Lot Essay
Accompanied by a certificate from the Estate of Yoshihara Jiro.
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Post-war Japanese Art: the Search for IdentityIn August 1945 Japan unconditionally surrendered and was occupied by US-led forces until 1952. The reconstruction of the Japanese art world coincided with the implementation of new economic, political and cultural systems, and its participation in the international art world. Post-war art can broadly be understood as a response of Japanese artists to these new circumstances. The ultra-nationalist elements of pre-war Japan judged Western progressive artistic trends, including Surrealism and Abstract Art, as being dangerous. However, the pre-war avant-garde artists who survived played an essential role in developing the post-war Japanese art world. One of those was Yoshihara Jiro who was a founding member, as well as Saito Yoshishige and Yamaguchi Takeo, of Kyushitsu-kai (Ninth Room Association), a pre-war group that searched for radical artistic forms.Yoshihara formed the Gutai Art Association in 1954, just two years after Japan regained its independence. The members consisted of young artists, including Shimamoto Shozo, Shiraga Kazuo, Tanaka Atsuko, Murakami Saburo, Motonaga Sadamasa and Yoshida Toshio. For the next 18 years, until Yoshihara died in 1972 at the age of 67, the group remained active, both in Japan and abroad, publishing their official journal entitled ‘Gutai’, organising their own exhibitions and opening their own museum which they called the ‘Gutai Pinacotheca’. The Japanese term ‘gutai’ signifies ‘concrete’, in contrast to that of ‘abstraction’, thus implying some of the characteristics of Gutai art. Yoshihara, as the leader of the group, insisted that they should not copy anyone, but that they had to do what no one had done before. This intense desire for something new was symbolic of the post-war national psyche, which was a determination to break free from the oppressive pre-war Japanese conventions. Having been inspired by their mentor, the Gutai members presented numerous unprecedented works and performances, using such unconventional materials as mud, logs and vinyl and even using their own bodies as their medium and/or agent. The origin of this innovative artistic attitude can be seen in, for example, Yoshihara’s often repeated words in the ‘Gutai Art Manifesto’ (1956): ‘In Gutai Art, the human spirit and matter shake hands with each other while keeping their distance.’1 The concept of linking materiality with creativity was the underlying principle of the Gutai. The effective use of a material’s special characteristics and the expressive means of violent actions which were utilized in Gutai art had much in common with the Art Informel painting that the French critic Michel Tapié advocated. After developing a relationship with Tapié who visited Japan in 1957, Gutai became associated with the Informel movement which included the artists Jean Fautrier and Jean Dubuffet, and it made its debut on the international stage, holding exhibitions in the United States and Europe. The Gutai group has been one of the best internationally recognised post-war Japanese art movements. The energetic activities of Michel Tapié and his fellow artists, Georges Mathieu and Sam Francis, during their 1957 visit caused the so-called ‘Informel whirlwind’ in the Japanese art world. Imai Toshimitsu and Domoto Hisao, whose creative activities were based in Paris at that time, had already joined the Art Informel movement. Characteristics of Art Informel, such as their emphasis on ‘material’ and ‘gesture’ inspired and encouraged Japanese artists to develop the possibilities afforded by a new expression in pursuit of material, not as a painting medium, but as a work of art in itself.The tendency to abandon all conventional notions and methods of painting and sculpting, a legacy of the Informel and Gutai movements, can be observed particularly among the artists who participated in the annual Yomiuri Independent exhibitions. Among those, Takamatsu Jiro, Nakanishi Natsuyuki and Akasegawa Genpei who formed a group called the ‘Hi Red Center’2 in 1963 presented their nonsensical, bizarre and disturbing creations which, whilst often being humorous, also delivered ironical messages. The radicalism represented by the Hi Red Center reflected a worldwide feeling in art and should be understood as emanating from an extremely serious and, in some sense, a very political motivation. They protested against the fact that the country was celebrating its rapid economic growth and domestic peace, epitomized by the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, only because these were being secured under the umbrella of the US military in the Cold War world structure. It can be said that they also resisted the enlightenment-like climate of post-war Japan through their non-rational behaviour.Their activities spanned barely two years; they each then followed their own individual creative path. However, this short-lived group’s influence has echoed profoundly among the later generations of Japanese artists. Takamatsu Jiro, for example, began to make paintings which explored the disparity between the real and illusion. The 2005 exhibition Mono-ha Reconsidering (The National Museum of Art, Osaka) shed new light on his achievement in the context of the development of the Mono-ha. The end of the 1960s saw the emergence of a number of younger artists who used raw natural and/or industrial materials including stone, wood, paper, steel plate and wire. They often arranged their materials just by laying them on the floor (or ground), and/or installing on walls. They neither formed a group nor made a manifesto; they came to be called ‘Mono-ha’ (School of Things). Many of these were students of Saito Yoshishige at Tama Art University.It is widely recognised that the three-dimensional work Phase – Mother Earth (1968) by Sekine Nobuo, then an assistant to Takamatsu, was the progenitor of this artistic phenomenon. This huge cylinder-form of soil created the impression that it had been shifted from below the ground to above. Lee Ufan, an artist who was born in Korea and studied philosophy in Japan, interpreted this ‘trick art’ as an innovative creation that revealed to us the ‘world as it is’. By evaluating this work so highly, he emphasised the importance of the direct encounter between physical materials and people. Suga Kishio, another leading theorist of Mono-ha, also pursued an alternative relationship between things and people, claiming that human beings were no longer the centre of the world and attempted to let ‘things’ take centre stage. These creative Mono-ha concepts were opposed to the Western notion of ‘creation’ and ‘originality’ in which humans are central to the world; they consider their creations to be no longer ‘artworks’ but ‘devices’ to see and/or meet the world. This is done, not through pre-existing images, but by revealing the tangible existence of things. Another aspect of their underlying beliefs was their abhorrence of the widely permeated post-war American consumerism that reached its peak in the 1970 Exposition in Osaka. The recent increased interest in post-war Japanese art and a new appreciation of its significance is evidenced by the in-depth exploration of the subject that has been carried out by a number of exhibitions.3 These were supported by scholarly publications and established the status of Gutai and Mono-ha in particular, in the history of Japanese avant-garde art. The radicalism of post-war Japanese art was certainly part of the international development of contemporary art in which Western art was dominant. However, Japanese artists often searched for their own creative identity. This challenge has continued right up until the present day, ever since the idea of Western ‘fine art’ was ‘implanted’ in a modern day Japan; it could be argued that this began with the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The gap between the recently acquired art skills, such as oil painting, and the country’s traditional art has engendered both a creative source and a conflict. This is the most essential fact for a better understanding of Japanese art of the modern era. 1. From Postwar to Postmodern, Art in Japan 1945–1989: Primary Documents, ed. by Doryun Chong, Michio Hayashi, Kenji Kajiya, and Fumihiko Sumitomo (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012), p.89.2. The group’s name ‘Hi Red Center’ comes from the English translation of the first characters of their surnames.3. Those exhibitions include Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-garde (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012),Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha (Blum & Poe in Los Angeles, 2012) and Gutai: Splendid Playground (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, 2013).Kiyoko Mitsuyama-Wdowiak, Independent Art Historian-------------Yoshihara Jiro became one of the most influential figures in postwar Japanese art. In addition to being an art critic, newspaper and journal contributor, in 1954 he founded the avant-garde Gutai Art Association with sixteen initial members. At the time of his death in 1972 (and resulting dissolution of the group), the group had expanded to fifty-nine members. With his famous statement “Do what has never been done before!” he urged the young Gutai artists to experiment with new ways of creating art, resulting in dresses made of lightbulbs, bottles containing pigment being hurled at large canvases on the floor, an artist leaping through paper screens, and another painting with his feet. A generation older than the other Gutai members, he also led the group’s commitment to forging international links with avant-garde artists, critics and curators around the world, with the intention of exposing Gutai to an international audience. Yoshihara grew up in the prosperous town of Ashiya near Osaka and was mentored by the artists Kamiyama Jiro and Fujita Tsuguharu (1886-1968) following their return from spells in Paris. In his own work, he experimented with a number of modernist styles before developing into a gestural abstract painter in the 1950s. In the 1960s towards the end of his life, he began his works involving large circles on a monochrome background, for which he has become most well-known. Deceptively simple, Yoshihara’s enso circles stem from the Zen tradition which combines painting, calligraphy and meditation.
Yoshihara Jiro (1905-1972)
Untitled
Details
Yoshihara Jiro (1905-1972)
Untitled
Painted in 1964
Gouache on paper
45.5 x 37.5 cm.
Untitled
Painted in 1964
Gouache on paper
45.5 x 37.5 cm.