Gutai group

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The Gutai group (具体； means "Embodiment") is the first radical, post-war group in Japan. It was founded by the painter Jiro Yoshihara in Osaka, Japan, 1954, in response to the reactionary artistic context of the time. This influential group known as Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai was involved in large-scale multimedia environments, performances and theatrical events.[1] According to the official website of Shozo Shimamoto, Shimamoto and Yoshihara founded Gutai together in 1954, and it was Shimamoto who suggested the name Gutai, which contrary to popular belief does not mean concrete but embodiment (according to this source) ”The kangi used to write 'gu' means tool, measures, and a way of doing something, while 'tai' means body..

The Gutai Manifesto

In 1956, Yoshihara wrote the manifesto for Gutai group. The full text of "Gutai Manifesto" is available in English at Japan's Ashiya City Museum of Art & History website. 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:

"Yet what is interesting in this respect is the novel beauty to be found in works of art and architecture of the past which have changed their appearance due to the damage of time or destruction by disasters in the course of the centuries. This is described as the beauty of decay, but is it not perhaps that beauty which material assumes when it is freed from artificial make-up and reveals its original characteristics? The fact that the ruins receive us warmly and kindly after all, and that they attract us with their cracks and flaking surfaces, could this not really be a sign of the material taking revenge, having recaptured its original life?...."

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 Michel Tapié, 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 Performance and Conceptual art." 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.

The Tate article records that "the group dissolved in 1972 following the death of Yoshihara."

Gutai at the Biennale di Venezia 2009

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Gutai: Splendid Playground at the Guggenheim Museum 2013

    See also

    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: ) (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 978883179696
    • “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.
    • Tiampo, Ming. Gutai: Decentering Modernism. (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2010) ISBN 0-226-80165-9, ISBN 978-0-226-80165-0
    • "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)
    1. ↑ ...], [contributors Rachel Barnes (2001). The 20th-Century art book. (Reprinted. ed.). London: Phaidon Press. ISBN 0714835420. 

    External links

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