Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

This painting is a spectacular tour de force of brush work. The bold characters were executed in a quick and fluid style of calligraphy developed to write complicated characters more quickly. The same style also allowed for more personal expression, and thus was considered more suitable for poetry and private correspondence than the precise, clerical script used to write documents. In order to write with such speed, the calligrapher has to have complete mastery of brush, ink, and form. The calligrapher must also be focused and resolute—paper is an unforgiving medium and a moment of hesitation will result in an unsightly blot of ink. Buddhist monks, particularly those who practiced Zen Buddhism (known as Chan Buddhism in Chinese), often employed this rapid style of painting and calligraphy because of the discipline it requires. This painting—which is actually two works joined together—consists of a pair of poems written by two Chinese monks, one living in China and the other in Japan.
The first poem (on the right) is by the monk Feiyin Tongrong, the abbot of the Wangfusi Temple on Mt. Huangbo in Fujian Province, southern China. As Feiyin says in the inscription (and in his seal in the upper right corner), he is the thirty-first spiritual descendant of Linji Yixuan (d. 866), the founder of the Linji sect of Chan Buddhism—perhaps better known by its Japanese appellation, Rinzai Zen.