725
gathering emotional force on the horizon throughout the Hudson River School. Or
a grand canvas by Turner or El Greco, the rear-window landscapes throughout the
Renaissance, heavenly atmospheres that absorb the dramas in Fra Angelico, or Rogier
van Der Weyden. A calling from the unknown, beyond, some philosophical opportunity, the very contours of wilderness. The narrowing of light on the eternal horizons
of dawn and dusk, together, forming an ethic silently adjudicated in one’s soul.
Take “The Paradise of Amida,” for example, a late seventh-century painting on a
white clay wall in the main hall (Kondo) of the Horyu-ji Monastery in Nara
Prefecture, Japan. The Buddha sits within the four paradises of the Pure Land, that
place of enlightenment in Mahayana, that encompasses Su-Meru (Kailasha), the
celestial equivalent of Mount Sinai.
9
Tens of thousands of other equivalent works of
art have been discovered (and all too frequently transplanted) along the Silk
Routes.
10
At the Palace (Beijing) and Shanghai Museums, a startling proliferation of
meditative scrolls involving half-empty spaces, gathering literati in open speculation, mostly empty “odes” to the “Red Cliff,” quiet pine tree forest vantages, a
thatched sylvan cottage with a lone occupant in silent repose, a hoopoe in equally
philosophical register amid a bamboo glen, a musician performing for a few friends
on the Qin zither without making a sound, myriad farewells that are utterly subsumed within a vast ink-bound landscape that has all but obfuscated the human
component, so many endlessly, exquisitely moribund trees and rocks, forever populating 1500 years of timelessness.
11
From the “shadows of Mt. Huang”
12
to the mid-thirteenth-century painting of “Li
Po Chanting a Poem” by Liang K’ai of the Sung Dynasty (died 1210),
13
in which the
most spare brushstrokes, ink on the paper of a hanging scroll, depict the essence of
humanity reduced in all her complexity, to the most singular and fixed simplicity, a
precursor to Japan’s famed sixteenth-century masterpiece by Kano Soshu of
“Bodhidharma Crossing the Yangzi River on a Reed,” (Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York). Or Qiu Ying’s impossibly perfect scene of “Long-tailed Birds among
Pines and Stream,” a paradise from the 1530s; Ming Dynasty, unequaled in the
9 See Pure Land Buddhist Painting, by Joji Okazaki, Japanese Arts Library, Kodansha International
Ltd. And Shibundo, Tokyo, 1977, p. 34.
10 See, for example, The Silk Route and The Diamond Path – Esoteric Buddhist Art On The TransHimalayan Trade Routes, Essays by Maximilian Klimburg, David L.Snellgrove, Fritz Staal,
Michel Strickmann, and Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, UCLA Art Council, Los Angeles,
California, 1982; See also, Central Asian Painting – From Afghanistan To Sinkiang, Text by Mario
Bussagli, Editions d’Art Albert Skira S.A. Geneva, Switzerland, 1979.
11 See Collection of Ancient Chinese Painting and Calligraphy from the Palace Museum and the
Shanghai Museum, with Forewords by Zheng Xinmiao, Director Palace Museum, and Chen
Xiejun, Director Shanghai Museum, Beijing/Shanghai, 2005.
12 See Shadows of Mt. Huang, Chinese Painting and Printing of the Anhui School, James Cahill,
Editor, University Art Museum, Berkeley, California, 1991.
13 See Chinese Painting, Text by James Cahill, Editions d’Art Albert Skira S.A. Geneva,
Switzerland, 1977, p. 90.
80.1 Obscurity and Redemptive Intuition
gathering emotional force on the horizon throughout the Hudson River School. Or
a grand canvas by Turner or El Greco, the rear-window landscapes throughout the
Renaissance, heavenly atmospheres that absorb the dramas in Fra Angelico, or Rogier
van Der Weyden. A calling from the unknown, beyond, some philosophical opportunity, the very contours of wilderness. The narrowing of light on the eternal horizons
of dawn and dusk, together, forming an ethic silently adjudicated in one’s soul.
Take “The Paradise of Amida,” for example, a late seventh-century painting on a
white clay wall in the main hall (Kondo) of the Horyu-ji Monastery in Nara
Prefecture, Japan. The Buddha sits within the four paradises of the Pure Land, that
place of enlightenment in Mahayana, that encompasses Su-Meru (Kailasha), the
celestial equivalent of Mount Sinai.
9
Tens of thousands of other equivalent works of
art have been discovered (and all too frequently transplanted) along the Silk
Routes.
10
At the Palace (Beijing) and Shanghai Museums, a startling proliferation of
meditative scrolls involving half-empty spaces, gathering literati in open speculation, mostly empty “odes” to the “Red Cliff,” quiet pine tree forest vantages, a
thatched sylvan cottage with a lone occupant in silent repose, a hoopoe in equally
philosophical register amid a bamboo glen, a musician performing for a few friends
on the Qin zither without making a sound, myriad farewells that are utterly subsumed within a vast ink-bound landscape that has all but obfuscated the human
component, so many endlessly, exquisitely moribund trees and rocks, forever populating 1500 years of timelessness.
11
From the “shadows of Mt. Huang”
12
to the mid-thirteenth-century painting of “Li
Po Chanting a Poem” by Liang K’ai of the Sung Dynasty (died 1210),
13
in which the
most spare brushstrokes, ink on the paper of a hanging scroll, depict the essence of
humanity reduced in all her complexity, to the most singular and fixed simplicity, a
precursor to Japan’s famed sixteenth-century masterpiece by Kano Soshu of
“Bodhidharma Crossing the Yangzi River on a Reed,” (Metropolitan Museum of Art
in New York). Or Qiu Ying’s impossibly perfect scene of “Long-tailed Birds among
Pines and Stream,” a paradise from the 1530s; Ming Dynasty, unequaled in the
9 See Pure Land Buddhist Painting, by Joji Okazaki, Japanese Arts Library, Kodansha International
Ltd. And Shibundo, Tokyo, 1977, p. 34.
10 See, for example, The Silk Route and The Diamond Path – Esoteric Buddhist Art On The TransHimalayan Trade Routes, Essays by Maximilian Klimburg, David L.Snellgrove, Fritz Staal,
Michel Strickmann, and Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, UCLA Art Council, Los Angeles,
California, 1982; See also, Central Asian Painting – From Afghanistan To Sinkiang, Text by Mario
Bussagli, Editions d’Art Albert Skira S.A. Geneva, Switzerland, 1979.
11 See Collection of Ancient Chinese Painting and Calligraphy from the Palace Museum and the
Shanghai Museum, with Forewords by Zheng Xinmiao, Director Palace Museum, and Chen
Xiejun, Director Shanghai Museum, Beijing/Shanghai, 2005.
12 See Shadows of Mt. Huang, Chinese Painting and Printing of the Anhui School, James Cahill,
Editor, University Art Museum, Berkeley, California, 1991.
13 See Chinese Painting, Text by James Cahill, Editions d’Art Albert Skira S.A. Geneva,
Switzerland, 1977, p. 90.
80.1 Obscurity and Redemptive Intuition