Art of Twentieth-Century Zen

by Audrey Yoshiko Seo

For centuries, many Zen Masters have also been artists: brush painters and calligraphers who created art-works as a form of "visual Dharma" to express Zen insights in a powerful, direct way. This tradition of Zen arts has long been acknowledged as a priceless legacy of Japanese culture. The Art of Twentieth-Century Zen demonstrates how the great Japanese Zen Masters of this century have reaffirmed Zen as a vital, living experience through their personal, dramatic, and often humorous brushwork. This record of their achievements brings together great masterpieces of calligraphy and painting, many of which are in Japanese temples or in private collections and have rarely been viewed by Westerners.