Silent Light: San Francisco and the Art of California Zen explores the influence of Zen Buddhism on artists and thinkers involved in the California counterculture of the 1950s and 1960s. The exhibition brings together Bay Area artists who were deeply influenced by the Asian aesthetics of Zen, pursuing organic materials and forms and, for many, approaching art-making itself as a form of meditation. Featured artists include Bernice Bing, JB Blunk, Jay DeFeo, Claire Falkenstein, Sam Francis, Nancy Genn, Sabro Hasegawa, Adaline Kent, Masatoyo Kishi, Arthur Monroe, Arthur Okamura, Gordon Onslow Ford, Wolfgang Paalen, Hodo Tobase, and Peter Voulkos, among others.
California Zen offered an alternative to the consumerism and conformity of postwar American society, emphasizing self-sufficiency, communal living, ecology, and creating art for oneself and one’s community with available materials.
Long before Shunryu Suzuki established the San Francisco Zen Center in 1962 and Tassajara Mountain Center in 1967, Japanese Zen found fertile ground in California through influential figures including D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, and Sabro Hasegawa, helping shape a distinctly Californian approach to Zen, art, and creative practice.
The exhibition concept was originally presented at Monterey Museum of Art and is being expanded by Sonoma Valley Museum of Art as part of the Further Triennial.