Emma Crichton-Miller on the Gutai Group
The avant-garde Gutai movement sought to shake up post-war Japan. While international recognation has been slow to arrive, the market for Gutai paintings is now growing steadily, with works by the most important painters achieving record prices in recent
The mantra of the radical post-war Gutai movement in Japan was ‘Do what no one has done before!’ The group, a loose affiliation of around 15 young artists, gathered around the painter Jiro Yoshihara (1905–72) in 1954, in the town of Ashiya, near Osaka in 1954. It was Shozo Shimamoto (1928– 2013) who suggested the name: Gu – meaning tool, or a way of doing something – and tai, meaning body. In his manifesto of 1956 Yoshihara suggested that the name meant ‘concreteness’ and ‘embodiment’. And, although Gutai art encompasses performance, painting, installation, and happenings – in ways that ally it variously with Abstract Expressionism, Art Informel, Fluxus movement, Arte Povera, Brazilian neo-concretism, performance and conceptual art – the idea of engaging physically, even violently, with materials, bringing the human body into the making process, is key.
Saburo Murakami (1925–96) punctured paper with his body. Atsuko Tanaka (1932– 2005) created a dress made of flashing painted lightbulbs, Shimamoto shot glass bottles full of paint from cannons and Kazuo Shiraga (1924–2008), known for his later foot paintings, wrestled in cement, gravel, clay and pebbles. In a Japan rebuilding its identity after defeat in the Second World War, Gutai was overtly radical and experimental, challenging conservative ideas about subject matter, method and materials. Yoshihara mounted exhibitions and published journals documenting the works of members, sending them to international artists and critics such as Allan Kaprow, Jackson Pollock and Michel Tapié, determined to begin conversations with avant-garde movements elsewhere. The Gutai Pinacotheca was founded in Osaka in 1962 to display their work and in 1970, the group was asked to participate in the World Expo in Osaka, where they choreographed a performance including men floating on huge balloons. After Yoshihara’s sudden death in 1972, however, the movement, which at its height had more than 50 members, disbanded. Some artists switched course while others continued in the same vein. Without Yoshira’s advocacy and despite the movement’s undeniable influence, Gutai disappeared from view.
There was a small market in France in the 1960s, encouraged by Michel Tapié and the Parisian gallerist Rodolphe Stadler. In 1994 Alexandra Munroe curated ‘Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky’, which toured from Yokohama to the Guggenheim in New York and SFMOMA in San Francisco, and sparked academic and curatorial interest in the field in the United States. Then, in 2005, Antwerp-based dealer Axel Vervoordt took a trip to Japan with Mattijs Visser, curator and founding director of the ZERO foundation in Düsseldorf, researching the links
Fergus McCaffrey, who mounted pioneering solo shows of Kazuo Shiraga and Sadamasa Motonaga in the United States, explains that the market is limited by availability: ‘Japanese museums hold a disproportionate amount of certain artists’ work, which limits the market for certain artists (an example is Jiro Yoshihara, where almost every major painting is owned by a museum).’ Nevertheless, the most sought-after Gutai artists continue to be ‘Kazuo Shiraga, Sadamasa Motonaga, Atsuko Tanaka, Toshio Yoshida, Chiyu Uemae, and Jiro Yoshihara from the first generation; and Takesada Matsutani and Minoru Yoshida from the second and third generations.’ He adds that the huge interest in the work of Saburo Murakami, Akira Kanayama, and Fujiko Shiraga is hampered by the lack of works to buy. He credits the growth of the now international market to ‘the commitment made by influential museums such as the Dallas Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, and Glenstone (among others) to not just exhibit the work but to collect it,’ and to ‘important collectors like Howard and Cindy Rachofsky and George Economou’.
There has also been growing recognition among collectors of the different contributions of individual artists within the movement, and increased appreciation for the later work of figures like Shiraga, Motonaga and Yoshida. McCaffrey says: ‘There is still a tremendous growth opportunity in post-war Japanese art. And while prices have risen significantly, the best pieces still trade at 15–25 per cent of their Western peers, whom they often surpass in innovation and aesthetic brilliance.’ He has available a very early burn painting by Yoshida called Sakuhin (54-28) (1954), which has not been exhibited since the 1990s.
Hauser & Wirth were quick to boost the Gutai market in the early 2010s, holding ‘A Visual Essay on Gutai at 32 East 69th Street’ in 2012, a historical exhibition of work by 12 leading artists in the former space of Martha Jackson, who had first introduced Gutai to American audiences in a 1958 group exhibition. Since then they have represented second-generation Gutai artist Takesada Matsutani (b. 1937; see the July/August 2016 issue of Apollo). The gallery’s senior director Yuta Nakajima comments, ‘He made incredible work from 1963–66 and then he left the group and went to Paris, where he developed significantly. Matsutani is definitely under the radar.’ (Hauser & Wirth’s show of Matsutani’s work in Hong Kong runs until 11 February.) Nakajima suggests that founding female Gutai artist Tsuruko Yamazaki (1925–2019), whom the gallery has exhibited in several group shows, is also ripe for a reappraisal.