Stephanie G. Mathis The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco is hosting a 13th-century ink painting that has been called the “Zen Mona Lisa.”
Persimmons (also called Six Persimmons) by the Chinese monk Muqi is on loan from Japan’s
In a press release, the museum’s director and CEO Jay Xu said: “Captivating in its simplicity, ‘The Heart of Zen,’ offers visitors a once-in-a lifetime encounter with two paintings that are so precious, celebrated, and yet so rarely seen, most of the globe has only experienced them as reproductions.”
They have never been outside Japan. The short window of time will protect them from being overexposed to light because they are delicate.
Only two paintings will be on display at the exhibition. The exhibition is held in a large, beige room with soft lighting and a projection showing the Daitokuji Ryokoin Temple.
Yuki Moishima is the associate curator for Japanese art at the museum. She tells Artnet’s Sarah Cascone, that she was “starstruck”, when she heard the paintings would be coming to San Francisco. She says that when she was in art history classes in school, the paintings were discussed and included in textbooks.
Persimmons and Chestnuts are simple but their beauty is profound. Six persimmons, by depicting a Chinese fruit devoid of any connotations, forces the viewer, Tim Brinkhof, to see the subject as it is and not for the ideas that it might represent. The result is a painting which cannot be analysed, but only experienced – the same way that one interacts with flowing water or rolling clouds.
Muqi, a Chinese painter who was born in the 1200s in the late Song Dynasty era, is renowned for his work in Japan. Muqi used loose brushstrokes when he painted animals and nature, a style that was in contrast to the precise strokes of many Chinese artists. Scholars believe merchants bought the paintings, then brought them to Japan where the monks’ style was celebrated.
The show was conceived by Kobori Geppo the abbot at the Daitokuji Ryokoin Temple. The museum impressed him during a 2017 visit to San Francisco. The number of homeless people and those experiencing other hardships was also a shock to him.
In a statement from the museum, Xu says that “during conversations with the abbot, it became apparent that we could foster empathy by sharing these two exceptional paintings with our City.” He hopes that the visitors will take away a sense of peace and harmony to help them face the daily challenges.
Two paintings will be displayed at the museum for a single weekend. Persimmonswill be displayed through December 10 while chestnutswill appear between December 8 and December 31.
“You may never see these pictures again,” says Xu. The short time frame we have to see these paintings echoes our limited time on Earth to have a positive influence on others.
