Aesthetics, No.13 : The Japanese Society for Aesthetics

Dürer and Sesshū as Spiritual History: Godness and Emptiness

ŌHASHI Ryōsuke

[Abstract]

Sesshû (1420-1505 or 1507) lived through the Önin War (1467-1477) in Japan, and Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), the German Renaissance. Sesshû was immersed in Buddhist thought and Dürer in Christian-philosophical thought. Sesshû practiced Zen in Kyoto, the capital of Japan and the center of politics, religion and art. Nürnberg, where Dürer was born and grew up, was called the hidden capital of the Holy Roman Empire, and was also an important center of commerce, humanism, religion, and art. The comparative reflection on these two painters will concentrate on the artistic expression of the human being and nature. The world of Dürer will be characterized with the word “godness” in the Christian sense, and that of Sesshû with the word of “nothingness” or “emptiness” in the Zen Buddhist sense. In the deep layer of their works we find a marvelous accordance expressed six centuries ago in Japan and Europe. This accordance brings us also to a question which goes beyond the range of an aesthetic reflection, the question about the whereabouts of the spiritual ground of the age past and that of the contemporary world. A consideration of this question is the original motif of the present comparative reflection.

Keywords: Dürer, Sesshû, ink-painting, human nature, nature