Ink and color on paperexpand_more
The Mary Griggs Burke Endowment Fund established by the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation and gift of funds from Nivin MacMillanexpand_more 2022.49a,b
In the Buddhist parable titled “Two Rivers and the White Path” (Niga byakudō), a man traveling to the west is chased by bandits when he arrives at the intersection of two rivers: one of blazing fire, and the other of torrential water. The river of water represents greed and covetousness, while the river of fire symbolizes anger and hatred. As he hesitantly takes the white path in between the two, he hears voices encouraging him from both banks, and he successfully crosses over.
Matsubara, who grew up in a temple, decided to paint this story while he was mourning the death of his teacher, Inoue Sankō. In Chaos, he rid himself of the urge to stay faithful to his teacher’s style and to pursue his own interest in depicting sound, as captured in the circles that cover the surface of the screens. The repetitive circles evoke the reverberations of the singing bowl, a sound commonly heard in a Japanese temple. Like the writhing figures in the screen, Matsubara struggled through the white path to emerge confident about his own ideas about painting.
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