Ch'an Art Lectures

[Losal Samten]

By Professor James Cahill (August 13, 1926 – February 14, 2014)


From Academy to Ch'an: Liang Kai

This last of the four Southern Song Academy masters is shown as providing a bridge between that tradition and the new kind of painting associated with Chan (Zen) Buddhism, which will make up the topic of most of the lecture 12 group. The gap between the way Liang Kai is regarded, and his works collected, in China and in Japan also introduces a large problem that complicates the whole concept of Chan painting: why it was preserved almost entirely in Japan and scarcely at all in China.

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The Beginnings of Ch'an Painting and Muchi

This is the first part of a long attempt to deal with the highly problematic subject of Chan painting—that is, painting associated in various ways with the Chan (Zen) sect of Buddhism. Shown and discussed at length are works by and ascribed to the most famous Chan painter, the monk-artist Muqi.

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Six Persimmons

This central section of lecture 12 concentrates on a single work probably by Muqi: his famous small picture of "Six Persimmons." Viewers are made to gaze at this simple but mysterious work for a long time, while our lecturer attempts answers to the central, ultimately unanswerable question: what is Chan painting, and how does it differ from literati painting?

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Sōgenga and Ch'an Landscapes
Our final lecture, which winds up the series, deals with the many Chan-associated paintings preserved in Japan that are grouped here, loosely, under the term Sōgenga. It concludes with the surviving works from two series of "Eight Views of the Xiao-Xiang Region," one attributed to Muqi, the other by Yujian—paintings that can be taken as representing the last stage in the long development of landscape painting in China that has been the central subject of this series.

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Continuations of Ch'an Ink Painting into Ming-Ching and the Prevalence of Type Images

This video lecture is based on a paper that I wrote of the same name. I present here two main arguments. First that Chan painting, generally thought to have ended during the beginning of Ming, continued to be practiced in Chan monasteries in later centuries, though not well preserved. Second, that the motifs and styles which survived in this tradition, could be called type images, which were painted in ink mono-chrome by both amateurs and professionals of the era.

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Full course on Chinese art here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 4758A5E5D7" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Zhen Li]

Wow, amazing. Thank you for sharing.