Here's some interesting lines from a thesis on Zen and Art that I came
across. [I didn't write it.]
Backs up some of the ideas of the Salvaggio Museum of Modern Living
rather well, I believe.

+

"Watts (1957:174) holds that the West sees and depicts nature in terms
of man-made symmetries and
super imposed forms, squeezing nature to fit his own ideas, while the
East accepts the object as is, and
presents it for what it is, not what the artist thinks it means."

+

"Art in the West has developed a complex linguistic symbolism through
which the artist manipulates his
material to communicate something to his audience. Art as communication
is basic to Western aesthetics,
as is the corollary interrelationship of form and content. Music is
considered a language of feeling
(Hanslick 1957) and consists of"sonorous moving forms." A landscape
painting in the Western tradition is
not merely an aesthetically pleasing reproduction; the artist uses his
techniques of balance, perspective,
and color, to express a personal reaction to the landscape–his painting
is a frozen human mood. The
aesthetic object is used as a link between the audience and the artist's
feelings. And the artist's technique
is used to create an illusion of the forms of reality.

The Zen artist, on the other hand, tries to suggest by the simplest
possible means the inherent nature of the
aesthetic object. Anything may be painted, or expressed in poetry, and
any sounds may become music. The
job of the artist is to suggest the essence, the eternal qualities of
the object, which is in itself a work of natural
art before the artist arrives on the scene. In order to achieve this,
the artist must fully understand the inner
nature of the aesthetic object, its Buddha nature. This is the hard
part. Technique, though important, is useless
without it; and the actual execution of the art work may be startlingly
spontaneous, once the artist has
comprehended the essence of his subject."

+

The full article, which goes on to the obligatory John Cage comparisons,
is at:

http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/lieberman/zen.html


-e.





Nmherman@aol.com wrote:

> In a message dated 5/29/2002 9:05:50 PM Central Daylight Time,
> joseph@electrichands.com writes:
>
>
>> even to move your hand requires a
>> decision, and a decision demonstrates a thought
>
>
>
> But in Zen drawing the drawing doesn't matter and the point is not to
> be thinking, deciding, choosing, any of that. Is that the basic
> difference between Eastern and Western art?
>
> Didn't Buckminster Fuller discuss that in "Decision and Complexity"?
> I haven't read it lately but I know at the time it was
> published–right after the controversial Bienniale of '73–people
> accused Fuller of having ties to Skinner, hyper-dependence on
> determination and enlightenment. They were driving at the value
> driver of the manufacture of enlightenment and gave 'er a good go; I
> won't hold 'er agin' 'em.
>
> The decision to choose, to select, and anoint is the decision. The
> rest of it is non-decisional, and we have the brain science hot on tap
> to prove it free and clear. Hey, I think the Smiths must have been
> copying T Rex a little bit. Who's better? Not my business.
>
> Ah, sweet decision. What on earth is more glutting or fleeting than a
> gratifying decision; in fact you could say that Empire itself is built
> on a fulcrum of decision or what we humans call "Art." Art, sweet
> Art. But EH Gombrich says in his book that "there is no such thing as
> Art; there are only Artists."
>
> Which was the same idea as in War and Peace! It's a general tradition
> that the artist is always outside of history. God damn witch doctors,
> they tell ya that to make you buy paintings left and right.
>
> Is Genius the Artist and 2000 the Art? I would say yes in that it has
> infinite surface area, my G2K compositional meme "the dark pixel."
> See, in 3d the logomeme is a spherical surface area generated by a
> script of possible moves by a knight. You can even go to 4D. My
> designers are working on this type of scripting as we speak.
>
> T Rex's "Electric Warrior"–bad or good album? I think it's pretty good.
>
> Plus so many nettimers are emailing me offlist it's been great, really
> great. I think it creates just the right buzz, the spin to get me
> that Walker Award!
>
> You do not have my permission to forward this to Rhizome or any other
> list.
>
> Your friend,
>
> Max Herman
>
> ++