Eido Tai Shimano 

Daniel Greene painted "Eido Tai Shimano" at an unknown date, using oil on canvas. It presents a portrait of a Japanese Zen Buddhist abbot in a traditional pose of seated meditation. Greene, a leading American portrait painter, worked in a realist tradition that developed in opposition to the institutional dominance of abstract expressionism. One might ask what motivates Greene to select a Zen abbot as a subject, given that the artist was immersed in a largely Euro-American artistic milieu? Was it merely a fascination with the "exotic" or might it also signal a progressive interest in cross-cultural exchange? To truly understand the painting's position within American art history, one might examine exhibition records, reviews, and other documentary evidence. The meaning of this artwork is contingent on the social, cultural and institutional context in which it was made and displayed.