by Jon Lackman | 18 March 2009 | Asia, Books, Museums
In caa.reviews, Donald F. McCallum writes on a recent collaboration by Gregory Levine and Yukio Lippit:
The exhibition Awakenings: Zen Figure Painting in Medieval Japan and its accompanying catalogue constitute a landmark in the study of Japanese art. The paintings displayed at the Japan Society Gallery were of both high quality and significance, and the catalogue essays are all of permanent importance and will be required reading for those interested in Japanese art history … especially crucial is their skepticism concerning many of the approaches seen in discussions of the last fifty or sixty years … Lippit’s essay, “Awakenings: The Development of the Zen Figural Pantheon,” is an extraordinarily interesting account of the formation of the Chan/Zen pantheon … [it] displays an exemplary grasp of the major historiographical and doctrinal issues … Lippit’s treatment of the manner in which C/Z masters utilized paintings to gain the support of wealthy and influential patrons is especially insightful … I believe it is reasonable to say that Lippit has achieved a brilliant new synthesis in the way in which he clarifies the functions and significance of the paintings under consideration …
In his probing essay “Two (or More) Truths, Reconsidering Zen Art in the West,” Levine examines various controversies related to the interpretation of Zen art, considering viewpoints ranging from those of practitioners who maintain that only the spiritually enlightened can truly understand the essence of Zen art to the work of art historians who subject these artworks to what they see as highly objective, scholarly analyses. While he is clearly striving for a balanced account, not surprisingly, given his institutional and disciplinary affiliations, Levine tends to come down on the art-historical side of the fence … In addition to catalogue entries by Lippit and Levine, there are others by Yoshiaki Shimizu, Barbara Brennan Ford, Eva Havlicova, Xiaojin Wu, and Ann Yonemura … This sort of division of labor results in greater variety than might result from a single scholar treating all examples of a specific group of paintings, thereby enhancing the overall value of the catalogue.
An excessive degree of popularization and what I have often thought of as the “mysteries of the East” approach that have for too long dominated the discourse on Zen art are entirely absent from this book, the only exception being some bibliographical citations to a few of the more egregious offenders. In that sense, this project can be seen as realigning the study of one of the most important and attractive areas of East Asian art, and Lippit, Levine, and their colleagues are to be congratulated for this achievement.
