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Lot Essay
Kazuo Shiraga, who was born in Amagasaki in 1924 to a family of kimono merchants, decided to pursue the path of an artist from an early age. After training in both nihonga (traditional Japanese painting) and yoga (western-style painting), in 1951, Shiraga began showing his works in the salon of Shin-seisaku ('New Production'). In the absence of a commercial art market, post-war Japan had become a fertile breeding ground for avant-garde collectives, in which artists were fueled by a drive to create art for a new democratic Japan. Shiraga, too, would form his own collective, Zero-kai (Zero Society) with Kanayama Akira and Murakami Saburo in 1952.
By this time, Shiraga had already begun making abstract monochrome paintings with his fingers, and with the encouragement of his Zero Society peers, progressed to painting with his feet, hanging from a rope suspended from a beam in the ceiling and spreading piles of paint laid out on the canvas (Fig. 3). Seeing the vanguardism in Shiraga and his peers' works, Shimamoto Shozo recruited the members of Zero Society to join Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai (Gutai Art Association) led by artist, teacher and critic, Jiro Yoshihara. With Gutai, Shiraga continued to develop his foot-painting methods, and also presented his seminal works, Challenging Mud (1955) (Fig. 1), in which the artist confronted the medium of mud and concrete with his bare body, and Ultramodern Sanbaso (1957) (Fig. 2), in which the artist danced on stage in a red costume, the movements to be read as the lines of a painting. Shiraga would become one of the most prominent figures of the Gutai group internationally, with his work brought to Europe and the US along with those of his Gutai peers by the French critic Michel Tapié in the late 50s. As Fergus McCaffrey points out in his essay,Beyond Transmission Failures: Shiraga in a New Context, Shiraga began painting with his body before his western contemporary, Yves Klein (Fig. 4 & 5), who only began to paint with the bodies of nude models in 1958, evidencing the independent vanguardism of Shiraga's work and also highlighting the vastly different approach Shiraga took to gestural abstraction in comparison to his western contemporaries. In recent years, Shiraga, Gutai and their important contributions to the history of modern art have made a major reentry into the public consciousness, with the 2013 exhibit, Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and a major retrospective at the Guggenheim in the same year entitled, Gutai: Splendid Playground.
'When I discovered what might be called my own shihitsu, when I began to complete taking off all ready-made clothes and becoming naked, forms were smashed into smithereens, techniques slipped off my palette knife and broke into two. An austere road to originality--run forward, run and run. It won't matter if I fall down. Before I knew it, my palette knife was replaced by a piece of wood, which I then impatiently threw away. Let me do it with my hands, with my fingers. Then, as I ran and ran, believing that I was moving forward, it occurred to me: Why not feet? Why don't I paint with my feet?' - Kazuo Shiraga
Early on in his practice, Shiraga identified the concept of shihitsu (one's nature, innate characteristics and abilities) and the development of shihitsu through accumulated actions as the propelling force behind his work. His early paintings, frequently painted in crimson lake, a blood-like colour favoured by Shiraga, are characterized by violent gestures, wrought with tension and kinetic energy. In his essay, What I think, published in the Gutai Journal in 1955, Shiraga wrote: 'I want to paint as though rushing around on a battlefield, exerting myself to collapse from exhaustion.' This combatant confrontation of body and material took place on large scale canvases, resulting in works that could be described as masculine, heroic, and raging with violence. However, Shiraga's approach took a turn in the 1960s when he gained interest in Esoteric Buddhism (a form of Buddhism that emphasizes ritualistic practices), eventually becoming a monk of the Tendai sect in 1971. He was named Sod? (the simple way) and incorporated the Tendai practice of tariki hongan (achieving the vow by relying on others' power) into his painting process, and included chanting in his routine so that he could feel at ease before painting. What resulted was Shiraga's Esoteric Buddhist Series, primarily painted between 1971 and 1978. His once violent gestures became 'clean,' almost serene at times, with fluid arcs, waves and circles that the artist created by sweeping boards and sticks across the surface, always innovating with his methods while continuing to refine his foot-painting technique. The colour red forfeited its gory appearance in Shiraga's work, taking on instead the quality of fire, as can be seen in Dattan (Lot 52), painted in 1976.
'The oil paint runs across the pictures as if fiery human emotions had been directly applied to the huge canvases.' -Yasuko Asano
Curator Yasuko Asano's description of Shiraga's work fittingly describes the present work, titled Dattan, after an important shuni-e (second-month service) ritual held in Buddhist temples in Japan, in which priests swing large burning torches, creating showers of sparks believed to fend off evil spirits. In the present lot, amidst a backdrop of yellow, a stream of blazing red leaps across the canvas and dances along the surface in swirls of black and white. Paint spits outwards from the edges like leaping embers, conveying the speed and force with which the artist dashed along the surface. In the words of art historian and curator Reiki Tomii, 'KShiraga perfected his style, shedding violence and turning it into a true automatic painting that incorporated what he called in a Buddhist sense 'being let to paint" (kakasete moratteriu).' Aglow with the artist's spirit, Dattan is a mature expression of Shiraga's individuality and his concept of the evolving shihitsu-no-less powerful than his early works, and blazing with an elevated spirituality and refreshing clarity.
By this time, Shiraga had already begun making abstract monochrome paintings with his fingers, and with the encouragement of his Zero Society peers, progressed to painting with his feet, hanging from a rope suspended from a beam in the ceiling and spreading piles of paint laid out on the canvas (Fig. 3). Seeing the vanguardism in Shiraga and his peers' works, Shimamoto Shozo recruited the members of Zero Society to join Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai (Gutai Art Association) led by artist, teacher and critic, Jiro Yoshihara. With Gutai, Shiraga continued to develop his foot-painting methods, and also presented his seminal works, Challenging Mud (1955) (Fig. 1), in which the artist confronted the medium of mud and concrete with his bare body, and Ultramodern Sanbaso (1957) (Fig. 2), in which the artist danced on stage in a red costume, the movements to be read as the lines of a painting. Shiraga would become one of the most prominent figures of the Gutai group internationally, with his work brought to Europe and the US along with those of his Gutai peers by the French critic Michel Tapié in the late 50s. As Fergus McCaffrey points out in his essay,Beyond Transmission Failures: Shiraga in a New Context, Shiraga began painting with his body before his western contemporary, Yves Klein (Fig. 4 & 5), who only began to paint with the bodies of nude models in 1958, evidencing the independent vanguardism of Shiraga's work and also highlighting the vastly different approach Shiraga took to gestural abstraction in comparison to his western contemporaries. In recent years, Shiraga, Gutai and their important contributions to the history of modern art have made a major reentry into the public consciousness, with the 2013 exhibit, Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949-1962, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and a major retrospective at the Guggenheim in the same year entitled, Gutai: Splendid Playground.
'When I discovered what might be called my own shihitsu, when I began to complete taking off all ready-made clothes and becoming naked, forms were smashed into smithereens, techniques slipped off my palette knife and broke into two. An austere road to originality--run forward, run and run. It won't matter if I fall down. Before I knew it, my palette knife was replaced by a piece of wood, which I then impatiently threw away. Let me do it with my hands, with my fingers. Then, as I ran and ran, believing that I was moving forward, it occurred to me: Why not feet? Why don't I paint with my feet?' - Kazuo Shiraga
Early on in his practice, Shiraga identified the concept of shihitsu (one's nature, innate characteristics and abilities) and the development of shihitsu through accumulated actions as the propelling force behind his work. His early paintings, frequently painted in crimson lake, a blood-like colour favoured by Shiraga, are characterized by violent gestures, wrought with tension and kinetic energy. In his essay, What I think, published in the Gutai Journal in 1955, Shiraga wrote: 'I want to paint as though rushing around on a battlefield, exerting myself to collapse from exhaustion.' This combatant confrontation of body and material took place on large scale canvases, resulting in works that could be described as masculine, heroic, and raging with violence. However, Shiraga's approach took a turn in the 1960s when he gained interest in Esoteric Buddhism (a form of Buddhism that emphasizes ritualistic practices), eventually becoming a monk of the Tendai sect in 1971. He was named Sod? (the simple way) and incorporated the Tendai practice of tariki hongan (achieving the vow by relying on others' power) into his painting process, and included chanting in his routine so that he could feel at ease before painting. What resulted was Shiraga's Esoteric Buddhist Series, primarily painted between 1971 and 1978. His once violent gestures became 'clean,' almost serene at times, with fluid arcs, waves and circles that the artist created by sweeping boards and sticks across the surface, always innovating with his methods while continuing to refine his foot-painting technique. The colour red forfeited its gory appearance in Shiraga's work, taking on instead the quality of fire, as can be seen in Dattan (Lot 52), painted in 1976.
'The oil paint runs across the pictures as if fiery human emotions had been directly applied to the huge canvases.' -Yasuko Asano
Curator Yasuko Asano's description of Shiraga's work fittingly describes the present work, titled Dattan, after an important shuni-e (second-month service) ritual held in Buddhist temples in Japan, in which priests swing large burning torches, creating showers of sparks believed to fend off evil spirits. In the present lot, amidst a backdrop of yellow, a stream of blazing red leaps across the canvas and dances along the surface in swirls of black and white. Paint spits outwards from the edges like leaping embers, conveying the speed and force with which the artist dashed along the surface. In the words of art historian and curator Reiki Tomii, 'KShiraga perfected his style, shedding violence and turning it into a true automatic painting that incorporated what he called in a Buddhist sense 'being let to paint" (kakasete moratteriu).' Aglow with the artist's spirit, Dattan is a mature expression of Shiraga's individuality and his concept of the evolving shihitsu-no-less powerful than his early works, and blazing with an elevated spirituality and refreshing clarity.