context: painting > general comments

Critical criteria

Line. That's what it's all about. That's an overstatement, a simplification, but not by all that much. The quality of line and stroke is more important than what it depicts. Philip S. Rawson puts it superbly in Japanese Paintings from Buddhist Shrines and Temples:

In developing the unity of their pictures Japanese artists have always looked first for continuity between lines across the picture surface, second for 'echoing series' of curves. Wherever possible each new line will pick up and continue the movement of a leading line in the picture, either by taking up its movement across an intervening gap or by 'echoing' its movement as a virtual parallel or as a radius from a common centre

You might want to look at the Zen criteria for what should be in a Zen work of art - these are more widely influential than just Zen painting.

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