Sesshu (1420-1506) Shin style
Ashikaga monochrome ink painting is one of the finest moments of Japanese art. Monochrome painting, which began in China as a logical extension of brush calligraphy, came to be the ultimate medium for the transmission of Japanese Zen. A Zen painter has been described as a man who studies technique for twenty years and then throws himself on the mercy of inspiration. The works of Zen artists often seem to have been tossed off without effort, but this is the deliberate deception of the consummate master. Like the slash of the Zen swordsman, the absolute accuracy of the Zen artist's brushstroke can come only from one whose mind and body are one. The purpose of Zen painting is to penetrate beyond the perceptions of the rational mind and its supporting senses, to show not nature's surface but its very essence. The artist paints the enlightenment of a moment, and there is therefore no time to labor over each stroke; the technique must flow thoughtlessly, from deep within, capturing the fleeting images of the inner sense, beyond mind and beyond thought.
To watch a Zen painter is to receive a lesson in the discipline of Zen. As he sets out to create a work, he first brings to hand the essential artistic materials: brush, inkstone, ink, paper. Kneeling on the floor, he spreads the paper out before him, and as he grinds and mixes the ink, begins to envision the outline and scope of his work. Like a samurai warrior before a battle, he banishes thoughts of the world and in a state of contemplation organizes his energies for a burst of action. When the ink is ready, the paper smoothed, an appropriate brush tested for point and feel, and his spirits composed, he strikes.
The ink is absorbed almost immediately by the fibrous rice paper preferred by Zen artists, allowing no alteration of a line once it has been set down. If the artist is dissatisfied with a stroke, he attempts no corrections but tears up the work and begins another. In contrast to conventional Western oil painting, which allows for retouching, an ink brushstroke on paper (or silk, which is sometimes used) becomes dull and lifeless if it is painted over, and corrections are always obvious when the painting dries. The work must flow out of the Zen discipline of no-mind. The artist never pauses to evaluate his work; the ink flows in an unending flurry of strokes—heavy or sparing, light or dark, as required—producing a sense of rhythm, movement, form, and the artist's vision of life's inner music.
The discipline of ink painting was only one of the qualities that endeared it to Zen painters. Equally important was the understated, suggestive art it made possible. Learning from the Chinese, Ashikaga Japanese discovered that black ink, carefully applied to suggest all the tones of light and shade, could be more expressive and profound than a rainbow of colors. (A similar lesson has been learned by modern photographers, who
often find black and white a medium more penerating than color.) The Chinese painters of the T'ang and Sung dynasties were the first to discover that black ink could be made to abstract all pigments and thereby suggest, more believably than actual color paintings, the real tones found in nature. Whereas the medium of ink has been used in the West primarily for line drawings and lithographs, the Eastern artists use ink to produce the illusion of color—an illusion so perfect that viewers must at times remind themselves that a scene is not in full polychrome. And just as the seemingly unfinished artistic statement nudges the viewer into participating in a work, the suggestive medium of monochrome with its implied rather than explicit hues tricks the viewer into unwittingly supplying his own colors.
The Zen insight that the palette of the mind is richer than that of the brush has been best described by a Japanese artist and critic, who explained the rich suggestiveness of black ink, called sumi by the Japanese:
At first glance, this bit of ink on a sheet of white paper seems dull and plain, but as one gazes at it, it transforms itself into an image of nature—a small part of nature, to be sure, seen dimly, as though through a mist, but a part that may guide one's spirit to the magnificent whole. Armed with pigments by the dozen, artists have tried for centuries to reproduce the true colors of nature, but at best theirs has been a limited success. The sumi-e [ink painting], by reducing all colors to shades of black, is able, paradoxically, to make one feel their genuine nuances. . . . By recognizing that the real colors of nature cannot be reproduced exactly, the sumi-e artist has grasped one of the most fundamental truths of nature. He is, therefore, more in tune with her than the painter who tries to engage her in oils and water colors.1
Zen painting seems to have been created, like the religion itself, by antischolastic thinkers of the latter T'ang dynasty. The eccentric monks who invented koan paradoxes also seem to have been fond of calligraphy and monochrome painting. These monks, together with non-Buddhist painters at odds with academic styles, loved to outrage their conservative colleagues by flinging ink at the paper and smearing it about with their hands, their hair, or sometimes the body of an assistant. Even those who restricted themselves to the brush delighted in caricature and unconventional styles. The school of painting represented by disaffected Tang literati and Ch'an monks came to be well respected (much like the abstract expressionist school of today) and was given the name of "untrammeled class." During the Sung dynasty, Ch'an monks became respectable members of Chinese society, and gradually three distinct types of Ch'an-influenced painting were established. One, known in Japanese as zenkiga, featured didactic figure paintings (zenki-zu) illustrating Ch'an parables, depicting Bodhidharma in some legendary situation, recording the critical moment of a koan, or simply illustrating a Zen adept practicing self-discipline through some humble task.