On the Look and Logos of Zen Art

“Everyone’s looking for something.” Some of us have found it, or part of it, in Zen Art, though the types of things we look at, the way we talk about them, and the sorts of Zen we draw from them may be dramatically different. Indeed, the easily joined words “Zen” and “Art” exist in dynamic tension, grammatically as well as conceptually, and bring to mind other intersections: “East” and “West,” practitioner and scholar, past and present. This paper explores some of the tensions, or perhaps currents and cross-currents, that accompany modern looking at and explaining Zen Art. It offers an episodic history of the formation and reception of Zen Art in modern era and reconsiders, somewhat insistently, figures such as Arthur Waley, Hisamatsu Shin’ichi, and, even, Murakami Takashi.

Cosponsored by he East Asian RFG , Art History (as part of its “Thinking Through Media” series), History, and the East Asia Center

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