When one thinks of Zen, one tends to think of black and white calligraphy paintings, tea ceremonies, or dry rock gardens among others, but rarely woodblock prints.\u00a0 So can a woodblock print be Zen? \u00a0Before we can answer this question, we first have to have an understanding of what Zen is.<\/p>\n
Zen signifies the Buddhist practice of opening and letting go of oneself to become one with nature or the universe through calmness and tranquility.\u00a0 It can be translated as \u201cmeditation\u201d, \u201ccontemplation\u201d, or \u201cimmersion\u201d (Brinker and Kanazawa, 12).\u00a0 However, Zen has no absolute definition and \u201ceveryone is entitled to his or her own view\u201d (Westgeest, 13-14).\u00a0 Thus, to define what Zen is would be a contamination to its essence and its \u201cenlightenment clarity\u201d (Brinker and Kanazawa, 12).\u00a0 On the other hand, Zen has been known as \u201c\u2018a teaching without words\u2019\u201d for the visual art conveys the spiritual emotions that reveal the \u201cZen Mind\u201d (Seo and Addiss, 15-16).<\/p>\n
There are seven qualities that distinguish Zen art from others and these qualities are: 1) asymmetry, 2) simplicity, 3) unadorned loftiness, 4) spontaneity, 5) spiritual adept, 6) unworldliness, and 7) inner serenity (Brinker and Kanaza, 38).\u00a0 In other words, if a woodblock print embodies these seven qualities in any shape or form, then it is Zen.\u00a0 Then one can safely say that Micah Schwaberow\u2019s woodblock print, which accompanies William Stafford\u2019s poem, Neighbors<\/em>, is a work of Zen aesthetic because it meets these seven traits.<\/p>\n The print is not symmetrical, for the four edges of the print are rocky, curvy, or indefinable as in the nature of mountains.\u00a0 The edges are not straight and visible to lock the composition within the rectangular space.\u00a0 Even the clouds, are organic in their shapes.\u00a0 They seem to flow freely in the clear and vast open sky unbound by earthly gravitation.\u00a0 Thus, in this aspect, the print is Zen.\u00a0 It also personifies simplicity because it is black and cool gray, a color that blends into white when standing at a distance.\u00a0 The print consists of two layers and thus, in this too, it is simple in comparison to other woodblock prints that consist of six and more layers of multicolor.<\/p>\n There is no loftiness emanating from the print because it has no name.\u00a0 It is merely an ambiguous, shadowy reflection of\u00a0 Neighbors<\/em>, the poem.\u00a0 In a way, it is content with its existence.\u00a0 Also, with or without the poem, it does not scream out that it is of mountains.\u00a0 In this sense, the imagery is abstract and fleeting, like T.D Suzuki wrote, \u201c[J]ust when you imagine you are catching a glimpse of it (Zen), it disappears\u201d (Westgeest, 11).\u00a0 Thus, Micah Schwaberow\u2019s print is Zen in this quality as well.<\/p>\n The fourth quality, spontaneity, implies energy.\u00a0 Although Schwaberow\u2019s print lacks the bursting kind of energy, it has its own source of energy.\u00a0 That is in its quietness; its energy gently flows out like a sweet whisper in the wind.\u00a0 This quiet energy is a direct connection to its spiritual adept.\u00a0 One can stare at the print, search its surface for that fleeting meaningful existence, and feel at peace, swimming in that calm spiritual pool of energy.<\/p>\n Unworldliness is associated with Zen because the image exists only at that moment when one looks at it.\u00a0 It does not exist in a place in the world but in the art itself.\u00a0 In this sense, Schwaberow\u2019s print is Zen because it lacks details that link it to the world.\u00a0 It is an image composed from the mind and spirit for the imagination, a tool that allows one to leave the world behind.\u00a0 In a way, to achieve unworldliness is to achieve inner serenity.\u00a0 Therefore Micah Schwaberow\u2019s print is Zen.<\/p>\n William Stafford\u2019s poem, Neighbors<\/em>, adds another Zen dimension to the simple woodblock print.\u00a0 For instance, Zen arts are meant to be contemplated and not just viewed (Awakawa, 16).\u00a0 The poem, in this case, acts as a koan to provoke the viewers to \u201cimmerse\u201d themselves into the visual and to \u201ccontemplate\u201d the meaning behind it.\u00a0 From the two verses of the poem, one can ponder deeper.\u00a0 One can draw the connection that the two verses symbolize the neighborly relationship between nature and humans.\u00a0 The first stanza talks of the mountains and their habits.\u00a0 The second stanza talks of the narrator, a human, and that the human is friend with a mountain. \u00a0When one views the two stanzas as one complete poem, meaning both nature and human merging into one being of sameness, then one can ascend to another level.\u00a0 In this higher level, one then can view the poem, which is of words–a humanly habit of conversation, as the neighbor of the universe\u2014the woodblock print depicting fleeting imagery of silent mountains and clouds.<\/p>\n As Westgeest states, \u201cThe feeling of unity with Nature is very important in Zen.\u00a0 This primarily amounts to an awareness that Man himself is also part of Nature\u201d (12).\u00a0 Once reaching the second level of connecting the poem and print as one, then one can climb up to the level of being a neighbor oneself to both the poem and print.\u00a0 For example, when one reads and examines the print, one is standing near it and facing it, being in the state of immersing and contemplating why the whole composition is the way it is.\u00a0 Thus, the viewer is the neighbor of the whole visual frame.\u00a0 All in all, the poem\u2014the embodiment of a koan that emphasizes \u201csuperanatural symbols\u2014such as mountains, animals, and other natural imagery\u201d (Heine, xiii), makes Micah Schwaberow\u2019s woodprint more Zen.<\/p>\n Awakawa, Yasuichi. Zen Painting. Trans. John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd, 1970.<\/p>\n Brinker, Brinker and Kanazawa, Hiroshi. Zen Masters of Meditation in Images and Writings. Trans. Andreas Leisinger. Zurich: Artibus Asiae Publishers, 1996.<\/p>\n Heine, Steven. Opening a Mountain. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.<\/p>\n Seo, Audrey Yoshiko\u00a0 and Addiss, Stephen. The Art of Twentieth-Century Zen. Boston: Shambhala, 1998.<\/p>\n Westgeest, Helen. Zen in the Fifties. Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers, 1997.<\/p>\n Disclaimer<\/em><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An Artistic Examination of \u201cNeighbor\u201d When one thinks of Zen, one tends to think of black and white calligraphy paintings, tea ceremonies, or dry rock gardens among others, but rarely woodblock prints.\u00a0 So can a woodblock print be Zen? \u00a0Before we can answer this question, we first have to have an understanding of what Zen … Continue reading “Mang Vang”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":261,"featured_media":0,"parent":380,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"page-full_width.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-501","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/kucera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/kucera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/kucera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/kucera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/261"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/kucera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/kucera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":601,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/kucera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/501\/revisions\/601"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/kucera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/kucera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bibliography<\/h4>\n
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