Design Anthology - Asia Pacific Edition
Art Movement
In the 1950s, Japan’s avant-garde Gutai group pioneered a radical approach encompassing performance, painting, installation and theatre
Circles spiral hypnotically into seemingly infinite voids, their centrifugal force in monochrome inducing a meditative trance; a single line breaks through the spiral. Radiating an essence both raw and refined, Yuko Nasaka’s car-lacquer finished wood panels generate an intangible magnetism, boldly embodying the Gutai spirit.
Last seen on display at Axel Vervoordt’s booth at Hong Kong Spotlight by Art Basel in November 2020, Nasaka’s works prompt an irresistible gravitational pull that is emblematic of Gutai works. Seen more recently, Takesada Matsutani’s sensuous, bulbous reliefs — exhibited at Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong as a solo exhibition in early 2021 — harness a similarly spirited energy. The work of these two artists reflects two of the Gutai movement’s central tenets: the use of materials in an original way, and their enlivening through movement and performance.
Matsutani and Nasaka were part of the movement’s second generation of artists. The Gutai Art Association was founded in 1954 by artists Jiro Yoshihara and Shozo Shimamoto. ‘Do what has never been done before,’ Yoshihara instructed the artists; in the Gutai Manifesto, he wrote that one of Gutai’s aspirations is ‘to pursue enthusiastically the possibilities of pure creativity’. This emphasis on novelty and spirituality is a result of circumstance. The group was born in Ashiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, a target of US airstrikes during the Second World War, and in the context of a newly industrialising post-war Japan. Following the identity crisis and massive trauma incurred after the war, the country’s environment was ripe for healing, rebuilding and reinvention.
The movement’s influence on contemporary creatives can be attributed to its history and the international exposure a post-war world allowed. Emerging around the same time as Western movements like abstract expressionism and Art Informel, Gutai’s influences ranged from Jackson Pollock to Georges Mathieu, and its influence extended to groups like the 1960s performanceoriented Fluxus movement, for example.
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Aaina Bhargava
Incorporating these concepts in dramatic performative gestures, the founding generation of Gutai artists interpreted materials and mediums in new ways. While Shimamoto hurled glass bottles of paint at canvases, Kazuo Shiraga used his feet to paint directly onto canvas laid out on the floor. Atsuko Tanaka, one of the first and few female members of the collective (along with Nasaka), crafted a kimono covered in hundreds of coloured light bulbs for a performance in 1956. Titled Denkifuku (Electric Dress), the work combined tradition with contemporary technology.
Continuing this legacy of retaining the essence of tradition, albeit through a more subtle but equally experimental approach, Nasaka and Matsutani joined the collective in the 1960s. By using car lacquer as a material, Nasaka introduced a new industrial material with implications related to the boom of Japan’s automotive industry. Imbued with a meditative quality, her technique involved holding a knife on a wood panel that rotated on a mechanical turntable. As the table turned, the knife carved a circle or spirals. This performative gesture at times resulted in marks that were unintentional, infusing a piece with wabi-sabi- esque beauty through imperfection, impermanence and incompletion, adhering to a belief in the infinite.
Matsutani literally breathes life into his work by blowing through a pipe or tube, manipulating his chosen material of vinyl adhesive glue, a material that was considered new when he began experimenting with it.The artist achieves uniquely tactile surfaces, as seen in Puffed Up-2 (2020) and Floating Inside (2020), by manipulating the glue either with his breath or with fans, drying the works in varying stages to create different textures.
Such motifs, of life, meditation and breath resonate deeply in the current era, offering us the opportunity to reflect and reimagine. At its core, and at its very best, Gutai art evokes a visceral reaction that is both empowering and peaceful, offering a moment of healing and demonstrating a universality that surpasses an appealing minimalist aesthetic.