Gutai Art Association

Gutai Art Association

具体美術協会, Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai
Formation	1954
Headquarters	Ashiya, Japan
Leader	Jiro Yoshihara

The Gutai Art Association (具体美術協会, Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai, or, short, Gutai) was a Japanese avant-garde artist group founded in the Hanshin region by young artists under the leadership of the painter Jiro Yoshihara in Ashiya, Japan, in 1954.

The group is best known for the broad range of experimental art forms combining painting with performance, conceptual, interactive, site-specific, theatrical and installation artworks, which its members explored in unconventional venues such as public parks and on stage. The members’ engagement with the relationship between spirit, human body and material, often concretized in artistic methods that involved the artist’s body and violent gestures.

Fueled by Yoshihara’s ambitious scope and strategic skills, Gutai’s exhibitions and publications reached audiences around the world, realizing what Yoshihara called an “international common ground” of experimental art. Gutai exchanged and collaborated with a great number of artists, art critics and curators from Europe, the US and South Africa, among them the French art critic Michel Tapié and the artists he promoted, art dealers Martha Jackson in New York and Rodolphe Stadler in Paris, and the Dutch-German artist groups NUL and Zero.

The critical reception of Gutai was strongly affected by the shifts in art discourse from the 1950s to the late 1960s, particularly from gestural painting to more performative approaches and so-called anti-art movements of the 1960s.

While Gutai works are recognized for anticipating ideas and approaches of European and US-American art of the 1960s, such as performance, happening, pop, minimal, conceptual, environmental and land art, Gutai artists referred to a broader understanding of picturing embodied in the Japanese term e (picture), which allowed them to overcome conventions of painting.

Gutai is one of the internationally most recognized positions within 20th century Japanese art and a key position in the historiography of Japanese post-World War II art.

History[]

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Foundation, 1954[]

Gutai was founded in late 1954 by 16 artists from the Hanshin region, under the leadership of the Ashiya-based painter Jirō Yoshihara.

Yoshihara, a businessman and renowned painter, who was based in Ashiya and whose artistic practice reached back to the 1920s, was an influential figure in the revitalization of cultural life in the Kansai region in the post-World War II years. He co-founded the Ashiya City Art Association in 1947, assisted in the establishment of the Ashiya City Exhibitions, mentored young artists, and collaborated with art educators. In 1951, together with the painters Kokuta Suda, Takao Yamazaki, Makoto Nakamura, and Kenzō Tanaka, and the sculptor Shigeru Ueki, he founded the Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Contemporary Art Discussion Group, known as Genbi), a forum for interdisciplinary exchange and discussion about creating new art that merged Eastern and Western culture as well as modern and traditional arts, including ikebana, calligraphy and pottery. The Genbi artists shared a preference for abstract art and a strongly international scope fueled by their ongoing exchange with European and US-American artists.

In late 1954, under Yoshihara’s initiative, a group of 16 artists including Genbi participants, Yoshihara’s students (e.g. Tsuruko Yamazaki and Shozo Shimamoto, his students since 1946 and 1947^[1]), and participants of the Ashiya City Exhibition, officially founded Gutai. Their first official act was the publication of the group’s own Gutai journal on January 1, 1955, to promote the members’ works to art audiences all over the world. Most of the Gutai members in the early 1950s had shifted to an abstract visual language in their paintings and were exploring new experimental methods of applying paint by using unconventional materials and tools such as rifles, watering pots, or brooms.

The kanji used to write 'gu' meaning tool, measures, or a way of doing something, while 'tai' means body.^[2] Yoshihara considers it to mean "embodiment" and "concreteness."^[3] It was Shimamoto who suggested the name Gutai.^[4]

The 17 founding members were Sadami Azuma, Kei Iseya, Tamiko Ueda, Chiyū Uemae, Hiroshi Okada, Hajime Okamoto, Shōzō Shimamoto, Yoshio Sekine, Shigeru Tsujimura, Tōichirō Fujikawa, Hiroshi Funai, Masanobu Masatoshi, Tsuruko Yamazaki, Toshio Yoshida, Hideo Yoshihara, Jirō Yoshihara and the latter’s son Michio Yoshihara.^[5] Yet, more than half of the founding members left the group  over the course of that first year, some of them disappointed by Yoshihara’s preference for the group’s own journal instead of actual (physical) exhibitions. On Yoshihara’s invitation, the members of the small art group Zero-kai (Zero Society), including Akira Kanayama, Saburō Murakami, Kazuo Shiraga, and Atsuko Tanaka, joined Gutai in the spring of 1955.

Stressing the importance of artistic creativity to individual autonomy and freedom, Yoshihara in the first Gutai issue claimed: “What matters most to us is to ensure that contemporary art provides a site enabling the people living through the severe present to be set free. We firmly believe that the creations accomplished in that free site can contribute to the progress of mankind. […] We hope to present concrete proof that our spirits are free. We never cease to pursue fresh emotions in all types of plastic arts. We look forward to finding friends in all visual arts.”^[6] Many of the Gutai artists, such as Yoshihara, Shimamoto, Yamazaki, Yōzō Ukita, Murakami, and Tanaka participated in art education, particularly for young children. They gave art classes, assisted with child art exhibitions such as the Dōbiten (Young children art exhibition) organized by the Ashiya City Art Association, and contributed to the children free poetry magazine Kirin, where they advocated for the fostering of children’s free creative expression.

Activities, 1955–1972[]

Coming about during postwar Japanese reconstruction, Gutai stressed freedom of expression with innovative materials and techniques.^[7] Gutai challenged imaginations to invent new notions of what art is with attention on the relationships between body, matter, time, and space. After the war, attitudes regarding cultural exchanging changed amongst nations as the art environment involved great optimism for global collaboration. Since artists were pursuing advances in contemporary art transnationally, the art environment of the time fostered thriving conditions for the Gutai group. For example, with the Treaty of San Francisco in 1951, there was an increase in cultural exchanges between Japan and its new western allies. Gutai artwork began being shown in exhibitions in both American and European cities.^{[8]: 21–22}

In the early 1950s, works by Yoshihara were featured in the opening shows of Nihon Kokusai Bijutsu-ten (International Art Exhibition Japan) and Gendai Nihon Bijutsu-ten (Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan) during the resurgence of contemporary art in Japan. In "Osaka 1951", Yoshihara and others established the Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Contemporary Art Discussion Group), known as "Genbi". This group served as a workshop and forum for creating new art forms merging Eastern and Western culture as well as the modern and traditional. The main focus of Yoshihara was gaining recognition in the art world through Japanese tradition and in 1952 Yoshihara participated for example to the Salon de Mai in Paris and again in 1958 after the visit of Georges Mathieu to Japan in 1957 and the discovery of the movement by the art critic Michel Tapié.

With post-occupation Japan's emphasis on freedom, the United States' goal was as well to promote abstract art in order to promote democracy. Like the social reforms of the Allies occupation of Japan after the war, the United States wanted to steer Japan, and other axis nations, away from the more communistic art style of socialist realism.^[9] This helped spread Gutai art since it sponsored its creation. One example is the Guggenheim International Award exhibition that begun after the war and tactfully included work from Japan, a former axis state, in order to invite non-western art into the purview of contemporary abstract art as it cooperated with the democratic propaganda.

Yoshihara Jiro was a businessman, self-taught painter who founded Gutai art in 1954 by gathering a group of artistic protégés in Ashiya, Hyōgo. The group shared a gallery space in Osaka. He directed the artists to attempt to do what has never been done before. These early works focused on marks made from bodily movements. Yoshihara's vision for Gutai was one of internationality, which was very plausible considering the political climate of the time. The worldwide distribution of hundreds of bulletins titled Gutai is perhaps the first proactive international effort done by Yoshihara. The bulletins included avant-garde works and Yoshihara sent subsequent Gutai bulletins to artist like Jackson Pollock, whom Yoshihara greatly admired, with the same aspiration of international recognition. Another one of Gutai's initial involvements with global extension was in 1963 when Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's curator Lawrence Alloway chose Gutai art to be represented in its show in order to exemplify the universality of art while to also admire the specificity of its culture. This notion is something that Gutai did indeed want to express. The avant-garde abstract art of the time created a universal language.^{[8]: 21–27} Gutai engaged in this language yet used its cultural and physical distance to preserve originality.^{[10]: 45–46} Gutai art challenges the particularity of performance and painting and can be simplified as an intricate combination of the two.^[10]: iii

The Gutai group developed a new perspective on individuality and community, which were ideas pertinent to the post war atmosphere. The group developed a "collective spirit of individuality"^{[11]: 383–415} by emphasizing the importance of the individual in a group context. To the Gutai group, community was essential in fostering the creativity of the individual. In terms of the post war atmosphere, it was common in Japan to believe that community was to blame for enabling such war aggression to happen and therefore it needed to be abolished. This is what inspired Yoshihara to rethink community. The group took on a horizontal system of community as opposed to a hierarchical one. Gutai believed that community was essential to the development of the individual. Gutai viewed individualism as challenging oneself against external forces, such as the psychological forces of fascism, in which the individual becomes a means of asserting freedom. Asserting freedom is how one can prevent totalitarianism from returning. These views were written in articles and shared in the Gutai bulletin. Artistically speaking, the Gutai group maintained their collective identity by having group exhibitions and group journals. The importance of the individual comes into play in the diversity of the artists themselves. The styles and approaches greatly varied with in the group.^{[11]: 384–393} They also had many existential reflections like Jean Fautrier and Jackson Pollock. Their principles of emancipation were from the rapid dehumanizing industrial growth that was happening in Japan. Their concerns were close to that of Allan Kaprow, the Situationist International, the Dutch group Nul, and the Brazilian Neo-concretists^[12] The group worked together for 18 years and dissolved after the sudden death of Yoshihara in March 1972.^[13]

Gutai journal, 1955–1965[]

The publication of the journal entitled Gutai was the first official act of the group.[1] The first issue appeared on January 1, 1955, and the last issue, number 14, in October 1965, with issues numbers 10 and 13 never having been published.[2] The Gutai journals consisted of the documentation of the group’s exhibition projects and the members’ works through photographs and articles and allowed Gutai to disseminate their work, to connect with audiences, artists, critics, art historians, around the world. Thus, the names of the artists were indicated in alphabet, and Gutai issues included texts written by Gutai members with English, and later also French, translations, as well as contributions by artists from abroad. Yoshihara was extremely self-conscious of the fact that whatever they did would not be seen by anyone unless they documented and disseminated it,^[14] particularly of the importance of plates and photographs.[3] The Gutai journals were sent to Jackson Pollock in the US or Hisao Dōmoto in Paris with the request to distribute copies in their social circles.^[15] They were seminal vehicles in Gutai’s international exchange with artists, critics, art and book dealers, Ben Friedman, George Wittenborn, Ray Johnson, Michel Tapié, Martha Jackson, Henk Peeters, Jean Clay and Allan Kaprow.^[14]

While the first issue of Gutai mainly consisted of photographic plates of works, from the second issue on, published in October 1955, the journal adapted a square format and lavish design that freely arranged drawings, graphic prints, photographs, and texts. They experimented with different qualities of paper, included cutouts and original paper works. The edition of the issues nos. 8, 9 and 10 were supervised by Yoshihara and Tapié.

A facsimile edition of the Gutai journals with English translations and scholarly essays was published in 2010.

[1] Hirai, Shoichi, “On Gutai”, Gutai: Painting in Time and Space / Gutai: Dipingere con il tempo e lo spazio, exh. cat., Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano, Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2010, 143–161.

[2] Hirai, in Gutai, Facsimile Edition, 127–128.

[3]  Hirai, Shoichi, “On Gutai”, Gutai: Painting in Time and Space / Gutai: Dipingere con il tempo e lo spazio, exh. cat., Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano, Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana, 2010, 145.

Outdoor exhibitions, 1955–1956[]

The group’s first exhibition participation after its foundation and launch of the Gutai journal took place in March 1955, when 12 Gutai members participated in the 3rd Yomiuri Independent Exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, to which they submitted works entitled Gutai to the painting section.

The first group's own exhibition project was the Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Midsummer Sun at Ashiya Park in July 1955. (Officially, the exhibition was a project by the Ashiya City Art Association, but it was de facto realized by Gutai members,[1] who made up the majority of participants,[2] including the former members of Zero-kai.) Taking over a public park in Ashiya, Gutai presented a two-week, twenty-four-hour-a-day open-air exhibition, addressing passersby crossing the park on their way to the beach nearby. "The experiment," the group announced, "is to take art out from closed rooms ... exposing the works to the natural forces of sun, wind, and rain."^[16] The exhibition committee requested that the works be able to withstand weather conditions such as rain and wind, and taking into consideration the extent of the exhibition venue, to be larger than 30 cm on one side.

Engaging with the various natural and technical conditions, the participants created numerous experimental works including performative, interactive and installation artworks, which are known for anticipating artistic tendencies that arose in Europe and the US in the 1960s, such as performance, site-specific, earth and environmental installation art. The artists unconventionally used industrially-produced materials for everyday use, construction materials, and scrap material. Sadamasa Motonaga suspended a vinyl bag filled with tinted water from the branch of a tree, Yasuo Sumi set up wire mesh covered with enamel paint. Atsuko Tanaka’s pink nylon sheet pinned just above the ground glaringly rippled in the wind. Kazuo Shiraga built a tent like structure with wooden poles, which he slashed with an axe inside. Tsuruko Yamazaki’s Danger,

In April 1956, in a partly outdoor photoshoot for the US-American magazine LIFE at the Yoshihara Oil Mill Factory’s grounds in Nishinomiya as well as in the ruins of the company’s factory in Amagasaki, Gutai members’ staged demonstrations of their creative procedures. The photoshoot in Amagasaki was called One Day Only Outdoor Art Exhibition.[3] The photographs were never published in LIFE.

In summer 1956, the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition was held at the Ashiya Park. This time, the works reflected more strongly on their relation to the natural environment, (Tiampo: “zenith of interactivity”), including several works that used the effects of electric light, such Motonaga’s large version of Work (Water) created by suspending long vinyl sheets with colored water between trees, or Yamazaki’s large cube of red vinyl hanging from the tree, or Jirō Yoshihara’s column made of paper lanterns Light Art or Michio Yoshihara’s work in which electric bulbs were set up in the ground. Shōzō Shimamoto created a painting by hanging a fifty foot long canvas hung from the trees and shooting paint out of a canon. Akira Kanayama throughout the park rolled out a 100 m long sheet of vinyl, onto which he had painted Footprints, Tanaka created Stage Cloths, consisting of giant geometrically abstracted humanoid forms with electric bulbs on the front side that were lit every evening.

Gutai organized and participated in further open-air projects, such as the International Sky Festival, Expo ’70, and the Zero op Zee (Zero on Sea) exhibition organized by the groups Zero and NUL in the Netherlands in 1966, which was never executed.

[2] Hirai, “Chronology”, Gutai: Splendid Playground, 286.

[3] Hirai, “Chronology”, Gutai: Splendid Playground, 287.

Gutai Art Exhibitions, 1955–1971[]

Adapting the common practice of established art associations, Gutai organized their own annual group exhibitions beginning in 1955, which provided a conventional indoor setting for works such as paintings and other two-dimensional works that were to be displayed hung on the wall. Until the group’s dissolution, 21 Gutai Art Exhibitions were held at various venues, such as the Ohara Hall in Tokyo, the Municipal Museum of Art of Kyoto, and gallery spaces of the Takashimaya and the Keio department stores in Osaka and Tokyo. Some of them were retroactively renamed as Gutai Art Exhibitions, e.g., the 2nd Gutai Art Small-Works Exhibition of 1958 as 5th Gutai Art Exhibition, the Gutai Group Exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, 1958, as 6th Gutai Art Exhibition, and the Gutai group exhibition at the Galleria Arti Figurative in Turin, 1959, as 7th Gutai Art Exhibition.[1]

The two first Gutai Art Exhibitions at the Ohara Hall in Tokyo were known for the public performances by the members, which emphasized the use of the human body  engaging with various materials in violent gestures. At the 1st Gutai Art Exhibition in October 1955, Kazuo Shiraga, stripped to his underwear and wallowed in a heap of mud, leaving the traces of his struggle i then kneaded material (Challenging Mud, 1955). In the exhibition rooms, Saburō Murakami with his whole body punched and tore through sets of large paper screens (6 Holes, 1955), which remained on display. Other exhibits included paintings, paper works, Motonaga’s stone objects and little vinyl bags filled with tinted water in different colors, Kanayama’s huge red room filling balloon, Yamazaki’s tin cans painted in pink paint, and other unconventional works that challenged the very notions of painting and art.

At the 2nd Gutai Art Exhibition at the same venue in fall 1956, Gutai members presented their production methods for the press/photographers. On the building’s rooftop, Shimamoto shattered glass bottles filled with paint onto canvases/paper laid on the ground, Murakami tore and stumbled through 24 paper screens Passage (1956), and Shiraga demonstrated his method of foot painting. Some of the photos shot by the photographer Kiyoji Ōtsuji at this occasion were used to frame the “Gutai Art Manifesto” in the art magazine Geijutsu shinchō in December 1956.

The Gutai Group Exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York in fall 1958, which was retroactively renamed the 6th Gutai Art Exhibition, was the group’s first exhibition outside of Japan. The show was facilitated by the French art critic Michel Tapié, who, having learned about Gutai via Japanese painters Hisao Dōmoto and Toshimitsu Imai in Paris, had travelled to Japan in fall 1957 to meet the group. Tapié at that time was promoting Informel as a global art movement and was advising the New York art dealer Martha Jackson. Yoshihara travelled to the US to participate in the preparations. Tapié and Yoshihara mainly selected Informel-style paintings by Gutai artists for this exhibition, which, in the context of the shift of the New York art scene from abstract expressionism towards …, led to criticism of their works as being derivatives of Pollock, (Dore Ashton) However, Tapié’s European networks provided Gutai the opportunities to exhibit in art spaces in Turin in 1959 and 1960. Their group exhibition at the Galleria Arti Figurative in Turin in 1959 was renamed as 7th Gutai Art Exhibition.

While the Gutai Art Exhibitions were the main event for the group’s presentation in the first years, up to 1960/2, with the increasing recognition of Gutai artists (as group and as solo artists) internationally and within the Japanese art world and the emergence of commercial art galleries for contemporary art in Japan, other exhibitions became more important (?). The artists also continued to participate in (other) exhibitions such as Trends in Contemporary Painting exhibitions and Ashiya City Exhibitions.

In addition to the annual Gutai Art Exhibitions, the group organized (not only by Gutai artists’ participation in other group exhibitions, but also) further exhibition series such as Gutai Art Small-Works Exhibitions, the Gutai Art New Artists Exhibitions, and the Gutai Art New-Work Exhibitions, and members’ solo exhibitions, which also took place at the group’s own gallery Gutai Pinacotheca in Osaka, which was opened in 1962.

[1] Hirai, “Chronology”, Gutai: Splendid Playground, 289.

The Gutai Manifesto, 1956[]

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In December 1956, Yoshihara wrote the manifesto for Gutai group.^[17] The manifesto emphasizes that Gutai art does not alter matter but rather speaks of the delicate interaction between spirit and matter that ultimately enables art to tell a story and possess life and freshness.^[18]

Among its preoccupations, the manifesto expresses a fascination with the beauty that arises when things become damaged or decayed. The process of damage or destruction is celebrated as a way of revealing the inner "life" of a given material or object:

"Now, interestingly, we find a contemporary beauty in the art and architecture of the past ravaged by the passage of time or natural disasters. Although their beauty is considered decadent, it may be that the innate beauty of matter is reemerging from behind the mask of artificial embellishment. Ruins unexpectedly welcome us with warmth and friendliness; they speak to us through their beautiful cracks and rubble—which might be a revenge of matter that has regained its innate life. In this sense, we highly regard the works of [Jackson] Pollock and [Georges] Mathieu. Their work reveals the scream of matter itself, cries of the paint and enamel. These two artists confront matter in a way that aptly corresponds to their individual discoveries. Or rather, they even seem to serve matter. Astonishing effects of differentiation and integration take place.".

As stated in the manifesto, Gutai art aspires "to go beyond abstraction" and "to pursue enthusiastically the possibilities of pure creativity." The goal of Gutai is "that by merging human qualities and materials properties, we can concretely comprehend abstract space."^{[citation needed]}

The manifesto makes references to many art works to exemplify what Gutai is and is not. The references to non-Gutai art offer ideas of how Gutai art can expand and advance art to new heights while the references to Gutai art offer a brief visualization of how exactly the movement is advancing art to these new heights. Specified in the manifesto, Gutai art is all about experimentation. It welcomes all pursuits whether it be actions, objects, or sounds; Gutai art has no rules.^{[8]: 18–19}

Stage shows[]

In 1957 and 1958, Gutai presented two live stage shows titled Gutai Art on the Stage at the Asahi Halls in Osaka and Tokyo. (The first show took place on May 29, 1957, in Osaka, and on July 17, 1957, in Tokyo. The second show on April 4, 1958, only took place at the Osaka venue.) The shows consisted of a dramaturgically staged suite of individual performances by the members showcasing their individual trademark approaches.

During the first show, Kanayama painted red and black lines on a large balloon resulting in a web-like pattern. This balloon was inflated slowly (starting out completely flattened out) so that it became an abstract sculptural piece, and rotated on the spot and placed under lights with changing colors. The balloon was then cut and deflated, almost returning to it its original state. Shimamoto hit on electric bulbs coming down from the ceiling with a stick, Murakami made a stage version of hitting large paper screen with a stick. Tanaka made a performance, in which she ripped and stripped off multiple layers of clothes, but also set up her giant Stage Cloth from the outdoor exhibition 1956 and her Electric Dress from the 2nd Gutai Art Exhibition. Kazuo Shiraga performed his own adaptation of the celebratory Sanbasō dance from Kyōgen and Noh theater, wearing a red costume with exaggeratedly extended sleeves and hat. Shimamoto played sounds from everyday life during the balloon inflating piece. And Motonaga shot rings of smoke into the hall with a canon-like apparatus.

In November 1962, Gutai presented the stage show Don’t Worry, the Moon Won’t Fall at the Sankei Hall in Osaka in collaboration with the Morita Modern Dance company. In the first part, staged by Gutai, the members presented works from their stage show in 1957 such as Kanayama’s Balloon (1957) and Shiraga’s Ultra-Modern Sanbasō (1957) or from other previous exhibitions such as Murakami’s Passage (1956). A new member, Shūji Mukai made a performance in which he painted archaic signs over the faces of audience participants who stuck their heads through holes in a standing board.

At the Expo ’70 in Osaka, Gutai staged the spectacular entertainment show Gutai Art Festival at the Festival Plaza.

Gutai and Informel[]

In 1957, the French art critic Michel Tapié learned about Gutai from two Japanese painters, Hisao Dōmoto and Toshimitsu Imai, in Paris. Inspired by the works he saw in the issue of the Gutai journal, Tapié in the same year travelled to Japan to meet Gutai and other artists in Japan. Tapié was a promoter of European gestural abstract art under the term Informel and US-American abstract expressionism, including works by artists such as Jean Fautrier, Jean Dubuffet, Lucio Fontana, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell. For Tapié, Gutai, with their innovative and dynamic gestural and material approach to painting, was the ideal partner to prove the global relevance of Informel.

The collaboration resulted in publications and exhibitions that Yoshihara and Tapié jointly supervised and curated, such as the Gutai magazine no. 8 (1958) and the exhibition International Art of a New Era: Informel and Gutai, which took place at the Takashimaya department store in Osaka in April 1958 and subsequently travelled Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Kyoto and Tokyo. At the occasion of the 9th Gutai Art Exhibition at Takashimaya department store in Osaka in April 1960, Gutai set up The International Sky Festival on the building’s roof top. For this project, which was conceived as an “international Informel exhibition”^[19] by Yoshihara and Tapié, works by 30 US-American, European and Japanese artists were copied on banners by the Gutai members and lifted into the air by advertising balloons. Thanks to Tapié’s support and extensive network of artists, collectors and galleries around the world, Gutai works were shown in exhibitions in several American and European cities.:21–22 Gutai’s group exhibitions and members’ solo shows were held at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York, the Galerie Stadler in Paris, and art spaces in Turin, where Tapié had set up his International Center of Aesthetic Research. Gutai members such as Shiraga, Tanaka and Motonaga signed contracts with Tapié to deliver works to him on a regular basis.

Gutai’s international recognition laid the grounds for the group’s acceptance by the Japanese art world as well, as in the late 1950s, Informel-style gesturally abstract painting gained unparalleled popularity.

Gutai Pinacotheca, 1962[]

On September 1, 1961, Gutai’s own art space Gutai Pinacotheca opened on the Nakanoshima sandbank in the center of Osaka. It consisted of three old storage houses owned by Yoshihara, of which the interior had been converted to a fashionable modern gallery space. With an exhibition space of app. 370 qm,^[20] it became the main venue for Gutai’s smaller group shows and solo exhibitions of members as well as acquainted European and US-American artists such as Lucio Fontana, Giuseppe Capogrossi, and Sam Francis. The Gutai Pinacotheca became a go-to-place for artists, art critics and curators from abroad visiting Japan, such as Paul Jenkins, Sam Francis, Isamu Noguchi, Peggy Guggenheim, Pierre Restany, Clement Greenberg, Lawrence Alloway, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Robert Rauschenberg.^[21]

Expo ’70, Osaka[]

The Expo '70, which took place in Osaka from March 15 to September 13, 1970, was the stage for the group’s last major appearances and art performances before the permanent disbanding of the Gutai two years later. Not only were works by Gutai members included in the Expo’s main art exhibition, but a separate Gutai group exhibition with several futuristic and technology-affine mixed-media works was held in the entrance of the Midori Hall. The group also contributed a jointly created outdoor installation work Garden on Garden. On three successive days during the expo, the group staged the Gutai Art Festival: Drama of Man and Matter at the Festival Plaza, a show composed of a sequence of individual performances which included men floating on giant balloons, remotely controlled toy dogs, and men in bubble blowing fire trucks.

Method[]

Although extremely diverse in nature, all Gutai art highlights the method in which it is made. The process of creation is very essential to the significance of the whole. It is the bodily interaction with the medium that distinguishes Gutai art from other movements. The body was essential yet the body was not prioritized over the materials themselves. It was rather seen as collaborating with the material.^[22] Gutai art has included many mediums such as paint, performance, film, light, sound, and other unconventional materials. Attempting to create unprecedented art, many Gutai artists experimented with materials that challenged the boundaries of art. Some artists who challenged the art making method are Saburo Murakami who punctured paper with his body, Atsuko Tanaka who schematically wired alarm bells and wore a dress made of flashing lightbulbs, and Shozo Shimamoto who shot paint from cannons and threw bottles of paint from elevated surfaces. Kazuo Shiraga, the "foot painter," wrestled in cement, gravel, clay, plaster, pebbles, and twigs in what he called "Challenging Mud" and then went on to create works in which he would suspend himself over a canvas and paint with his toes. His work "married theory with practice"^[23] which was one of Gutai's aspirations. The mediums used to produce Gutai art had no restrictions.

Live performances and Gutai music[]

"Gutai Art on the Stage" were two performances that were given by the Gutai group in 1957 and 1958, respectively. During the first live performance, Kanayama painted red and black lines on a large balloon in a web-like pattern. Then, this balloon was inflated slowly (starting out completely flattened out) so that it became an abstract sculptural piece. This balloon, now rotating on the spot, was placed directly under lights that changed color. The balloon was then cut and deflated, almost returning to it its original state. Shimamoto composed "monotonous" music (this is how sound was incorporated into some Gutai art pieces) that was played during, and complementing, the balloon inflating piece.

Marter, Joan M. Abstract Expressionism: The International Context. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2007. Print

Mail art[]

Like in 1956 Ray Johnson's nascent mail art, the Gutai artists utilized nengajo, or New Years postcards, for their mail art. Nengajo were more than just greeting cards. They have long traditional significance and serve as a ritualistic social interaction, which reflects the Gutai goal of giving spirit to the typically inanimate.^{[citation needed]} Motonaga Sadamasa sent what is believed to be the first Gutai nengajõ to Tsuruko Yamazaki in 1956. The card showed green, blue, red, yellow, and black pigments, which were then smudged to animate the markings. The mailing imparted the paintings with life and also pushed the limits of painting in regard to time and space. It also expanded the limits of exhibition spaces, which was another goal of the Gutai group. As stated by Dick Higgins, "There are two ways you can introduce time into a piece: turn it into a performance, or allow it to reveal itself slowly, through the mail."^[24]

At the 11th Gutai Art Exhibition, visitors could pay ten yen to a Gutai Card box to receive a nengajo from one of the Gutai members inside of the box. This was viewed as a performance, not consumerism, and the money went to a children's charity, which furthered the nengajo idea of a gift.^{[10]: 54–61}

Biennale di Venezia 2009[]

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Criticism[]

Gutai's first American appearance at the Martha Jackson Gallery in 1958^[8] faced many accusations from critics exclaiming that the art was imitating Jackson Pollock. However, Gutai art did not copy from Pollock but rather took what inspiration it needed to be able to address the issue of freedom after the world war in Japan.^{[8]: 25–27} Yoshihara praised Pollock as the greatest living American painter and admired his pure originality and concrete interpretation of freedom. Yoshihara shared with Pollock a desire to embody nature as opposed to creating representational art. Yoshihara accepted being in the same aesthetic realm as Pollock, however, he aggressively strived to create a distinct style. Prone to the assumption that Japanese artists follow Western artists, Yoshihara insisted Gutai artists create an extremely distinguished style. One thing Yoshihara did to try to avoid derivative accusations was to have his pupils study in his library to learn about contemporary issues so that their work could compete with the art of the center.^{[10]: 47–54} Gutai work made from bodily processes did find inspiration in Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, yet expanded on these concepts drastically.

At a glance, Gutai's early paintings may look like Jackson Pollock's drip paintings, however their approach and methods were radically different. If one compares Jackson Pollock's, Number 7 to Sumi Yasuo's work. Pollock's is deliberate and composted within rectilinear bounds. Whereas Yasuo worked by "going recklessly wild" and splattering paint.^[8] Gutai was also called Dadaistic in which Yoshihara addressed in the manifesto, "Sometimes, at first glance, we are compared with and mistaken for Dadaism, and we ourselves fully recognize the achievements of Dadaism. But we think differently, in contrast to Dadaism, our work is the result of investigating the possibilities of calling the material to life."^[8]: 19 Gutai specialist Fergus McCaffrey said, "Shiraga and other members of the Gutai Art Association had their work dismissed as derivative of second-generation Abstract Expressionism when showing at Martha Jackson Gallery in New York in 1958, and it is only recently that we have been able to shake off that terrible misunderstanding."^[23] Jiro Yoshihara sought to create a genre that was beyond classification in pursuit of true originality despite these earlier accusations.^{[10]: 45–46}

In 2013, the Gutai group's artworks were collectively ranked by Dale Eisinger of Complex as the fifth greatest work of performance art, with the writer arguing, "Jiro engaged in correspondence with American Happenings artist Allan Kaprow, resulting in engaging multimedia art that traded ideas across an East-West dialog in a way never before realized."^[25]

Influence[]

In addition to Yoshihara and Shimamoto, members of the Gutai group included Takesada Matsutani, Sadamasa Motonaga fr:Sadamasa Motonaga, Atsuko Tanaka, Akira Kanayama, and others. A formative influence on the later Fluxus movement, the group was also associated with certain European (particularly French) art world figures such as Georges Mathieu and the art critic Michel Tapié who promoted Gutai art in Europe, and with tachisme ("art informel"). According to the Tate Gallery's online art glossary, Gutai artists also created a series of striking works anticipating later Happenings and Performances, notably by Yves Klein from 1957, who sojourned in Japan in 1952–1954 and introduced Gutai to the german artists of ZERO and Piero Manzoni, as well as conceptual art.^[26] Gutai artists also created works that would now be called installations, inspiring the work of non-Japanese artists such as Allan Kaprow, Nam June Paik, Wolf Vostell, and Conrad Bo, and leading to the later Fluxus network.

Politics[]

Gutai had a very important political message. They tried to do what has not been done before in the history of Japan. In the 1950s modern Japanese art was dominated by the theme of Social Realism. During that time refined abstraction (in particular, post-war Nihonga) was exported to foreign exhibitions as Japanese art that is representative of their artistic expression. A growing desire to escape this monotony was evident. Jiro Yoshihara really pushed the young members of Gutai to escape this Artistic/political oppression, seek individuality, and to resist oppression. This definition of Freedom is inescapably found in the idealistic rights-based model that requires an escape from political oppression.^[12] Yoshihara did not directly imply or announce a political agenda for Gutai. Art historian Alexandra Munroe and curator Paul Schimmel read Gutai art as a response to the prevailing political situation in Japan in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Munroe, for instance, speculated that they engaged in their actions in order to make faster the introduction of American-style Democracy in Japan.^[27] Their deliberate ambiguity in painting released the artists from tyranny which espouses one kind of attitude, and therefore an escape towards "freedom".

In 1970, from March 15 and September 13, Japan's Expo '70 was the stage for one of their most remarkable and also their last major appearances and art performances as the Gutai art movement before the permanent disbanding of the Gutai two years later. During Expo '70, some of the Gutai's art performances consisted of men floating on giant balloons and men in bubble blowing fire trucks.^[28]

Retrospective exhibitions[]

• 2006

The ZERO. International Künstler-Avantgarde der 50er/60er Jahre exhibition is held at the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf and later travels to Saint-Étienne. Included in the exhibition are works by Kanayama, Motonaga, Murakami, Shimamoto, Fujiko Shiraga, Kazuo Shiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, Yamazaki, Toshio Yoshida, Jiro Yoshihara, and Michio Yoshihara.

• 2007

The Artempo: Where Time Becomes Art exhibition is held at Palazzo Fortuny in Venice. Included in the exhibition are works by Murakami, Shimamoto, Fujiko Shiraga, Kazuo Shiraga, and Yamazaki.

• 2009

The 53rd International Art Exhibition The Venice Biennale, “Fare Mondi” includes a group of Gutai works by Kanayama, Motonaga, Murakami, Shimamoto, Kazuo Shiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, Yamazaki, Jiro Yoshihara, and Michio Yoshihara.

• 2009

The “Under Each Other’s Spell”: The Gutai Group and New York exhibition is held at the Pollock–Krasner House and Study Center in New York. Included in the exhibition are works by Motonaga, Shimamoto, Kazuo Shiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, Toshio Yoshida, and Jiro Yoshihara.

• 2010

The Gutai: Painting with Time and Space exhibition is held at Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano. Included in the exhibition are works by Kanayama, Motonaga, Murakami, Shimamoto, Fujiko Shiraga, Kazuo Shiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, Yamazaki, Toshio Yoshida, Jiro Yoshihara, and Michio Yoshihara.

• 2013

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presented "Gutai: Splendid Playground, a retrospective of the Gutai Art Association".^[29] It was the first North American museum exhibition devoted to the Gutai group. The exhibition featured 145 works by 25 artists and spanning two generations of Gutai artists.^[29]

Participants[]

The Gutai group's work can be divided into two separate phases, the first lasting from 1954 until 1961, and the second beginning in 1962 and lasting until Gutai's dissolve in 1972.^[30] Gutai's first phase and original intention upon forming was to create works in new media and expand painting to become more performative.^[31] Artists of this phase of Gutai focused on the aesthetics of destruction as an art form to respond to postwar Japan. The artists blended artist and material for psychological relief by smashing paint-filled bottles against the canvas or punching holes in Japanese paper screens to exemplify rupture and fragmentation and their desire for transformation.^[32] The second phase of Gutai works, starting in 1962, were responding to the cultural shift happening in Japan as a result of rapid population growth and technological advances.^[31]

• Jiro Yoshihara
• Akira Kanayama
• Saburo Murakami
• Kazuo Shiraga
• Shozo Shimamoto
• Atsuko Tanaka
• Sadamasa Motonaga
• Seiko Kanno
• Tsuruko Yamazaki
• Takesada Matsutani
• Sadaharu Horio
• Yuko Nasaka
• Minoru Onoda

See also[]

• Anti-art
• Fluxus
• Georges Mathieu
• Installation art
• Michel Tapié

Notes[]

General references[]

• Françoise Bonnefoy; Sarah Clément; Isabelle Sauvage; Galerie nationale du jeu de paume (France). Gutai (Paris : Galerie nationale du jeu de paume : Réunion des musées nationaux, 1999) ISBN 2-908901-68-4, ISBN 978-2-908901-68-9
• Alexandra Munroe; Yokohama Bijutsukan.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Japanese art after 1945 : scream against the sky [= 戦後日本の前衛美術空へ叫び /] (New York : H.N. Abrams, 1994) ISBN 0-8109-3512-0, ISBN 978-0-8109-3512-9 [contents include "Nam June Paik -- To challenge the mid-summer sun : the Gutai group"]
• Michel Tapié. L'aventure informelle (according to Worldcat "Details" information: "Other Titles: Gutaï.") (Nishinomiya, Japan, S. Shimamoto, 1957) OCLC 1194658
• Tiampo, Ming. Gutai and Informel Post-war art in Japan and France, 1945--1965. (Worldcat link: [1]) (Dissertation Abstracts International, 65-01A) ISBN 0-496-66047-0, ISBN 978-0-496-66047-6
• Jirō Yoshihara; Shōzō Shimamoto; Michel Tapié; Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai. Gutai [= 具体] (具体美術協会, Nishinomiya-shi : Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai, 1955-1965) [Japanese : Serial Publication : Periodical] OCLC 53194339 [Worldcat "Other titles" information: Gutai art exhibition, Aventure informelle, International art of a new era, U.S.A., Japan, Europe, International Sky Festival, Osaka, 1960]
• Mattijs Visser; Gutai. Mal communication; Making Worlds, Exhibition catalog 53rd International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia 2009; ISBN 978-88-317-9696-5
• "ZERO, Internationale Künstler Avantgarde", published by Museum Kunst Palast and Cantz, with essays by Jean-Hubert Martin, Valerie Hilling, Catherine Millet and Mattijs Visser, Düsseldorf/Ostfildern 2006 ISBN 3-9809060-4-3
• Ming Tampo, Guest Curator, "Under Each Other's Spell": The Gutai and New York. Catalogue © 2009 The Stony Brook Foundation, Inc.
• "Gutai: Dipingere con il tempo e con lo spazio / Gutai: Painting with Time and Space", published by Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano. (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2010)
• Munroe, Alexandra. All The Landscapes: Gutai's World. In Gutai: Splendid Playground, edited by Ming Tiampo and Alexandra Munroe, pp. 21–43. Exh. cat. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2013.

External links[]

• Gutai/ZERO/Nul Archive
• Material on Shimamoto
• Fluxusgenova.org historical essay on Fluxus, mentioning formative influence of "Gutaj" [sic] group
• UNESCO biographical information on Atsuko Tanaka: "...Performances featuring different costumes were the main characteristic of her work with the Gutaj Group."
• Tate Gallery: article on Gutai
• Website of the Ashiya City Museum of Art & History
• Complete text of the Gutai Manifesto (provided in English translation by the Ashiya City Museum website)
• Gutai: Splendid Playground Curator Exhibition Resources