Buddhist Art Reviews by Scott Snibbe
Line Describing a Cone 1973, Anthony McCall, Digital transfer from 16mm film
When I was first invited to write art essays for the Roborant Review, I hesitated, unsure whether I had anything original to add. However, as I dove into the assignment, I realized that I could write authentically about art from an experiential, emotional—and Buddhist—perspective. What does art tell us about our lived experience? What does art say about conscious awareness? And how does art transform our minds (for the better)?
Below are my first four reviews, which I enjoyed writing, sharing a lifelong passion for art that is energetic, joyful, and asks essential questions about what it is to be human and relate to the people, world, and universe around us.
Line Describing a Cone 1973, Anthony McCall
Anthony McCall: First Light, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
“A rare, transcendental exhibition of three works of “solid light” by Anthony McCall brings these questions of mind and reality to the fore in an exhibition now on view at San Francisco’s Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture.…”
Untitled, undated, Arthur Monroe, oil on canvas, 18” x 14”
Human / Nature: California Zen in Big Sur and the Bay Area, Monterey Museum of Art
“Does staring at a blank wall for a thousand hours sound easy or relaxing? Does it sound particularly “zen” in the flavorless way we now use this word to brand a nail spa or tea blend? Yet this aggravating activity sits at the heart of Zen Buddhism as it took root in California’s counterculture of the 1950s and ’60s, flowing through the open minds of writers and artists drawn to the creative poles of San Francisco and Big Sur.”
Bill Kane, Chekawa, Collaged dupioni silk with canvas backing, 96x102", 2009
Bill Kane, Light Bodies, Themes and Projects
“‘Everything we know is false’ is one of the teachings that Bill treasures most from his Buddhist instruction. Because we have minds, we name things; we develop strong likes and dislikes; these grow into firm feelings of right and wrong, biases, and conflicts. Our minds are out of control, hypnotized by deluded ways of seeing reality and ourselves. Everything we know is false. Yet through the lens of ordinary perception, Kane's art reveals a world transformed from the coarse and unkind to one that is luminous, welcoming, and ecstatic.”
Chairman of the Board, 1971, Helen Frankenthaler, acrylic and felt-tip pen on canvas, 6' 10 x 16' 2
Helen Frankenthaler: A Grand Sweep, Museum of Modern Art, New York
“Chairman of the Board (1971) is an enormous, predominantly orange canvas. A raw fault line arcs through its middle, revealing a bare linen crevasse from which blossom purple, brown, green, and pink blooms. Feminine, alluring, creative (or violent?)—weighed with a jarringly masculine title—the work suggests that the universe has even more to offer us than we have yet imagined. The painter's own words indicate that she may have been as jolted by its beauty as we are: ‘anything original is as much of a shock to the artist as anyone else.’”