Zen painting & calligraphy

by Jan Fontein

"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.