Japanese Zen Buddhism and the Impossible Painting

Lecture by Professor Yukio Lippit
September 23, 2014, The Getty Center
Created by the Zen monk-painter Josetsu for the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimochi, The Gourd and the Catfish (ca. 1413)-which involved the participation of some 32 Zen monks-has been designated a Japanese national treasure and is celebrated as a Zen masterpiece.
In this lecture, Yukio Lippit considers the ways in which the work mobilizes new modes of artistic representation to pictorialize the nonsensical nature of Zen koans (riddles or paradoxical statements that demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning). Lippit also explores the connections between ink paintings, medieval shogunal culture, and Zen Buddhism's doctrinal emphasis on the concept of emptiness.
Yukio Lippit is Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.
Learn more about this event at the Getty Research Institute's website: www.getty.edu/r...

[@HamburgerJamesUSA]

Fascinating lecture. Can you purchase a reproduction of this art anywhere? I'm not seeing anything online.

[@paradisebound]

It's a fascinating piece that fills us with questions that we can only answer ourselves. I speak about this in some of my Zen Buddhist, Japanese Art and Culture videos.

[@Gisbertus_Voetius]

Does Zen see the negation in a hegelian sense? As the necessary progression of the essence unfolding?

[@slavojjoshu5518]

If the water in the gourd is held as one's own, the fish swims unrestrained. When waters rise as mist and fall as rain, the fish is already inside.

[@anonymousprivate116]

Can you bring on Shoryu Bradley of Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery in America for a talk on Zen :)!

[@CarrotCakeMake]

Does anyone know the name of the art at 28:21 ?

[@cyntheabogel370]

曾我蕭白 Soga Shōhaku (1730-1781) and Tekkai sennin (immortal). For an explanation see: collections.artsmia.org/art/117449/the-immortals-gama-sennin-and-tekkai-sennin-kuroda-ryozan

[@BERESEC]

The painter was Yoda ......and he used The Force.....

[@RM-kz3yg]

30:00

[@davereid-daly2205]

Very articulate. The reason this work was not replicated is because the painter was Buddha.

[@michaelmccauslin3676]

Visual arts is the only artist form where people talk too damn much.

[@roythomas3667]

Very insightful. I too, am now enlightened.