. 220) is based on a traditional
presented in temples, elucidating doctrine or Denman Ross in Boston, Charles Freer in Chinese representation of that legendary savant
temple history. Legends of Kiyomizu Temple Detroit, S. C. Bosch-Reitz at the Metropolitan and pattern of virtue who, though a layman and
(cat. 217) may well have been painted for that Museum in New York, Bernhard Berenson in sick at the time, could expound Buddha's teach-
purpose. It is datable to 1517, and attributed to Florence, Laurence Binyon in London, to name a ings even to Monju (S: Manjusri), Bodhisattva
Tosa Mitsunobu. It stands, however, stylistically few—moved to an appreciation of Buddhist of Wisdom. Their meeting and Yuima's exposi-
between his authentic work (cat. 216) and the icons from a familiarity with Christian icons, tion were the subject of an early sutra, called in
folk style emaki we shall consider next. Its wild especially those of the late Middle Ages. Some Japanese Yuima Kyo (S: Vimalakirti Nirdesa
composition and frenetic movement are amaz- of the enthusiasts readily transferred their Sutra). In Chinese painting of the Song dynasty
ing — and totally removed from the fully growing enthusiasm for gold-ground Italian (960-1279) Yuima was customarily represented
professional control of Mitsunobu. "Picture paintings of the trecento to richly colored and as bearded, benign, and elderly, reclining on an
explainers" plied their trade also at fairs or mar- often gold-embellished Buddhist icons of the arm rest and usually attended by a heavenly
kets, reciting true history, fantastic legends (cat. ninth to the fourteenth centuries. acolyte. Bunsei's depiction owes much to the
219), or vulgar tales that lampooned well- These icons were duplicated and reduplicated circumstances of the commission: the painting
known local figures. The etoki hoshi were by successive generations —copies of copies of was requested by a Zen monk named Zensai as
almost certainly responsible for the practice of copies —for good reason: to be effective, salva- a memorial image of his warrior-father, Suruga
writing texts — some of them spoken by the tion magic, like any other magic, must adhere no Kami Arakawa Akiuji. The close-up view of
painted characters in the scrolls — directly onto precisely to formula. Sedulous imitation, head and torso alone, combined with the pierc-
the pictures, in contrast to the usual practice however, enfeebled their aesthetic effectiveness, ing, even combative expression of the face,
whereby sections of text preceded, followed, or which was revitalized only with infusions from transmutes the benign sage into an ideal
alternated with the pictorial sections. These popular culture. The old icons could be realized warrior.
devices, strikingly similar to our comic-strip in new manners, but no new energy informed Only four years earlier an even more formid-
"balloons," made both text and pictures more latter-day productions of the traditional icons, able figure, the brilliant and eccentric Ikkyu
accessible to popular audiences. mandalas, or founders' portraits. By the four- Sojun, poet, calligrapher, Zen monk, and debau-
Thus the artist of Legends of the Founding of teenth and fifteenth centuries the old careful chee, later to become abbot of Daitoku-ji, was
Dojo-ji (cat. 219) sprinkles the text of his wildly and expensive use of cut gold-leaf (kirikane) directly portrayed, probably by Bokusai. The
imaginative and lurid tale among the sharply patterns on deities' garments had largely given arresting, aggrieved countenance looks directly
simplified and "primitive" settings and charac- way to painted gold-dust ornament. Literally at the beholder, a most unusual, even unique,
terizations of the pictorial matter. The resulting and figuratively, the traditional icons were depiction in Japanese painting (as noted by
"folkish" style, certainly persuasive on a funda- impoverished. Donald Keene). A lifetime spent equally in
mental and popular level, is a polar opposite to With the importation of Zen Buddhism in the bodily dissipation and in defense of Zen moral-
the old courtly style and shows less skill than thirteenth century, and its development and ity and integrity can be read — correctly — into
the narrative scrolls of the Kamakura period dominance in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- the unkempt head. Paradoxically, such a portrait
emaki artists. turies, came a new vocabulary and grammar. violated accepted canons, both contemporaneous
The fashionable revival of folk art in Japan Perhaps the most iconic of images in the new and historical, of Zen portraiture, and at the
before World War n recognized and used an iconography were those least expected to be same time was only possible within the Zen
aesthetic code deeply rooted in medieval Japan. so —the portraits of the founders and transmit- culture and aesthetic. The Zen emphasis on
The fullest expression of this folk substratum in ters of Zen tradition (cat. 218), a genre direct experience, intuitive recognition of truth,
the time around 1492 occurred in the modifica- developed out of the Chinese Chan portraits and transmission "from mind to mind" called
tions of more traditional art —icons, yamato-e, brought to Japan in the Kamakura period (1185- for such portraiture, but, to judge from extant
and narrative painting. Perhaps the hold of the 1333). Despite their contemporary subjects, works, only Bunsei, Ikkyu, and Bokusai heard
"new manner" on the court and the military realistically rendered as to physical appearance, the call.
made it easier for the now more mobile under- settings, furniture, and disposition, overall Along with Zen teachings came new artistic
class—merchants, artisans, farmers —to exert these portraits (chinso) show a uniformity pre- subjects, radically informal compared with the
their preferences on some forms of art. But cer- viously found in the icons of Esoteric Bud- icons of the older sects but quickly and vastly
tainly the rich variety of Momoyama and Edo dhism. The abbot's chair and robes, the three- popular. One of the appropriate new subjects
art had its beginnings in Muromachi period. quarters position, the sober coloration, and the was Daruma (S: Bodhidharma), the legendary
fine-line delineation of the subject are omni- Indian prince who founded Zen (S: Dhyana; C:
present. And this is understandable, for one of Chan) Buddhism. Whether a close-up image
the key elements in Zen Buddhism was the depicting only the head and upper torso (cat.
transmission of teachings through adept to 221), or a full-length figure in a landscape
pupil, establishing long and complex lineages. (often crossing the Yangzi River standing on a

318 CIRCA 1492