BOOK REVIEW
Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art
2004, published by University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles. Hardcover, 280 pages, 119 color and black-and-white images. Edited by Jacquelyn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob.
ISBN 0 520 24346 3

I am from Japan, where Buddhism is ingrained in everyday life. I recall having a sort of enlightenment experience as a young boy. I was chanting one morning at home, forcing myself to sit in front of my family’s Buddhist altar. At the time, I was filled with emotional torment, and I simply tried to focus on the chanting. As my lips pronounced the words repeatedly, I noticed the sounds of the chant becoming nonsensical as they blended into one. I felt the vibration of he lower register in my skull, while the higher register articulated the rhythm. Ultimately, the sounds became entirely foreign to me, engulfing my body from my head to my legs, which I had tucked underneath me and were numb from sitting in the formal seiza posture. Somehow I forgot all the pain of life, and threw myself into an abyss of abstract feelings. Gradually I became aware that I was making the sounds metaphysically. It was a strange sensation indeed. Afterwards, I felt reborn.

For the past 10 years, I have been reading and thinking about Buddhism and art. Buddha Mind in Contemporary Art, a compilation of material from a two-year seminar and discussion on Buddhism in contemporary art entitled “Awake: Art, Buddhism, and the Dimensions of Consciousness,” co-organized by Jacquelynn Baas and Mary Jane Jacob, is a mouth-watering feast for the eyes and the intellect. The book, comprised of essays and interviews, draws upon numerous contributors who address the ways that artists apply Buddhist thought and practice to their projects.

The authors of the essays, many of which were presented and workshopped during the “Awake” sessions, include pioneering avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson, philosopher-critic Arthur Danto, and psychiatrist Mark Epstein. They suggest that there has been a long, fertile history of Western artists looking at Buddhism, each discovering the endless possibilities for creativity one can obtain by stepping outside the structures of conventional Western thinking.

Arthur Danto lyrically weaves together his own personal encounter with a woodblock print depicting the 13th-century Japanese Buddhist radical Nichiren trudging to his place of exile against a snow-blown landscape, his observations on Zen guru D.T. Suzuki’s lectures at Columbia University and their influence on New York’s avant-garde in the 1950s and 1960s and his understanding of Pop Art. Danto starts out as a young idealist, throwing himself into the foreign terrain of Eastern thought. At the end, he expresses a mature understanding of Buddhism as both an enlightening philosophy and a contested political institution.

Taiwanese art historian Tosi Lee argues that Marcel Duchamp, a key figure in the development of contemporary art, seized upon Buddhist iconography and philosophy in creating his works. In Lee’s eyes, Duchamp’s notorious signed urinal resembles a Buddha sculpture, and his bicycle wheel is the wheel of Dharma, while his cross-dressing alter-ego Rrose Selavy borrows a leaf from Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion, who appears as both male and female. More significantly, Lee suggests that Duchamp crossed the boundaries between life and art in a way that mirrors Buddhist teachings on the relationship between life and religious or meditative practice.

The second half of the book presents interviews with 12 artists whose work embody Buddhist ideas. They include Rirkrit Tiravanija, who advocates art as life; Ernesto Pujol and Bill Viola, who see Buddhist spirituality as a solution to the perversion of a market driven society; and Marina Abramovic, who has worked with Tibetan lamas and aboriginal shamans in pursuing her endurance-based performances. Mariko Mori presents and Eastern vision of pragmatic Buddhism, while Zhang Huan, a Chinese artist now working in the United States, enigmatically states, “Here in America there are deep feelings for dogs. Here people give dogs toy bones; in China we have real bones [sic].”

Some artists seem to have been overlooked. Atsuko Tanaka’s infinite circle paintings come to mind as iconic representations of Buddhist practice that would have fit well in this book. Similarly, the popularity of Zen philosophy compared to other Buddhist schools in the book seems linked to the widespread acceptance of Zen-inspired artists in the American avant-garde. I look forward to a subsequent effort that further explores the different faces of Buddhism.

I also anticipate seeing the realization of Buddha mind that occurs in contemporary art, as happened to me at the Whitney Biennial in 2004. The moment I entered the dark room where a video by Marina Abramovic was being projected, I was mesmerized by the voice, the expression, and the emotions of the little boy singing in her work. I did not understand the words, but the music alone made me experience so much pain. It was as if the boy’s singing brought to life a kind of universal suffering, ultimately drawing us into a feeling of enlightenment. Through her creativity, Abramovic shed light upon a brutal truth in the life of this boy. The boy’s voice lingered and, I hope, spoke to other people in the audience in the same way it spoke to me.

-Hiroshi Sunairi