Nothing & Everything

Brooklyn Rail and Tricycle Magazine founder Pearlman presents a succinct overview of the role of Buddhist ideas in the emergence of radical and thought-provoking visual art, music, dance, and literature in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The first part of the book is devoted to a discussion of D.T. Suzuki, the Japanese scholar of Zen Buddhism who provided many American artists with their first taste of esoteric Buddhist ideas. The development of the work of John Cage is given ample space along with how his Zen-based ideas influenced individual artists and movements such as Fluxus and the Japanese group Hi Red Center. The book's strength is its discussion of the interactions and connections among artists; less compelling, and even haphazard, are the references to Buddhist thought.