My new piece about Buddhism and culture

“What used to be done by Religion has to be done alone by Art."

– Saburo Hasegawa, in a letter to Isamu Noguchi. January 12, 1951.

I never thought there could be such a deep bond between Zen Buddhism and the avant-garde art world and its cultural critique. But Ellen Pearlman has demonstrated otherwise in her book "Nothing and Everything". I was assigned to write a review about her study of Zen's influence on the New York avant-garde scene. I find it difficult to write as a journalist and as a postmodern artist at the same time, because I’m not an artist. By contrast, Nothing and Everything is a book more about art than religion and presupposes a decent knowledge or interest in American avant-garde. Despite this, one “credential” I do have is that I’m a Buddhist and someone who publicly writes about Buddhism. So I probably do have a small stake in understanding the New York collaboration between Saburo Hasegawa, the first Japanese abstract painter, the Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, and Franz Kline the European-American painter. There are many more such ties, and if you're interested, the article is right here.