zen Drawings

It is interesting that in a culture devoted to striving to be the best of everything people are embracing Buddhism's teachings of striving to not strive. It started as a reaction against the ultra materialism in the roaring twenties. As a reaction to WWI people were moving to the big cities and cars and telephones were becoming everyday. Then in the 1930s it was gone. This drove more people to question capitalism and one outlet was zen philosophy.

This was later revisited more intensely in the 1960s as a reaction to the post WWII us when everybody was supposed to go back to conformity. Suddenly young people were questioning the capitalist government and were drawing on things from the east. this time it actually worked for a larger less select group called by most people "hippies"(they actually preferred "freaks").

This zen drawing exercise was fascinating.I was intrigued by the drawing exercises where the whole point was to see what happened when we let go of or consciousness. I was actually being told to focus inside my head but I think I overdid it in class. This used inner space and real space . We inderectly interacted with each other as a group in doing this drawing. We didn't look at the previos artist and mada a somehow unified whole
The drawing I think could hang either right side up or upside down and it would work either way.