Title: Zen painting & calligraphy; an exhibition of works of art lent by temples, private collectors, and public and private museums in Japan, organized in collaboration with the Agency for Cultural Affairs of the Japanese government
Authors: Fontein, Jan.; Hickman, Money L.,; Japan.; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Publisher: Museum of Fine Arts; distributed by New York Graphic Society, Greenwich, Conn.
Year: 1971
Subjects: Zen painting Exhibitions.; Zen calligraphy Exhibitions.
Abstract: "This book, based on an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, describes and illustrates a wide range of works dating from the Sung and Yuan periods in China and from the Kamakura, Muromachi, and later periods up to the nineteenth century in Japan. Showing the broad scope as well as the distinctive characteristics of Ch'an art in China and Zen art in Japan, these works include landscapes, paintings of patriarchs and eccentrics, of birds, animals, and plants, and calligraphy by eminent monks. Many of the paintings were accompanied by poetic colophons -- often witty and colorful -- composed either by the artist himself or by another monk of about the same period. Nearly all these inscriptions are here translated for the first time. In addition to detailed descriptions of the individual works that set each piece in its historical and artistic context, the book also contains a forty-page introduction that traces the origins and development of Zen Buddhist art"-- Front flap.
Contents: Foreword / Hidemi Kohn -- Preface / Perry Townsend Rathbone -- Acknowldegments / Jan Fontein and Money L. Hickman -- Chronology -- Introduction -- The beginnings of Ch'an Buddhism -- Chinese and Indian thought in Ch'an Buddhism -- The Northern and Southern Schools -- The earliest form of Ch'an art -- The consolidation and expansion of the Ch'an sect -- Juan-hsiu (832-912): the birth of Ch'an art -- Ch'an literature and koan -- Ch'an art during the Northern Sung Period (960-1126) -- Ch'an monks and literati -- The repertoire of Ch'an themes -- The Buddha and figures from the Buddhist pantheon -- Zenkiga -- The Ch'an Eccentrics in art -- Chinso: the portraits of Ch'an masters -- Landscapes, animals, and plants -- Ch'an monks and literati in the Southern Sung and Yuan Periods -- The end of Ch'an art in China -- Zen: its establishment in Japan -- Zen monks in China during Late Kamakura times -- Japanese Chinso -- Bokuseki: the calligraphy of Ch'an and Zen monks -- The Gozan monasteries and their literary school -- Zen Suiboku painting: origins and evolution -- Zen art in the Edo period -- Catalogue -- Glossary -- Index.