Buddha with Bird Nest: sculpture
November 7, 2007 | Edward Tufte
5 Comment(s)
Here’s the first version of this sculpture, a steel and bronze Buddha, supported by the three cylinders of wisdom (perhaps a reference to the Diamond Sutra scroll books), sitting on a stone.
The new version of this artwork is below, deeper into the thread:
Buddha also appears in my Beautiful Evidence (at page 87) in the discussion of the Diamond Sutra:
Photographs by Andrei Severny.
Topics: Art, E.T., Sculpture
I wonder if you are aware of the resemblance between the three-disk platform of your Buddha sculpture and Marcel Duchamp’s paintings Chocolate Grinder No. 1 (1913) and Chocolate Grinder No. 2 (1914). The image of three rolling cylinders topped by a circular plane from those paintings also is a major element in the “Bachelors” area (the lower half) of The Large Glass or The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Considering the aura of philosophical, metaphysical contemplation and intense purposefulness around Duchamp’s work, it strikes me that even if you didn’t have it in mind when designing the Buddha piece, it might be a coincidence worth noticing.
On the left: steel, bronze, handmade bird nest.
On the right, 3 steel forgings mounted on steel surface plates.
Here are some stories about this piece:
1. Buddha on the Buddha-mobile.
2. Buddha on a base formed by the three cylinders of wisdom.
3. Buddha was said to meditate so serenely that birds were able to nest in his hair.
4. Buddha is one of the few Dear Leaders that you can place a bird’s nest
upon his head and his fundamentalist followers won’t try to blow you up.
Thus the piece is a statement about Buddha and Buddhism as well as other
religious belief systems.
5. Buddha visits Egypt (or an Egyptian color palette) in the second picture immediately above.
6. This Buddha maintains dignity, wholeness, and coherence in the presence of all these stories.
The 3 blacksmith forgings mounted on surface plates (at right) will probably be part of the Buddha piece for my New York show.
Buddha with Bird Nest, absent the 3 forgings and surface plates, was shown at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, June 2009- January 2010.
Photographs by Andrei Severny.
Scenes from the Life of the Buddha, ink and colours on silk, from Cave 17, Mogao, near Dunhuang, Gansu province, ChinaTang dynasty, 8th-early 9th century AD, British Museum, Asia OA 1919,1-1,0.97.
Note that the illustrations above of the Diamond Sutra printed book/scroll and the silk drawing of Buddha with a bird’s nest are both from the amazing Dunhuang Caves in China and are both dated in the 8th-9th century CE.
This is a serene, yet dynamic Tathagata, riding the rollers of buddha, dharma, and sangha. This Buddha can maneuver in any direction, occupy any point of view. Karma rolls on inexorably, yet he remains tranquil, unperturbed.