In a perhaps apocryphal tale, the painter Ito Jakuchu (1716–1800) once came across live sparrows for sale in Kyoto’s Nishiki Market. Taking pity on the birds, as they were “fated to roast on a spit,” he bought a large number of them and released them into his garden. According to the Rinzai Zen monk Daiten Kenjo, a friend and mentor to Jakuchu, this expression of pity “was the compassion of one destined to become a bodhisattva.”

Jakuchu brought this same spirit of compassion to his artistic work, directing a careful attentiveness toward ordinary creatures often considered too humble for traditional Japanese painting. A devoted lay practitioner, or koji, he maintained close friendships with Zen monks throughout his life, and his Buddhist practice provided a framework for his art. His name, likely given to him by Daiten, translates to “like a void” and was taken from a phrase from the Tao Te Ching, “The greatest fullness is like a void.” Jakuchu’s work indeed demonstrates the fullness and vibrancy of life that close observation reveals, and his technical precision and almost obsessive attention to detail give his paintings a vivid realism that sometimes borders on the surreal.

The eldest son of a Kyoto greengrocer, Jakuchu spent much of his youth in the bustling Nishiki Market among the stands of vegetables and fish. As a teenager, he trained in classical painting under Ooka Shunboku, a minor master in the Kano school known for his bird-and-flower paintings; however, Jakuchu ultimately found this school too strict and opted instead to learn to paint through studying elements of his daily life, from the vegetables in his father’s shop to the fish in the market to the assortment of roosters and fowl he raised at home. In fact, he sometimes imported exotic birds into his garden so that he could observe them firsthand and render them with appropriate vivacity and character.

Jakuchu’s work demonstrates the fullness and vibrancy of life that close observation reveals.

After his father’s sudden death in 1739, Jakuchu took over the family shop; however, he had little interest in business and often sought refuge from the bustle of the market by retreating to the mountains. According to Daiten, Jakuchu “was quite oblivious to the luxurious attractions that daily seduce one’s eyes and ears in cities and towns” and was instead “inclined to enjoy solitary pursuits, patiently labor[ing] day by day to develop his talents and expressive means.” To this end, he built himself a studio on the outskirts of Kyoto, which he called Shin’en-kan, or “Villa of the Detached Heart,” pulling a line from the 4th-century Chinese poet Tao Qian.

Around this time, Jakuchu first met Daiten, the Rinzai monk-poet who came to be his religious mentor, close friend, and artistic patron. In addition to providing spiritual guidance, Daiten introduced Jakuchu into literary circles—and gave him access to the extensive archive of classical Japanese and Chinese artwork housed in Kyoto’s Shokoku-ji temple. Jakuchu honed his technique through assiduous study of these paintings, as well as European books on botany, zoology, and mineralogy.

At the age of 40, Jakuchu retired from the family business, passing ownership to his younger brother. Free to pursue painting, he moved to Shokoku-ji and embarked on his most famous work, Doshoku Sai-e, or Colorful Realm of Living Beings. Now designated as a National Treasure, Colorful Realm consists of thirty-three scrolls of animals, plants, insects, and fish, with a triptych of Shakyamuni Buddha and the bodhisattvas Manjushri and Samantabhadra as its centerpiece. A visual menagerie of flora and fauna, the series depicts more than one hundred species of animals rendered in brilliant color and exquisite detail, among them twenty-five varieties of birds, seventy types of insects, and 146 different kinds of seashells. The resulting compositions are dizzying and at times hypnotic, imbuing the everyday with an almost otherworldly vitality. The Zen monk Baisao was so moved by the series that he gifted Jakuchu a hanging scroll that read, “Enlivened by his hand, his paintings are filled with a mysterious spirit.”

Upon its completion, Jakuchu donated Colorful Realm to Shokoku-ji in 1765 in the hope that it would be used for rituals and ceremonies—and that his work would in some way contribute to the temple’s merit. “On a daily basis I devote myself heart and soul to painting, drawing superlative flowers and trees, and attempting to capture the true forms of birds and insects,” he wrote in the series’s dedication. “My aim is not to win fame or glory in the mundane world but to contribute to the sacred accoutrements that adorn the temple.”

Jakuchu’s attentiveness and devotion to the details of daily life allowed him to portray the character of each creature with great humor and theatricality, from his beloved strutting roosters to quizzical cockatoos. He took this personification a step further with Vegetable Parinirvana, a monochrome ink-brush painting depicting the Buddha’s entrance into nirvana using more than sixty varieties of produce. A daikon radish reclines at the center of the scroll as the dying Buddha, surrounded by mourning eggplants, cucumbers, and yams; Queen Maya, the Buddha’s mother, looks on from Tavatimsa Heaven as a quince. The painting has been understood as a testament to the buddhanature inherent in all beings, even radishes.

“Enlivened by his hand, his paintings are filled with a mysterious spirit.”

As he grew older, Jakuchu became more absorbed in Zen Buddhism and began spending more of his time at the Obaku Zen temples in the mountains south of Kyoto. There, he developed close relationships with the Obaku monks and turned to a quieter minimalism, putting aside the bold polychromatic scrolls of Colorful Realms for monochrome ink. His projects also took on more explicitly Buddhist themes, and he began work on a large-scale sculpture garden at Sekiho-ji called Five Hundred Arhats, depicting the eight phases of the Buddha’s life through expressive stone statues.

In 1788, Jakuchu’s studio was destroyed in the Great Tenmei Fire, along with his family’s shop and many of his paintings. Over the course of the next few years, he became increasingly reclusive, eventually taking up residence at Sekiho-ji so he could continue to work on the sculpture garden. Facing financial ruin from the fire, Jakuchu funded the project by selling ink paintings to local villagers in exchange for bushels of rice, which he then traded for silver to pay the stonemasons. Inspired by Baisao, or “The Old Tea Seller,” he styled himself as Beito-o, or “The Old Man of One Rice Bushel.”

Jakuchu continued to work on the garden until his death at the age of 84. After he died, it fell into disrepair as sculptures were stolen, buried by earthquakes, or eroded by time; though at its height it boasted more than a thousand statues of the Buddha and his followers, now only 420 remain. Still, Jakuchu leaves behind an impressive collection of silk scrolls, screens, and ink paintings that illustrate the richness and exuberance of everyday life—if only we learn how to look.

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In a recent solo exhibition hosted at the Other Space gallery in Dharamsala, India, minutes from the residence of the Dalai Lama, Tibetan artist Tenzin Gyurmey delivered a complex and layered body of work that wove together Indian and Tibetan exile culture, taboos, forbidden activities, proverbs, and spiritual iconography. Titled “Behind the Two Mountains,” the show featured imagery ranging from the surreal—people with baboon butts as heads—to the provocative—dried meat hanging in front of a portrait of the Dalai Lama.

As the son of a respected tulku (reincarnated master) and thangka artist, Gyurmey grew up with social and religious pressures to behave in expected ways, but he was a bit of a rebellious misfit. The exhibition title refers to a place near his high school in Dharamsala, where he and others would hang out when doing naughty things like smoking and meeting foreign girlfriends. Some of his paintings are potentially risqué and controversial, and Gyurmey told me that others had criticized them without understanding his intentions or their meaning. “If you are creating something new, a sign that you are doing something is when people criticize you because you are provoking something,” he said. “It clashes with their long-held ideas and questions them.”

Gyurmey became interested in art at an early age, but opportunities to follow his artistic passions were limited. Feeling pressured to do well by his family, teachers, and peers, he initially planned to study genetic engineering in college, but karma intervened. Encouraged by his sister, he returned to his love of art and enrolled at the College of Art in Delhi. During his studies, he met his mentor and inspiration, Tibetan contemporary artist Tsherin Sherpa, and held his first art exhibit at Sherpa’s art gallery in Kathmandu. However, even as Gyurmey’s art started to receive attention and he was invited to show his work, his lack of financial resources and refugee status left him unable to travel for exhibitions. Not deterred by these challenges, Gyurmey has continued developing an artistic voice that is striking and mystifying, weaving together Tibetan and Indian symbols to create fantastical images.

Blessed features the artist in a room with his tulku father in the pose of the famous yogi Milarepa (who sang about the suffering of slaughtered animals), an image of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and pieces of drying meat. Gyurmey explained he had fond memories of this “blessed” time during his childhood when they all lived in one room and could not separate sacred objects from worldly ones. Blessed confronts ideas about what is pure and impure, the joys and challenges of a family living in a cramped space, the ethics of meat consumption, and the contradictory gap between Buddhist teachings and their real-life implementation.

A Crime with Mother portrays Gyurmey’s inner conflict about when he was young and traveled with his mother to purchase forbidden buffalo meat out of state. The symbolism in this work—such as the portraits behind him of the Tibetan mythical figure Ashang Chogyel, taught to children to scare them into being good, and the Indian leader, avid vegetarian, and advocate of ahimsa (nonviolence) Mahatma Gandhi; handcuffed wrists; a half-skull face for himself; and a severed buffalo head on his mother—wrestle with the heavy weight of transgressing religious beliefs when confronting Buddhist and Hindu understandings of karma, interconnectivity, and eating animals. Plus, there’s the worldly fear of being arrested by the Indian police. Eating cow (or buff) meat in India is controversial and illegal in some places. As the cow is a sacred animal in Hinduism, such meat is banned in the Himachal Pradesh state, where Gyurmey lives.

Many Buddhists, including Tibetans, regard meat-eating as sacrilegious, impure, and cruel and make no hierarchical distinction between animals and humans. The English expression “sacred cow” also refers to a belief, custom, or convention accepted without questioning. In more ways than one, Gyurmey creatively tackles—directly and indirectly—the stories, influence, and power of the “sacred cows” in his culture and community.

A fusion of Indian and Tibetan themes is present in much of his work, and Gyurmey often pokes fun at the shaming of mixed-race and cross-cultural relationships.  I asked Gyurmey what he thought about a notion of a pure Tibetan-ness: “Identity is a very individual thing,” he told me. “All people have their own identities, what they have experienced, seen, and so on. Purity culture is like forcing people to come into one category, like this is Tibetan, this is Indian. They are forcing people to be in a homogeneous group and culture, but it is not.” He appreciates the natural richness, beauty, vitality, and aesthetic qualities of all the intercultural influences that make us unique individuals and human beings, especially in the global age of the internet and social media.

Some significant aspects of the cross-culture experiences expressed in his art are more subtle. Unable to afford pricey canvases, Gyurmey would paint on woven taupe-colored sacks, drochak-bhureh (barley sacks), used by the United States to deliver food to Tibetan refugees, transforming them into a poignant symbol of his journey as a Tibetan in exile and struggling artist. Gyurmey states on his website that:

To me, this material bears testament to the way the Tibetan diaspora has planted themselves in a new culture and undergone changes in their own culture. Through these works, I examine and celebrate the space we have created for ourselves as Tibetans in India.

Imaginatively illustrating the seemingly mundane life of a naughty Tibetan boy in exile, Gyurmey mixes interracial and ethnic relationships with Tibetan Buddhist iconography to create both uniquely Tibetan and globally relevant images that cross cultural and spiritual boundaries.

This article originally appeared on tricycle.org and has been edited for length.

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In East Asian culture, brushwork is considered a “mind seal”—a single stroke can reveal what is in a person’s heart. It can also express the essence of a master’s teaching. Since it is not the formation of the characters but the spirit behind the composition that matters, few of the most esteemed examples of brushwork were by professionals—and many masterpieces were by martial artists. In fact, Wang Xizhi, venerated as the greatest calligrapher in Chinese history, was a Tang dynasty general.

This collection focuses on the brushwork of the budo (“way of martial arts” or “martial way”) masters of Japan. What defines a budo master? It refers to one who is well accomplished in all the technical aspects of the martial arts and, more importantly, the strategy behind warriorship. Strategy involves the ability to correctly evaluate an opponent’s strengths and weaknesses, both material and psychological. However, one can qualify as a budo master even if one has never stepped on a battlefield. Although some budo masters refused to wield weapons (as part of their Buddhist vows), they were as skilled as the best martial artists. While many budo masters were heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism, others were not—they drew on their experiences with esoteric Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism, Daoism, folk religion, and other traditions. Like Zen, the most effective budo teachings are short and to the point. Due to the compact medium—a single sheet of paper—the essence of a master’s teaching is limited to a few characters; typically a one- or two-line phrase or often only a single “one-word barrier.” Many budo masters painted as well. Although a few were excellent artists, the majority of their paintings are simply composed, and some are more like cartoons, often graced by a laugh-out-loud humor.

This is not an art history survey; it is a meditation manual. The illustrations are to be contemplated, not analyzed. It is an encounter between the viewer and the viewed. Everyone sees the artwork from a different perspective. The captions are “hints”; the interpretations are up to the reader.

Zen Snowman

Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form!

–Deiryu

Paintings of a yukidaruma, or “snow Daruma,” are a common theme in Zen art (Daruma being the Japanese rendition of Bodhidharma, the Indian monk credited with transmitting Buddhism to China and rumored to have founded Shaolin Kung Fu). They are usually accompanied by an inscription of the most famous line of the Heart Sutra. The snowman materializes—in the depth of winter, it is as solid as can be—but when the weather begins to warm up, the snowman gradually melts away. The reality of “form is emptiness, emptiness is form” can actually be seen in the appearance and disappearance of the snowman in a single, short season. This Zen snowman has a rather alarmed expression—he realizes that he is beginning to melt.

As a young monk, Izawa Deiryu (1895–1954) was a student and attendant of Nantenbo (see page 70), who once accused him of copying his work and selling it. Deiryu replied, “Why would I do that? My brushwork is much better than yours!” Later serving as the abbot of Enpuku-ji, he was a master of numerous arts—calligraphy, painting, kendo (a form of swordsmanship), and kyudo (a form of archery).

Zazen Oni

Let go of
Everything
You don’t have,
Forget everything you don’t know,
And just be like this [= Buddha]!

–Inscription by Motsugai

Even demons (oni) can be transformed through Zen meditation; an oni’s bravery and fearlessness can make its enlightenment more powerful and effective. Oni are known for wielding iron rods to beat evildoers as they fall into hell, but this oni has placed its rod on the ground in front of it; it no longer needs it. The inscription is a koan—“How is it possible to give up what we don’t have and forget what we don’t know?”—to be pondered single-mindedly and intently like the fiercest demon.

Takeda Motsugai (1795–1867) became a Soto Zen novice at age 5 and became a martial arts master famed for his prodigious strength, nicknamed “Demon.” Yet his zenga (“Zen artwork”) have a light, humorous touch, displaying a wonderful sense of joy and freedom—not all hard-edged and grim, as we might expect from a demon.

Staff

Speak and you get the Nanten staff;
do not speak and you get the Nanten
BO! (Staff )

–[signed] Seventy-plus-four-year-old fellow Nantenbo Toju

The staff in the middle serves as both a painting of Nantenbo’s staff and the last character of the inscription. The calligraphy on both sides of the painting form little staffs. He is telling us, “The essence of Zen transcends speaking and nonspeaking; clever words or mere silence will not cut it. Unless you really demonstrate Zen to me, you will feel a good whack of my staff.”

Nakahara Nantenbo (1833–1912) carried his trademark staff wherever he went and applied it liberally to “wake up” his students.

Butterfly

Sporting and sleeping
Amidst the dew in
A field of flowers—
In whose dream
Is this butterfly?

–Rengetsu

This refers to the famous dream of Chuang-tzu: “Am I a man dreaming of a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming I am a man?” There are several other meanings. In Japan, it is believed that at the time of a person’s death, a butterfly will appear to relatives, friends, and students who are close to the deceased, as a kind of farewell. Rengetsu’s signature is to the side, as if she is enjoying the butterfly and the calligraphy dancing about. The work is animated with no sense of a pause or a break in composition or concentration.

During her teen years, Otagaki Rengetsu (1791–1875) was raised a samurai lady in Kameoka Castle, well instructed in both the fine and martial arts. She was famed for her beauty and married young, but she eventually lost two husbands and all her children to illness. She became a Buddhist nun at age 33 and thereafter devoted her life to spiritual pursuits: meditation, charity, and art—poetry, calligraphy, painting, and pottery.

Mount Fuji

Good when clear, good even when cloudy—Fuji mountain’s original form never changes.

–Koho

Life is full of changes, alternating between sunny and dark days, but our innate buddhanature, pure and majestic, remains undisturbed. Tesshu’s Fuji, the simplest painting possible, is formed by three lush brushstrokes. It is a masterpiece of minimalist Zen art, and the rhythmic flow of the calligraphic inscription is outstanding.

Yamaoka Tesshu (1836–1888) was a demon swordsman and an elite soldier. However, when he was defeated by the much smaller and older Asari Gimei, Tesshu realized that it was the mind, not the body, that determined the outcome. Studying Zen with the master Tekisui, he experienced a great awakening at the age of 45 and founded the Muto Ryu (“No-Sword School”) to promote his ideas of the sword and Zen as one.

Killer Frog

The two square off for a fight to the death
The one who is not rash,
Who takes a breath [has the right timing] will win—
In the evening cool.

The painting is by  Sengai Gibon (1750–1837), but the accompanying inscription is by an unknown calligrapher. Usually this type of encounter—which often takes place in the evening—ends badly for the frog, but this time my money is on the amphibian. The thin, timid-looking snake appears woefully overmatched. The frog is in a sumo stance (tachi-ai); in sumo, timing is key to victory. Sengai’s Zen frogs are typically whimsical creatures, but this killer frog is fierce.

♦

From The Art of Budo: The Calligraphy and Paintings of the Martial Arts Masters by John Stevens © 2022. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc., Boulder, CO.

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Bay Area artist Squeak Carnwath never plans a new painting in advance. Instead, she embraces the unknown, allowing the art to unfold on the canvas with each brushstroke. “I see art-making as a kind of self-making, as a way of finding out who we are, where we are, and how we’re oriented in the universe,” she said in an interview with the Oakland Museum of California. This process of discovery and rediscovery is evident in the materiality of Carnwath’s paintings, as old layers of paint and writing peek out through the new, bestowing them with a distinct illuminance.

“I see art-making as a kind of self-making, as a way of finding out who we are, where we are, and how we’re oriented in the universe.”

Born in Abington, Pennsylvania, in 1947, Carnwath—who goes exclusively by her childhood nickname, “Squeak”—received her MFA from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, California, in 1977, where she has lived and worked since. Though her career now spans over five decades, clear common threads connect her earliest works with more recent paintings. Carnwath’s signature blocks, dots, handprints, and animal and human figures float on top of color fields and against grids. And present in nearly every painting are lines of numbers and written observations, which she has likened to messages scrawled on the wall of a public bathroom, a space that is uniquely intimate and public.

While her repetitive use of specific iconographies suggests personal significance, Carnwath prefers to leave their interpretation to each viewer. “I like the elasticity of symbols and the fact that people read them in different ways,” she told UC Berkeley News. To Carnwath, shapes and colors hook viewers into an art object, and, after they’re drawn in, “they will start free-associating to a thing that’s familiar and can make sense of the imagery as it relates to their own life.”

How can we be happy in a world characterized by impermanence?

Certain symbols recall the mundanity of everyday life, such as cups of water in Instinct 1, 2, 3, while others conjure up more philosophical ideas, like the blue Buddha sitting atop a black field of stars in Buddha Funnel. In Trying Simply To Be Happy, the canvas is split into two halves, light and dark, and scrawled notes remark on the transitory nature of our world: “What are we going to do without ice at the North Pole”; and “Grafitti [sic] (from memory) as it once existed in the school elevator. It has since been sanded and ground off the steel doors.” These musings, combined with the work’s title, suggest that Carnwath is grappling with a universal question: How can we be happy in a world characterized by impermanence?

Framing all the colorful chaos and shapes are blue Buddha silhouettes, twelve at the top and twelve at the bottom, evocative of the Medicine Buddha and his twelve vows to free sentient beings from physical and mental suffering. Maybe Carnwath is suggesting that happiness is possible, that the benevolent Buddhas can guide us on a path out of the cycle of light and dark, birth and death. Or maybe it should be left up to interpretation.

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Inspired by the relationship between chance and beauty, multimedia artist Wu Chi-Tsung collaborates with the unpredictability of the natural world to create his mesmerizing blue landscapes.

After earning his BFA at the Taipei National University of Arts, Wu continued exploring a variety of mediums including oil painting, photography, video, LED installations, and experimental ink painting. He calls himself a “cultural hybrid,” moving between both the East and West and contemporary and traditional techniques.

His cultural dexterity is on full display in his Cyano-Collage series. The series recalls Chinese shan shui (“mountain-water”) paintings. The artwork’s distinct look comes from combining techniques of classical Chinese ink painting with those used in cyanotype, a photographic printing process.

Instead of needing to be developed in a dark room, cyanotypes react with ultraviolet light to reveal their signature blue color. Inspired by cun fa, a texturing method used by traditional shan shui artists, Wu adds the cyanotype coating to sheets of rice paper and crumples them before leaving them out in the light. After Wu unfolds and refolds the sheets, then washes them and glues them to an aluminum board in layers, the landscapes emerge.

Indeed, his technique is itself not unlike an environmental process such as the formation of a mountain. “I’m basically like a farmer. It’s physical,” he told the Financial Times. “There are a lot of coincidences that I cannot control. That’s the best part.” The result is a work that doesn’t represent a real place, yet has the “spirit of a Chinese landscape.”

Using light as a medium is a hallmark of Wu’s work, but his real interest lies in the images that light produces and how they reflect our understanding of the world. “Through an image, what we see and process in our minds [is] visualized and solidified,” he said in an interview with the online gallery The Artling.

“Sometimes, we should just let it go. Let the work grow in the way it should.”

For “Seeing Through Light,” his exhibition at Tao Art Space in 2021, he recorded a flashlight’s movements over statues of buddhas and bodhisattvas. The resulting video creates the impression of gradual illumination—or enlightenment.

Wu Chi-Tsung walks the line between creator and witness. There’s no doubt that exercising his talents is integral to the outcome, but relinquishing the role of the creator is just as important. “The more you try to control it, the more likely you lose the possibility. Sometimes, we should just let it go. Let the work grow in the way it should,” he said to Artnet.

Above all, Wu wants to record how time, light, and the effects of touch work together to let beauty unfold naturally. “If I could just lower my ego,” he told Ocula, “and let the material show what it is . . . I could get real freedom through that. In this way, I am helping the material to find its own being.”

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During the 2020 lockdown, the New York-born, Los Angeles-based artist David Orr was gifted a telescope, which he began using to capture images of the moon from his backyard. Shortly after, he started sharing them with friends via an email list, wanting to “uplift the spirit of friends and family” during a difficult time. He didn’t realize then that these images would become the raw material for Mandala Lunae—one of three series of abstract mandalas featured in his most recent exhibition, Radiance + Reflection: Perfect Vessels and Moon Mandalas, hosted at New York City’s Tibet House.

“Tibetan Buddhism already revels in the visual, which is appealing to any artist,” Orr writes in the exhibit’s catalog, “but the connection for me goes far deeper.” Mandala Lunae—along with Perfect Vessels and Illumined, the other two series in the exhibition—was inspired by the traditional form of the mandala (Skt., literally “circle”). They contain complex geometric patterns circling a blank, void-like reflective space at the center of the aluminum disk. To view these pieces is to experience the Heart Sutra’s principle that “emptiness is form, form is emptiness.”

The Flower Garland Sutra, which describes “untold moons” emitting “untold beams of light” as they emanate from the body of the Buddha, was another inspiration for Orr’s Mandala Lunae. In the sutra, “a cosmos of infinite realms upon realms mutually [contain] each other.”

To view these pieces is to experience the Heart Sutra’s principle that “emptiness is form, form is emptiness.”

Perfect Vessels is a series of photographs of human skulls originally shot at the Mütter Museum of Pathology in Philadelphia. Orr digitally reconstructed the photographs to give the skulls, marked by disease and imperfection, a symmetrical appearance. “I liked the idea that, simply by repeating these ‘imperfections,’ I achieved results closer to perfection,” Orr writes.

The third series, Illumined, was created using images of sacred manuscripts, texts, and sutras that Orr accessed during a residency at the Los Angeles–based Philosophical Research Society—including a silk-paneled Prajnaparamita Sutra manuscript and an 1834 Lotus Sutra manuscript from the collection of a Japanese priest.

While Buddhism is an ongoing serious interest of Orr’s, he takes a playful approach to his study and practice, valuing creative inspiration and exploration over mastery. He finds meaning in the process itself: “I’m always fascinated by the concept of ‘be here now’ because… I’m never ‘here now,’” Orr told me at the exhibition’s opening.

Moon Mandala N° 8: 10/25/2021, 2021

Perfect Vessel [Unknown / N° 1006.80 ], 2014

Moon Mandala N° 28: 3/14/2022, 2022

Perfect Vessel [ Unknown / N° 1161.01 ], 2014

Moon Mandala N° 11: 11/15/21, 2021

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In 1935, Sōetsu Yanagi (1889–1961), philosopher and founding figure of the Japanese folk arts movement, found himself unusually awed by a series of woodblock prints at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum’s annual national art exhibition. The prints were the first breakthrough creation of Shikō Munakata (1903–1975), an aspiring artist then still selling natto (fermented soybeans) by day to make a living. Munakata had several years earlier turned away from oils to the traditional art of woodblock printing, which began with a brief apprenticeship and blossomed into an assiduous, lifelong course of self-study. It was an unlikely object for critical appraisal in the art world in Japan, where the cosmopolitan art scene cast a more serious eye to European styles. However, to Yanagi, who had focused much of his life advocating for the revival of traditional Japanese crafts, or mingei, Munakata’s work offered something singular in both style and intensity to the burgeoning movement.  To inspire the young artist, Yanagi turned Munakata’s attention to Buddhism, and specifically the rich artistic and spiritual heritage at Nara, one of Japan’s ancient capitals and home to some of its most treasured Buddhist sculpture. In 1939, after a year and a half of drafting, drawing, and redrawing, Munakata presented a series of woodblock prints at the Japan Folk Art Museum. Titled “The Two Bodhisattvas and the Ten Great Disciples,” they show six facing sets of a well-known series of figures from the Buddha’s retinue, with the addition of the bodhisattvas Manjushri and Samantabhadra. Each print offers a bold stylization of traditional iconographic representations, following the stark, powerful lines of the block to interpret each figure’s role in the Buddha’s hagiography. The arhat Anuruddha’s divine eye points a fiery gaze skyward, and Subhuti, known for his profound understanding of emptiness, casts a knowing downward glance. The images are subtle in their seeming simplicity, playing with direction as much as Buddhist philosophy. The resulting aesthetic of dualities can be seen across the work and Munakata’s life and offers in the very contours of the woodblock a singular view of both Buddhism and art.

“I listen to the voices within the wood and, through carving, bring them to life.” (1964)

“The darkness of the evening was serious. On the other hand, the daytime was unexpectedly bright. It felt like the whole city was constructed by the machines.” (1964)

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Brooklyn-born artist Chitra Ganesh’s unique blend of mythological, religious, political, and popular imagery stems from the summer trips she took to India while growing up. There she encountered thousand-year-old statues and paintings alongside advertisements, graffiti, movie posters, and comic books. She began bringing things home from her trips and piecing them together, each tidbit in conversation with the ones beside it. This prompted her initial artistic process of creating traditional collage pieces.

Since then, Ganesh has earned an MFA from Columbia University and has shown her art around the world. Her paintings, animations, installations, and murals have been exhibited at galleries and institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, the Rubin Museum, MoMA PS1, and others across the US, Europe, and South Asia.

Ganesh’s artwork incorporates Buddhist and Hindu religious and folkloric iconography while drawing on feminist and queer scholarship, her dedication to political and social activism, and popular culture. In an interview with Ocula Magazine, Ganesh noted that for many middle- or lower-middle-class immigrant families like hers, popular culture from their countries of origin provides a “bridge of sorts to the idea of home.”

She adds fantasy elements to much of her art, too, to help viewers see themselves in characters they typically wouldn’t relate to, she told Hyperallergic. When you remove some reality from a story, she said, people will feel more comfortable empathizing. Ultimately she strives to add representations of femininity, sexuality, and power to canons of literature and art where these themes have historically been absent.

In India, Ganesh encountered thousand-year-old statues and paintings alongside advertisements, graffiti, movie posters, and comic books. This prompted her initial artistic process of creating traditional collage pieces.

Ganesh adds fantasy elements to her art to make it easier for viewers to empathize with characters other than those they typically see themselves in. When you remove some reality from a story, she says, people will feel more comfortable empathizing.

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When Mayumi Oda is ready to create a new work, the first thing she typically does is meditate or chant. She often offers prayers to the goddesses—Tara, Sarasvati, and Kannon—who have been an inspiration to her as a Zen Buddhist teacher, an activist for a nuclear-free world, and a prolific artist whose unique style has earned her international acclaim as the “Matisse of Japan.”

Born in the Tokyo suburb of Kyodo in 1941, Oda has had a unique connection to goddesses ever since her childhood. As a young girl she loved venturing out of her hometown to visit Kamakura, where Nichiren Buddhism (which her family practiced) took root in Japan. She would frequent a cave shrine dedicated to Sarasvati, and on one such visit, she encountered a seer who imparted the fateful words: “Young girl, you are going to be a successful painter,” Oda recalled in her 2020 autobiography, Sarasvati’s Gift. The seer was certainly right: Oda, now residing in Hawaii at the age of 80, has exhibited in solo shows and permanent collections around the world.

In 1966, Oda moved to New York City and began producing the brilliantly colorful goddesses that are now essential to her style and portfolio. “Through my creative process, I have been creating myself,” Oda says in her artist statement. “Goddesses are a projection of myself and who I want to be.”

Although Tara has not featured as prominently in Oda’s life and art as the goddesses she grew up with in Japan, the Tibetan Buddhist bodhisattva with 21 forms has been a significant presence for her. “They’re the same—Sarasvati and Tara,” she told Tricycle. “They’re all goddesses that teach us compassion and love. I don’t have a favorite.”

Tara, known as the “Mother of Liberation,” speaks to Oda’s reverence for motherhood. She views her career as an homage to the feminine energy of her own mother, who fostered her creativity. Her connection to this energy deepened after giving birth to her first son in 1967. “I had a good mother who really cared for me,” she said. “[Her love] is in my body. I can’t separate them. Mother is now me, even if she’s gone.”

By invoking Tara’s mantra, Oda, much like Tibetan thangka painters, imbues her artwork with divine feminine qualities—wisdom, compassion, creativity, and reverence for nature—that are transmitted to the viewer. But she channels the goddesses in her own way, setting aside the strict proportions of the traditional Tibetan style in favor of her singularly fluid linework. She often reimagines Tara, such as a Black woman in Black Tara. In doing so, her goal is to create art that “feels real to me.”

“Green Tara is the goddess of the Earth, where all the living things rise and grow. Because I live on a farm and grow food, that’s real to me,” she explained.

In her silk screens, Oda can express herself more effortlessly, creating flowing lines that grace such works as Mother Tara! Homage & Praise to You.

“Silkscreen lets you express the color freely. And my art is nothing but good color,” she said. Working from such inner truths has also guided Oda’s activism.

“When you have compassion and you see something you have to do, you just do it,” she said. “The goddesses help me find that compassion. They give me love.”

The post Praises to the Taras appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Artist Nge Lay has seen Myanmar (formerly Burma) go through rapid, often tumultuous, changes. Born in 1979, Nge Lay was just a child when a 1988 pro-democracy uprising was violently repressed by the military regime.

In the decades since, the country has continued to experience harsh crackdowns while also opening up its borders to new markets and cultures.

Nge Lay has dedicated herself to capturing Myanmar’s changing society through her photography, performances, sculptures, and installations. In Endless Story and Urban Story, two ongoing series started in 2012 (selections of which appear in these pages), Nge Lay combines photographs of early 20th-century Myanmar with portraits she staged to echo the original.

On February 1, 2021, a military coup threw the country back into the dark days of junta rule.

From their home in Myanmar, Nge Lay and her family have endured Internet blackouts and nightly fears as security forces raid neighborhoods trying to arrest protesters. Despite the conflict, she took the time in March to answer questions from Tricycle about the dramatic changes taking place in Myanmar.

Many of the protests have been quite creative, using art, dance and satirical slogans as a form of expression/resistance. Are you inspired by what you see? The early stages of the revolution were quite creative, and all people went out. All the roads downtown and in front of embassies and the United Nations office were too crowded to march in, with demands for democracy, to free Aung San Suu Kyi, our president, Win Myint, and other people who were arrested. People created lots of new slogans and new forms of demonstration. But now the focus is more on each ward defending itself and trying to stop those who come and shoot tear gas and guns [at night]. I cannot create my own artwork right now, but I move forward because this time is more important than creating artwork.

What do you think about the role of the artist in these times in Myanmar? The artist is not superman. We are the same as other people. So most of the artists do not stop supporting this movement and do as much as we can.

“The artist is not Superman. Most of the artists do not stop supporting this movement and do as much as we can.”

It has been a challenging year for Myanmar even before the coup. How did you spend time in lockdown? Did it fuel your creativity or did you find it difficult to be creative? We faced challenges since the COVID pandemic, the whole year of 2020 and up through the February 1 coup. Because art is not so popular in Myanmar, mostly we depend on international collectors and museums. During the pandemic, the economy was down and that stopped most of the support from abroad. So we have had no income the whole year. Some galleries tried to support us, but they also had difficulty surviving and there was not enough for us.

Could you talk a little bit about how your work, especially the Endless Story series, is an expression of Myanmar culture and identity? I’m interested in collecting historic photographs. Old photos can tell us our past situations, including culture, identity, and all. The Endless Story series is one of my ongoing photography projects, and I’ll create it in another country if I get a chance. It will go on in Myanmar as well.

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