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“Killing the Buddha”: Reconstructing Zen

Apr 27, 2023 - Jul 24, 2023
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” So said a Zen master in an iconoclastic koan—a paradoxical statement to provoke a disciple into understanding, in this case to warn against a doctrinal conception of Buddhism. From its roots in ninth-century Japan to its existence as a modern global phenomenon, Zen, or rather our understanding of it, has dramatically transformed. “Killing the Buddha”: Reconstructing Zen investigates the dynamic shifts in Zen and Zen-adjacent art from the seventeenth century to the post–World War II period. Focusing primarily on the Kemper Art Museum’s twentieth-century collection, this installation addresses three themes: meditation, movement, and reinterpretation. These categories respectively engage the role of meditation in the historical practice of Zen through seventeenth-century ink scrolls, the global spread of Zen concepts and its Western artistic interpretations, and the mutability of the role of Zen in American and Japanese avant-garde artistic movements, including Gutai and Abstract Expressionism. Weaving together the works of Zen monks and nuns—such as Sengai Gibon and Ōٲ쾱 Rengetsu—with Zen-inspired works by Franz Kline, Yoshihara Jiro, Yoko Ono, and others—this exhibition illuminates the outsize yet understated role of Zen in the canon of modern art.



“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” So said a Zen master in an iconoclastic koan—a paradoxical statement to provoke a disciple into understanding, in this case to warn against a doctrinal conception of Buddhism. From its roots in ninth-century Japan to its existence as a modern global phenomenon, Zen, or rather our understanding of it, has dramatically transformed. “Killing the Buddha”: Reconstructing Zen investigates the dynamic shifts in Zen and Zen-adjacent art from the seventeenth century to the post–World War II period. Focusing primarily on the Kemper Art Museum’s twentieth-century collection, this installation addresses three themes: meditation, movement, and reinterpretation. These categories respectively engage the role of meditation in the historical practice of Zen through seventeenth-century ink scrolls, the global spread of Zen concepts and its Western artistic interpretations, and the mutability of the role of Zen in American and Japanese avant-garde artistic movements, including Gutai and Abstract Expressionism. Weaving together the works of Zen monks and nuns—such as Sengai Gibon and Ōٲ쾱 Rengetsu—with Zen-inspired works by Franz Kline, Yoshihara Jiro, Yoko Ono, and others—this exhibition illuminates the outsize yet understated role of Zen in the canon of modern art.



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Washington University, One Brookings Drive St. Louis, MO, USA 63130

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