Agnes Martin, Robert Rauschenberg, and the Undefinable Self: The Use of the Viewer in Constructions of the Queer Self through Zen Worldviews

Written by Dahlia Labatte, McGill University

Edited by Ayşegül Alpak and Mathieu Lajoie

Once diving into postwar American art there is a realization that it is an unimaginably complex web of influences, figures, cultural points, and intersecting demographics that are worthwhile exploring. This analysis simply picks out two interacting facets of the larger context that provide indispensable insight: Zen Buddhism and queerness. Zen comes into the United States to settle into the fertile soil that is provided by Dada and Abstract Expressionism, and in its various paths and manifestations widely impacts the New York art world. This analysis highlights the place of the Coenties Slip and the intersection of queer artists in the dissemination of Zen philosophy. Through visual and material analysis of Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings (1951) and Agnes Martin’s Night Sea (1963), a link is drawn between the non-normative embodying of queer identity that is incompatible with Western thinking and the alternative worldviews Zen provides. Highlighting perception, and the experience of the viewer in these works, Zen gives these artists a visual and intellectual language through which they can explore and construct the queered self.

Zen’s Fertile Soil: Dada & Abstract Expressionism

Dada is an important piece to better understanding Rauschenberg and the place of Zen in American art; a movement that emerged during the First World War (1914-1918). The movement is generally interpreted as a response to the horrors of war. The work produced was intentionally nonsensical and satirical. Depending on the Dada group (there were groups of ‘Dada’ artists in various locations) some were more deeply involved in politics and political Dada, others adhered strictly to the ‘meaninglessness’ of the movement.[1] Dada dealt directly with emptiness and nothingness in a way that the Western art world had never seen before; an intentional avoidance or negation of meaning and substance. The most famous example being the readymades of Marcel Duchamp, who was also a friend of John Cage, an important facet in thinking about Zen in the United States. This is to say in the early twentieth century American and European art worlds were considering concepts like emptiness and existentialism, and although very different from Dada ideas, the integration of a Zen worldview in the 1950s and 60s was not incompatible with artistic movements of the recent past.

Abstract Expressionism was a group of artists and a movement, generally located in New York City through the 1940s and 1950s.[2] The name indicates the creation of abstract work that is ‘expressive’ or emotional, and characterized by gestural movement, mark-making, and spontaneity. This is more strongly associated with the action painting group of the Abstract Expressionist movement, the most well-known being Jackson Pollock. Colour-field painting, seen as either a related movement or a subsection of the Abstract Expressionists, took a slightly different approach. Colour-field painting is not characterized by expressive and emotional mark-making, rather simpler compositions utilizing blended and flowing aura or fields of colour. This subsection had a stronger interest in religiosity and myth, some reading the works as having the intention to create a meditational/contemplative response in the viewer, or in the artist throughout the process of creation. The most well-known of this group being Mark Rothko, while Helen Frankenthaler is also occasionally categorized as a colour-field painter. Overall, Abstract Expressionism and Colour-field painting were innovative in their highlighting the experience of the artist, and the process of creation. Altogether, the idea of the art-making process as self-expression and as a reflection of a worldview was being fully developed in the twentieth century; this art historical context created a fertile cultural soil in which Zen in America was able to bloom. Understanding the place of these movements is necessary to understand Rauschenberg and Martin’s local artistic context, and further, how Zen Buddhism was able to fit somewhat neatly into this artistic and social context.

Zen in the United States

D.T. Suzuki & Zen’s Polyvocal Manifestation in America

In terms of the journey of Zen Buddhism to the United States, scholar, author and translator D.T. Suzuki is generally credited, especially for its dissemination in artistic and cultural circles. In 1949, he began almost a decade of teaching at American schools, culminating at Columbia University where he spent five years.[3] Suzuki’s scholarship and interpretation of Zen and enlightenment could be summarized as a focus on the present moment, access to a pure experience of nothingness, an emphasis on nondualism, and the subjective inner feeling of religiosity.[4] His scholarship deeply resonated with artists and creatives at the time, like John Cage, that were dealing with adjacent ideas through Dada and Abstract Expressionism. Rauschenberg encountered Zen more directly through John Cage and Suzuki; however, Martin's exact ‘lineage’ is less clear. It would be incorrect to state she was unaware, uneducated or unimpacted by Zen. The manifestation and spread of Zen in the United States, particularly in artistic circles, is not easy to track and reflects more communal sharing and dissemination of ideas, rather than a travelling of specific texts. As is discussed by Gregory Levine, “public explanations of and discussions about Zen during the postwar period became in a certain sense more of what Zen was for most people than meditation or other rituals.”[5] Levine explicitly outlines the multivalence of postwar Zen in the United States, which indicates that there is no one way of reading Zen into artwork or categorizing works as “Zen” or “Zen-inspired.” Therefore, in the context of Rauschenberg and Martin, this analysis attempts to avoid categorizing the works as “Zen art” rather hones in on the unavoidable impact of Zen on the artworks in question.

Zen & Queerness

New York City’s Coenties Slip was one of America’s only largely queer artistic enclaves.[6] Additionally, many of the artists in the Coenties Slip were active supporters or students of Zen in the artistic context. Visual artists Cy Twombly, Ad Reinhardt, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Lenore Tawney were supporters and incubators of Zen in American art, and are all either understood or speculated to be queer artists. This extends to queer artists of other mediums, such as composer John Cage and writer Allen Ginsberg who were also leading proponents of versions of Zen in America, exemplifying Jonathan Katz observation that “the leading proponents of an American Zen aesthetic were largely, though by no means exclusively homosexual.”[7] Particularly in the New York context, there is a strong demographic overlap of the artists interacting with and being inspired by Zen Buddhism, and queer artists; in the spaces of the Coenties Slip and the Black Mountain College.

People embodying a queer identity (whether partially closeted or out) occupy a space of “otherness” throughout history. Therefore, it is not a stretch to say queer artists will seek out and find communities of like-people. Particularly in the mid-20th century in the United States, Western thinking and its consequences in social acceptability led to a larger society that had little tolerance for the ‘other.’ When Zen is introduced to the American context, largely credited to Suzuki, it opens up an intellectual alternative; a space for the Other. Embodying a queer identity, in accepting and non-accepting communities, impacts overarching thinking about the individual, the self, identity, and interactions with the world. For artists in the 1950s, when art becomes conceptualized as a vehicle for authentic self-expression, if the artist conceives the self to be a ‘queered’ object that is in-flux, somewhat uncategorizable, and contradictory, Western thinking is not congruent with this. Zen, among other Asian or ‘Eastern’ philosophies proffered salve and offered a conceptualization of the self and the world that had space for those embodying a non-normative sexuality and self-expression.  

Case Study 1: White Paintings

Figure 1. Robert Rauschenberg, White Paintings (three panel), 1951, latex paint on canvas, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco. https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/98.308.A-C/.

Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg is an American artist, working from around 1948 to 2008, primarily in New York City.[8] His early work is characterized by explorations in a variety of mediums, such as photography, painting, printmaking, drawing, and sculpture; separately and in combination with each other. Rauschenberg’s ‘Combines’ would become a hallmark, and hold an important place in art history, surpassing genre, categorization, and highlighting the importance of everyday objects. In New York, Rauschenberg is introduced to the Abstract Expressionists. Although he was consciously not part of the movement, he is often remembered as a forerunner of the Abstract Expressionists, challenging gestural and expressionist painting. His early work was produced in both New York City and the Black Mountain College, which housed another group of influential artists like John Cage, Cy Twombly, among others, as mentioned. In the Western canon of art history, this is the context in which Rauschenberg’s work is generally understood: as a contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists and following the Dadaists.

Rauschenberg is connected to Zen relatively directly through John Cage. They met in 1951 at Black Mountain College, the same year Rauschenberg first made his White Paintings. Cage was one of Suzuki’s active supporters, attending his early lectures, and turned to Zen Buddhism as a source for his work, but also as a practice in his everyday life.[9] Cage and Rauschenberg became friends and creative collaborators on occasion, Cage citing Rauschenberg’s White Paintings as an inspiration for his famous 4’33” composition. John Cage functions as the thread that goes between Dada, Zen Buddhism and Rauschenberg, illustrating their connectedness and causality. Rauschenberg is mostly understood to have been connected to Zen through Cage and attending Suzuki’s public lectures.[10] However, it cannot be ignored that Rauschenberg was in the presence of many other artists around New York in the Black Mountain College and the Coenties Slip, who were also studying and inspired by Zen. This included artists like Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns, both artists indebted to Zen and at different points in relationships with Rauschenberg. This is indicative of the various avenues through which Zen is diffusing and manifesting the American artistic and intellectual culture of the 1950s and 60s. 

The White Paintings

Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings are a series of paintings (pictured is the three panel version) with one, two, three, four, and seven panel variations. The series was all produced in New York City, around 1951. They were however refabricated and repainted in 1968 for an exhibition to maintain the smooth untouched surfaces.[11] The various versions are either in the collections of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation or the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Rauschenberg’s White Paintings are created using latex paint (house paint) on canvas, chosen for its reflective and smooth qualities. The paint was applied using a roller, to avoid any marks or evidence of manual application that could be left by a paint brush. Reading the pieces through a Zen lens, and taking into account Rauschenberg’s own relationship with Zen Buddhism, the series deals with concepts of nothingness/emptiness, meditation, the creative process, and non-oppositional (queered) constructions of the viewer/artist.

In terms of the technical construction of Rauschenberg’s White Paintings the reflective latex paint is the most important element. The piece intentionally functions like a “clock” depending on the space where it is installed; the paint tracks time by reacting to the light and shadows of its environment. With shadows being cast by viewers, it could be considered to have an element of conceptual portraiture, “Zen paintings often transcend the limitations of their subject matter, allowing the viewers to perceive beyond the painting itself, directly appealing to the human.”[12] Similar to John Cage’s 4’33’ which could be considered to be painting a sound portrait of the audience through silence, Rauschenberg’s piece does the same thing.[13] It creates the space for observation. The piece, in one reading, can therefore transcend audience and maker, through viewing the piece becomes continually activated and recreated through the act of being and looking. In this joining of audience and creator Rauschenberg also invokes the intentional nondualism and joining of opposites found in Suzuki’s Zen.

Rauschenberg described his practice as existing the gap between art and life, describing the pieces as intertwined with the contemporary fleeting moment, “Dealing with the suspense, excitement and body of an organic silence, the restriction and freedom of absence, the plastic fullness of nothing, the point the circle begins and ends, they are a natural response to the current pressures of the faithless and a promoter of intuitional optimism. It is completely irrelevant that I am making them – Today is their creator.”[14] He directly refers to the influence of Zen concepts such as nothingness, silence, and the continual present and he often used those terms to describe his own work.[15] Rauschenberg draws from Suzuki’s interpretations of Zen enlightenment and meditation as a tool for his creative process and as the intended effect on the viewer. Through the piece the viewer should be able to reach a state of contemplation and meditation; an inner sense of religiosity through the emptiness/substance that is channelled in the piece.

Despite its impossibility, Rauschenberg attempts to remove the artist as a figure in the White Paintings, through pristine and smooth paint application and through the use of studio assistant to further remove the individual artist’s hand. However, the artist is the primary context for the creation of an artwork and thus that category cannot be removed so simply. The White Paintings are created at a rather important turning point in the artist’s life: being produced shortly after he separated from his wife and became involved with a man.[16] The White Paintings are distinct and a complete visual turn from his previous works, occurring at the same time as his life shifts dramatically. Because of this it becomes difficult to not in some capacity involve a biographical and therefore queer, reading of these works. In his use of assistant and other artist hands in the creation or recreation of these works, Rauschenberg enlisted the help of Cy Twombly, his lover at the time.[17] With Twombly’s involvement in the creation of the White Paintings, there is a sort of queer interaction happening on the canvas, in a material sense,“These paintings, completed during his first few months of life as a gay man, are described as the product of something his head and heart have moved through, manifested in terms of silence, restriction and the freedom of absence.”[18] It is also possible to mobilize Rauschenberg’s use of silence and non-representation in a queer reading.

For many closeted queer artists at the time, ‘authentic’ self-expression in their artworks was not possible the way it was for straight artists (such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, etc.), therefore, self-expression required a more coded and non-explicit visual language. Jonathan Katz, in his dissertation “Opposition, Inc.: The homosexualization of postwar American art,” argues that through silence, a doubleness or identity as ‘self’ and ‘other’ can be expressed. Meaning that oppositionality and non-conformity is incorporated into the object without an explicit sense of ‘opposition.’[19] In the case of Rauschenberg’s White Paintings, the queer self is expressed through the silence that is intentionally uncategorized and undefinable. By attempting to remove the artist from the pieces, a queered sense of the individual emerges. This is counterintuitively furthered by the required presence of the viewer in the paintings: as the viewer grafts themselves onto the nothingness of the White Paintings, a space opens up for “non-conformity within consensus culture.”[20]

Whether the average viewer or museum goer sees the work as a piece of Zen and/or queer painting is a different question and would depend on a variety of factors. This ‘accessibility’ and ‘translation’ topic is discussed frequently in modern and contemporary art in a variety of contexts. The core Zen ideas of Rauschenberg’s White Paintings that are further impacted by a queer reading are likely not translated to every viewer, or even most of them. However, if a viewer experiences the desired reaction of entering a contemplative state, and seeing themself in the work, is it entirely necessary that they are aware of its Zen influence? Is the emotional or intellectual grasp more important? In that same vein, Rauschenberg’s use of Zen goes through a variety of translations and interpretations, through Rauschenberg’s own queer identity, and D.T. Suzuki’s interpretation of Zen being separated from the Japanese cultural, political, and ritual context, and put into the American context and for the purpose of artistic production.[21] Rauschenberg’s White Paintings show the process of religion being translated through space and time, the piece is in the context of the American abstract movement and does not draw on the Zen landscape of calligraphy traditions.[22] Is the series seen as being inspired/influenced by Zen, or as the result of Zen practice in America and as a participant in the Zen tradition? The White Paintings have a certain kind of open-endedness that allows for a variety of readings, both Zen and queer, so this analysis intends to bring up several facets to allow for a fuller reading of the pieces, rather than the only possible reading.

Case Study 2: Night Sea

Figure 2. Agnes Martin, Night Sea, 1963, crayon, gold leaf, and oil on linen, 6’ x 6’, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,  https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.459/.

Agnes Martin

Agnes Martin was a Canadian-American artist, born in 1912 and working from around 1940 until the end of her life in 2004; with a brief pause from 1967 to 1972. Her early work can be categorized as an exploration of abstraction through organic form. Later she began to use more geometric forms which evolved into what became her signature style: large-format abstract grid paintings.[23] Although born in Canada, Martin spent most of her life between New York City and New Mexico. In New York City, she completed both Teachers College and her Master’s in Arts at Columbia University, notably completing her master’s at the same time as D.T. Suzuki was teaching at Columbia.[24] She is known as part of the artist enclave living in the Coenties Slip, opposing themselves to the more fashionable Abstract Expressionists. Her work stands against the trendy gestural painting of the Abstract Expressionists, in favour of a more minimalist and meditative aesthetic. In the Coenties Slip, she was among artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Lenore Tawney, Ellsworth Kelly, James Rosenquist, and others. In looking at work by artists living the Coenties Slip it is clear that these artists were not united by style, movement, or shared belief, unlike the Abstract Expressionist group and movement.

Martin’s work cannot be neatly categorized in an art historical movement like Abstract Expressionism. She is generally understood to exist within the time period of American post-war modern art, adhering to a minimalist and non-gestural aesthetic, in contrast to figurative painting and the Abstract Expressionists. It is possible to place her within the movement of Color Field painting.. However, this is also not a neat categorization due to the grid structure of her works which on a basic level break down the idea of a ‘field’ of colour, as is seen in her piece Night Sea. Martin’s work exists outside most surface level attempts at categorization. She does not make use of gestural painting or mark-making techniques like Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning, nor was she painting flowing auras of colour like Marth Rothko or Helen Frankenthaler. Both these groups, which have some overlap in artists, placed emphasis on the relationship between the artist and the painting; the individualistic process of painting. In this way Martin’s work also rejects those categorizations as Abstract Expressionist or Color Field. She is also not participating in the use of found objects, assemblage, or collage techniques that were a part of many artists practice in the Coenties Slip, like Robert Indiana or James Rosenquist.

Similar to her inability to be categorized in art historical movements, her relationship to Zen is fluid and layered. As mentioned, she was completing her master’s at Columbia University (1951-1952) when D.T. Suzuki was starting his time at the school.[25] There is no guarantee she went to his lectures or read his writing. However, it is unlikely she was not aware of him at all or had not encountered his work in some capacity, especially since she was in the company of many artists who were active supporters of Suzuki like Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, among others. According to curator Jacquelynn Baas, she read and was inspired by Huang Po (a ninth-century dharma descendent of the Sixth Patriarch), her notes containing a summary taken from The Zen Teaching of Huang Po, On the Transmission of Mind. Additionally, Baas notes she provided a retelling of the Buddha’s Flower Sermon in a letter to Arne Glimcher.[26] It is not guaranteed that Martin was a part of the crowd that frequently went to Suzuki’s lectures and it was unlikely she saw herself as a Zen practitioner. However, it would be a misstep to claim she was not educated in, impacted, or inspired by Zen. Martin’s writing and work is proof of Zen’s larger impact on the fabric of American artistic culture; the way in which Zen came through as “polyvocal and with noticeable static.”[27] In other words, her work and the Zen impact is a “product of the Zen boom itself–not so much incorrect as symptomatic. It is part of the history of the modern-contemporary Zen.”[28] To discount the Zen present in Martin’s praxis would be to ignore a large part of Zen impact on American art. It is present in the underbelly of artistic revolutions and innovations of American modern art.

Night Sea

Agnes Martin’s Night Sea is a mixed media painting, produced in 1963 while the artist was living in the Coenties Slip, New York City. The piece is on a large-scale canvas, divided into small rectangles to create a symmetrical grid structure. The field of rectangles are filled with layers of pigment to create a dimensional field of a teal-blue colour. Some sections of the grid are filled in with gold leaf, other sections are left uncovered. From a distance, the piece appears to be a solid mass of colour, only upon closer inspection does it reveal itself to be made up of a smaller and slightly shimmering structure. Surrounding the teal grid, Martin has left the uncovered canvas as an even border of negative space. The space of the canvas has been neatly and consciously organized by the even grid and border that are left mostly uncovered. However, the space of the grid is not kept completely straight and pristinely clear of paint: the layers and overlapping of pigments are visible in small refutations of the grid, and along the canvas border where there are a couple spots of blue paint (on the top left and on the bottom right of the canvas). Night Sea is part of The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[29] This analysis of Martin’s Night Sea is guided by the categories of process, product, and viewer, and how each further a conceptualization of queer identity in relation to Zen. The viewer and perception will be discussed in further depth in the following section.

Martin does not strive for a representation of ‘nothing’ or ‘emptiness’ as some American artists inspired by Zen at the time were doing. She does not create a flat field or remove evidence of human touch or the artist’s interaction like John Cage in his 4’33” or Rauschenberg in his White Paintings. Night Sea and her grid paintings are more in line with Zen through the practice and effect of meditation, and the non-dualism that arises from acknowledging the seemingly contradictory elements of fullness and nothingness. For many artists, the process of creation is a process to get lost in, a “meditative” process. Martin’s process particularly required painstaking measuring and execution to create the small grids on such a large canvas. With all of the grid lines being straight and each tile being so small in size, the product of the painting is one of self-disciplined, repetitive and patient actions. Precise actions that have been constantly and consistently practiced allow the artist to eventually surrender their mind and body to the actions, allowing the practiced muscle memory to take over and enter a state of calmness. This is relevant and legitimate for Agnes Martin who suffered with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (the two diagnoses change depending on the source). Meditation helped alleviate her symptoms and painting became a physical practice and manifestation of that meditation.[30] Her grids are visual evidence of that: the meditative effect of repetitive action and “with its equilibrium of verticals and horizontals, its inherent limitlessness, its seamless incorporation of any singularity into a coherent overarching structure…once the first vertical and horizontal marks are laid down, a grid almost generates itself, becoming an exercise in pure execution, a kind of manual mantra.”[31] Katz also notes the painting of her grids requires self-discipline, focused execution and have “clear affinities with Zen” in her “transcendental ambitions.”[32] The visual structure of Night Sea indicates both a process and product that are in line with Zen qualities of meditation and conducting of ritual action.

In terms of Martin’s queer identity, she was not publicly out and did not acknowledge her sexuality in her writing or interviews; however, she was known as a lesbian to those close to her.[33] At this point, the analysis of Night Sea and her grid paintings reads further than her writings about her own work. Although many artists, including Martin, attempted to remove biographical interpretations from their work, such readings prove difficult to avoid. When it comes to creative production, it is impossible to ignore the primary context of the creation: the artist, and historical context secondly. Martin was often self-contradictory in her works (which could simply be due to the variety of sources of her inspiration( and the quantity of her writing about her own work led to various contradictory ideas. However, contradiction does not mean incorrect or unproductive in readings of her work. The contradictory and in-flux elements of her work are precisely what this analysis hones in on in the following paragraphs.

The suspension of contradiction and non-dualism in Martin’s Night Sea connects her to both Zen and queerness, in “Agnes Martin and the Sexuality of Abstraction”, Katz discusses the way Zen gave Martin a visual and intellectual language through which she was able to grapple with queerness and non-normative expressions of love, resulting in her individual artistic praxis. Through the distinct form and structure that is provided by the grid and the blue pigments which create the impression of a vast and deep ocean, Martin presents the object as both contained and limitless in its connection to a larger oneness. The identity of the object, through which the self is understood, is contradictory and undefinable in its visual qualities. For queer artists that did not ascribe to individualistic expressions of intention and self-identification, Zen ethos “proffered salve” for closeted artists and allowed a conceptualization of self exemplified through artwork that “was less in thrall to an illusion of its own monadic autonomy” and restricted by social perceptions of normative behaviour/thinking.[34] When read in conjunction and as simultaneous in their cause and effect, the queer connection between Martin and Zen is inseparable.

The viewer is not an essential requirement for Night Sea to conceptually ‘exist’, like Rauschenberg’s White Paintings. However, the presence of a viewer certainly allows the piece to fulfill a few functions that are central to this reading. The transformational and in-flux qualities of Night Sea and other grid paintings properly come alive when considering the viewer. The visual qualities of the painting change depending on where the viewer is standing: up close the grid is visible and the larger blue ocean dissolves into the underlying dividing structure. The individual qualities of each blue tile in the grid become noticeable and the various layers of blue paint and spots where paint overtakes the negative space of the grid. In contrast, from far away the grid yields and fades away into the depth of the ocean and becomes invisible. The geometric and linear division of the grid are no longer there and a more limitless blue takes precedence. Furthermore, some areas of the grid have been painted with gold, which shine from particular angles and in certain lighting conditions.[35] These changes in the nature of the piece are not something that depend on being merely ‘noticed’ or chosen by the viewer; they are qualitative of the object itself and indicative of the undefinable nature of the piece. Night Sea depicts and is an example of continual experience and impact of perception on what we see to be true, the piece “instantiates an unexpected gulf between what appears to be true and what is true”[36] This is in alignment with Zen thinking that “perception is unreliable, and the mind, in its emotional and cognitive capacities, can, upon sufficient reflection, pierce the sensory simulacrum in favor of the true.”[37] Through Martin’s Night Sea, the self is shown to be continually experienced, in flux, and inseparable from a larger whole. The impact of Zen in Martin’s work is indivisible from her queer understanding of identity as being incompatible with Western philosophy and societal expectation.

Night Sea is, therefore, a clever double metaphor. Firstly, the piece depicts a representation of a Zen-inspired worldview, one that is non-dualistic and allows for a world that is both constantly in-flux and a suspension of contradictions between the idea of the ‘individual’ and the whole. Secondly, the piece uses that Zen worldview as a metaphor for the undefinable and contradictory closeted queer artist and particularly the ways that perception is unreliable and reality is a constructed notion. For the closeted artist, the ‘self’ and ‘identity’ changed depending on the degree of closeness to the person being interacted with. For Martin, the average collector of her work or audience of her lecture would not be aware of her sexuality and in that reality she was simply an unmarried straight woman. For someone closer to her inner circle, the ‘reality’ of her identity would change. The piece offers a visual representation of the experience of queerness, as it is illustrated through a Zen-impacted worldview.

Synthesis

Robert Rauschenberg’s White Paintings and Agnes Martin’s Night Sea are open to various readings, as is the nature of their artistic practices and the intention of many postwar American artists. This analysis aims to shed some light on the interactions between Zen Buddhism and Zen-impacted worldviews and artistic practices, particularly as it intersected with queer identity exemplified in the works Night Sea and the White Paintings by Martin and Rauschenberg (respectively). As argued by Gregory Levine, Zen came through to the United States as “polyvocal and with noticeable static.”[38] The history of Zen and Zen (inspired) art in America is difficult to categorize and neatly explain. However, this is part of the result of the Zen-boom and the modern-contemporary history of Zen and should not be ignored.[39] That is the reasoning behind the avoidance of terms such as “Zen art” or “Zen-inspired,” instead opting for a “Zen reading” of Rauschenberg’s and Martin’s work. Oftentimes, interpretations get caught up in whether something is ‘really’ Zen, which can be worthwhile investigation but would require a different kind of research into the daily practices of the individual artists. This is a different process and investigation than interpretation of visual artworks which are rather attempts at imaging experiences and concepts that are unable to be entirely explained in words. Altogether, Night Sea and the White Paintings are works that can be read through various lenses, but to negate the impacts of Zen and the interactions of queer identity in these works would be to lose a significant amount of their meaning and depth.

Endnotes

[1] “Dada,” Tate, accessed November 30, 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/dada.

[2] “Abstract Expressionism.” Tate, accessed November 30, 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/abstract-expressionism.

[3] James Dobbins, “D. T. Suzuki: Ideas and Influences,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion (2022), 1.

[4] Dobbins, “D. T. Suzuki: Ideas and Influences.” 1, 3, 9.

[5] Gregory Levine, Long Strange Journey: On Modern Zen, Zen Art, and Other Predicaments (University of Hawaii Press, 2017) 22.

[6] Jonathan Katz, “Agnes Martin and the Sexuality of Abstraction.” In Agnes Martin, ed. Lynne Cooke and Karen Kelly (Yale University Press, 2011), 99.

[7] Katz, “Agnes Martin and the Sexuality of Abstraction,” 99.

[8] “Artist.” Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, accessed November 30, 2024, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/artist.

[9] Christopher Huck, “The Empty-Sublime: Considering Robert Rauschenberg in a Comparative Context.” Comparative and Continental Philosophy 15, no. 1–2 (2023): 78-79.

[10] Huck, “The Empty-Sublime,” 78-79.

[11] “White Paintings (1951).” Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, accessed November 30, 2024, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/art/galleries/series/white-paintings-1951.

[12] Jin-Shan Shen, Yu-Meng Xiao, Chih-Long Lin, “Exploring the Characteristics of Zen Painting.” Creative Education 15 (n.d.): 655.

[13] Liam Smith, “Zen Buddhism and Mid-Century American Art.” (MA thesis, Stony Brook University, 2011), 28.

[14] Smith, “Zen Buddhism and Mid-Century American Art,” 27.

[15] Smith, “Zen Buddhism and Mid-Century American Art,” 28.

[16] Katz, “Opposition Inc.: The Homosexualization of Postwar American Art,” 99.

[17] Vincent Forsell, “In Plain Sight: Queer Symbolism Encoded in the Works of Marsden Hartley, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns.” (MA thesis, Temple University, 2019), 35.

[18] Katz, “Opposition Inc.: The Homosexualization of Postwar American Art.” 101.

[19] Katz, “Opposition Inc.: The Homosexualization of Postwar American Art,” 5 and 60.

[20] Katz, “Opposition Inc.: The Homosexualization of Postwar American Art,” 60.

[21] Thomas Tweed, “Buddhism, Art, and Transcultural Collage: Toward a Cultural History of Buddhism in the United States, 1945–2000” in Gods in America: Religious Pluralism in the United States. (Oxford University Press 2013), 194.

[22] Shen, Xiao, and Lin, “Exploring the Characteristics of Zen Painting.” 656.

[23] “Agnes Martin,” Museum of Modern Art,  accessed November 30, 2024, https://www.moma.org/artists/3787.

[24] Baas, “Agnes Martin: Readings for Writings,” 233.

[25] Jacqualynn Baas, “Asian Philosophy: New Dimensions for Art, 1945-1975,” 2018, 233.

[26] Jacquelynn Baas, “Agnes Martin: Readings for Writings” (Tate Publishing, 2015), 233-34.

[27] Levine, Long Strange Journey, 129.

[28] Levine, Long Strange Journey, 136.

[29] Martin, Night Sea, accessed November 30, 2024, https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.459/.

[30] Henry Martin, “Chapter Nine: Coenties Slip, New York.” In Agnes Martin: Pioneer, Painter, Icon. (Schaffner Press, 2018), 138.

[31] Katz, “Agnes Martin and the Sexuality of Abstraction,” 100.

[32] Katz, “Agnes Martin and the Sexuality of Abstraction,” 100.

[33] Katz, “Agnes Martin and the Sexuality of Abstraction,” 97.

[34] Katz, “Agnes Martin and the Sexuality of Abstraction,” 100-101.

[35] Suzanne P. Hudson, Agnes Martin: Night Sea. (MIT Press, 2017), 13.

[36] Katz, “Agnes Martin and the Sexuality of Abstraction,” 93.

[37] Katz, “Agnes Martin and the Sexuality of Abstraction,” 103.

[38] Levine, Long Strange Journey, 129.

[39] Levine, Long Strange Journey, 136.