When one looks at Franz Kline’s Abstract Expressionist paintings involving Gestural Abstraction, they cannot help but read a Chinese or Japanese character in calligraphic form. In fact, a relationship can be established between Kline’s “abstract” lines and marks from the calligraphic strokes of Sumi ink made by the masters of the traditional art form—Japanese calligraphy.
Japanese calligraphy, also known as shodo, meaning “the path (or the way) of writing,” is the oldest art form in Japan, having been practiced since the 5th century. Curated in association with Shodo Columbus, the group exhibition at Gallery 60, titled Contours and Strokes: A Dialogue in Art, could serve as an important cultural exchange between American contemporary artists and Japanese calligraphers.
In Japan, students learn calligraphy from elementary school, beginning with the easier-to-do block style of kaisho. The semi-cursive style of gyosho and the cursive style of sosho are more difficult to master. Japanese calligraphy is greatly influenced by Zen Buddhism, which teaches the importance of becoming one with the moment through meditation. In this aspect, Japanese calligraphy has the qualities of meditation, as it requires the practitioner to focus on the meaning of the character and clear of disturbances in one’s mind.
Being present and becoming one with the instance also relates to photography. Photography is a technologically based art form that seeks to capture the reality split into milliseconds by exposing light-sensitive chemicals on film or electronic sensors to light. Both photography and Japanese calligraphy can be best expressed when the artist is fully alert and focused on the subject at hand, whether that may be the meaning of the character or a person framed within the viewfinder. Both relate to Zen Buddhism in that the purity of the moment, whether the calligrapher is writing in cursive or a photographer is capturing the reflection of a bird in flight, forbids any disturbances of unnecessary emotions, thoughts, or memories.
Due to the mechanical and/or electronic nature of the camera, however, the outcome of photography can be very different from calligraphy. Photographers typically capture the subject with sharp and realistic rendering, but it is possible to create gestural expressions with the camera as well. One can put the camera on long exposure (in the light) and move the camera about to create light movements, which can equate to the gestural and abstract marks and movements in calligraphy.
Or, just as in the case of David Alexander’s works, such as Confetti (2021), one can combine photographs with gestural marks and abstract shapes by altering the image digitally. Alexander provides a link between the abstract, expressive realm of imagination (where calligraphy belongs) and its antithesis, the physical reality isolated and captured by the human eye or the camera.
Dasha Bazanova’s Impressionistic oil painting of her cat, titled Sleeping Cat (2024), serves as another key bridge between the imaginative and the physical, photographic reality. Framed just as a portrait shot would be cropped, the painting references an underlying physical reality and interprets it into a painterly reality of Impressionistic strokes and brushwork. This merging of reality with imaginative interpretation is subtle, and it stops there.
One of the calligraphic demonstrations was by Mika Kanemura, who used a huge brush the length of her body to create bold and expressive strokes on the paper laid on the floor. While looking at the demonstration, one could not help but be reminded of the Abstract Expressionist painters, who similarly used large tools and relied on spontaneity and abstraction.
A big discernible difference is that the Japanese calligrapher is not process-based, whereas the American Abstract Expressionists were heavy on exploring and experimenting through a process-based approach. Process-based art means breaking down the creative method into various steps, rules, and techniques in repetition, with a focus on the creative experience or process rather than the final product. The Japanese calligrapher utilizes (sumi) ink on traditional paper, whereas the Abstract Expressionists were keen on using oil paint on canvas or wooden boards. This difference also means that the Japanese calligrapher cannot build up layers and must arrive at the final image in the moment, while the Abstract Expressionist painter may layer the image through experimental processes and in multiple steps to complete the painting.
Zach Ziemann paints in the mode of Abstract Expressionism in his work, Nocturne (2023), but it could also be mistaken for a highly abstracted and cursive form of East Asian calligraphy. Ziemann’s work is closest to the realm of ambiguity and liminality, between interpretation and meaning and physical reality, in which the abstraction and pictographic representation are not based only on physical reality but also on the underlying super-reality of abstract ideas and forms.
While there were many other impressive works in the exhibition, such as Dan Christoffel’s Young Virginia Woolf (2010) and Kiichi Takeuchi’s American Dream Vase 2.0 (2024), we must arrive at a conclusion of some kind—that the Abstract Expressionists whose movement was the culmination of Modernism, had arrived at the doorstep of a traditional art form that is Japanese (and East Asian) calligraphy, just as Cubism’s Picasso discovered the potency of the so-called “primitive” forms from African sculptures. Is the world of ideas an enclosed system of circular composition (or sphere), on which we people crawl like ants, believing that we are making progress, only to bump into one another from the other direction? This may be the end of humanism (and the need for human accomplishments), the beginning of the end of ideas, and a return to a world of spirituality that respects the divine significance of reality and existence. This beginning or ending is just as the Japanese calligraphers had been practicing the art form in line with the teachings of Zen Buddhism for centuries.
Contours and Strokes: A Dialogue in Art
Curated by Kiichi Takeuchi at Gallery 60 NYC in association with Calligraphy Columbus
Through October 18th.
About the Writer: Chunbum Park, also known as Chun, is a writer, artist, and photographer from South Korea, where they were born in 1991. Park has written for the New Visionary Magazine, Two Coats of Paint, Tussle Magazine, XIBT Magazine, and others. They completed their MFA in Fine Arts Studio from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2022. Park’s graduate thesis dealt with the merging of gender fluidity, anti-racist aesthetics, and Northeast Asian beauty in their art. They also interview artists at the Emerging Whales Collective.