The was a Japanese avant-garde artist group founded in the Hanshin region by young artists under the leadership of the painter Jirō Yoshihara in Ashiya, Japan, in 1954. It operated until shortly after Yoshihara's death in 1972.
The group, today one of the most internationally-recognized instances of 20th century Japanese art, is best known for the broad range of experimental art forms combining painting with performance, conceptual, interactive, site-specific, theatrical and installation artworks, which its members explored in unconventional venues such as public parks and on stage. The members’ engagement with the relationship between spirit, human body and material, often concretized in artistic methods that involved the artist’s body and violent gestures.
Fueled by Yoshihara’s ambitions, global scope and strategic awareness, Gutai’s exhibitions and publications reached audiences around the world, realizing what Yoshihara called an “international common ground” of art.Ming Tiampo, Gutai: Decentering Modernism, Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2010. Gutai exchanged and collaborated with many artists, art critics and curators from Europe, the US and South Africa, among them the French art critic Michel Tapié and the artists he promoted, art dealers Martha Jackson in New York and Rodolphe Stadler in Paris, the Dutch artist group Nul, the German artist group Zero, and individual artists including John Cage, Christo Coetzee, Merce Cunningham, Paul Jenkins, Ray Johnson, Isamu Noguchi, and Robert Rauschenberg. Until the group’s dissolution in 1972 following Yoshihara’s death, around 60 artists were involved as members.
The critical reception of Gutai was strongly affected by the shifts in art discourse from the 1950s to the late 1960s, particularly from gestural painting to more performative approaches and so-called anti-art movements of the 1960s. While Gutai works are recognized for anticipating ideas and approaches of European and American art of the 1960s, such as performance, happening, pop, minimal, conceptual, environmental and land art, Gutai artists referred to a broader understanding of picturing embodied in the Japanese term e (picture), which allowed them to overcome conventions of painting.
History
Foundation, 1954 Gutai was founded in 1954 by artists under the leadership of the Ashiya-based painter and businessman Jirō Yoshihara, who was an influential figure in the revitalization of cultural life in Japan in the post-World War II years. Yoshihara, a member of Nika-kai, had co-founded the Ashiya City Art Association in 1947, engaged in the establishment of the Ashiya City Exhibitions, and mentored young artists. In 1951, he co-founded the Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Contemporary Art Discussion Group, known as Genbi), a forum for interdisciplinary exchange and discussion of East-Asian and Western modern and traditional arts, including ikebana, calligraphy and pottery. Genbi artists shared a preference for abstract art and had a strongly international scope fueled by their ongoing engagement with European and US-American artists, which became also a key aspect for Gutai.
In late 1954, Yoshihara and 16 artists, including his students (e.g. Tsuruko Yamazaki and Shozo Shimamoto, his students since 1946 and 1947具体資料集 1954–1972 / Gutai Documents 1954–1972, Ashiya: Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, 1994.), Genbi and Ashiya City Exhibition participants, decided to create a new group under the name of Gutai (the name was proposed by Shimamoto) and to issue a journal under the same name. The founding members were Sadami Azuma, Kei Iseya, Tamiko Ueda, Chiyū Uemae, Hiroshi Okada, Hajime Okamoto, Shōzō Shimamoto, Yoshio Sekine, Shigeru Tsujimura, Tōichirō Fujikawa, Hiroshi Funai, Masanobu Masatoshi, Tsuruko Yamazaki, Toshio Yoshida, Hideo Yoshihara, Jirō Yoshihara and his son Michio Yoshihara. The first issue of Gutai appeared in January 1955.
In March 1955, several founding members showed paintings all entitled Gutai at the 3rd Yomiuri Independent Exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in March 1955, but until the summer of 1955, more than half of them had left the group (some disappointed by the priority that Yoshihara gave to the Gutai journal instead of actual exhibitions). However, the group took a stronger, more conceptual direction following this break with the addition of new members such as Sadamasa Motonaga, and the artists of Zero-kai (Zero Society) Akira Kanayama, Saburō Murakami, Kazuo Shiraga, and Atsuko Tanaka.
Artistic ideas By choosing the Japanese term gutai, which means concrete, as opposed to both abstract (chūshō) and figurative (gushō),Ming Tiampo, “Gutai Experiments on the World Stage”, Gutai. Dipingere con il tempo e lo spazio / Painting with Time and Space, exh. cat., Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano, Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2010, pp. 24–37. the group distinguished themselves from contemporary figurative art, such as Surrealism and social realism, as well as from formalist geometric abstraction. The kanji used to write 'gu' meaning tool, measures, or a way of doing something, while 'tai' means body.http://modernartasia.com/Mariko%20Aoyagi%20Gutai.pdf The individual artistic approaches of many members were characterized by unconventional, experimental methods of applying paint, which they soon extended to three dimensional objects, performance, and installation works. Yoshihara constantly urged his younger fellows to “Create what has never been done before!”,Ming Tiampo, “’Create What Has Never Been Done Before!’ Historicising Gutai Discourses of Originality”, Third Text 21/6 (2007): 689–706. and by proposing unconventional exhibition formats, he stimulated the creation of radically innovative works that transcended conventional definitions of artistic genres. This dynamic artistic relationship between Yoshihara and his younger fellow members over the years engendered Gutai’s “culture of experimentation”.
Gutai Art Manifesto (1956)
In the “Gutai Art Manifesto”, published in the December issue of the art magazine Geijutsu shinchō in 1956, Yoshihara stated that Gutai Art aspired “to go beyond abstraction” and “to pursue … the possibilities of pure creativity,” rejecting conventions and the limits of genres.Jirō Yoshihara, “Gutai Art Manifesto”, transl. Reiko Tomii, Gutai: Splendid Playground, ed. Ming Tiampo, Alexandra Munroe, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York: The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2013, 18–19, or also on: http://web.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/gutai/data/manifesto.html (Retrieved 2022-02-21) Also, that Gutai Art envisioned a dynamic relationship between the human spirit and matter, which enabled matter to speak for itself and celebrate the process of damage or decay as a way of revealing its inner life:Shōichi Hirai, 具体ってなんだ? 結成50周年の前衛美術グループ18年の記録 / What’s Gutai?, Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha, 2004. “Gutai Art imparts life to matter. Gutai Art does not distort matter. In Gutai Art, the human spirit and matter shake hands with each other while keeping their distance. […] Now, interestingly, we find a contemporary beauty in the art and architecture of the past ravaged by the passage of time or natural disasters. Although their beauty is considered decadent, it may be that the innate beauty of matter is reemerging from behind the mask of artificial embellishment. Ruins unexpectedly welcome us with warmth and friendliness; they speak to us through their beautiful cracks and rubble—which might be a revenge of matter that has regained its innate life. … We believe that by merging human qualities and material properties, we can concretely comprehend abstract space.”Stressing the importance of artistic creativity to individual autonomy and freedom, Yoshihara in the first Gutai issue claimed: “What matters most to us is to ensure that contemporary art provides a site enabling the people living through the severe present to be set free. We firmly believe that the creations accomplished in that free site can contribute to the progress of mankind. […] We hope to present concrete proof that our spirits are free. We never cease to pursue fresh emotions in all types of plastic arts. We look forward to finding friends in all visual arts.”具体 復刻版 / Gutai, Facsimile Edition, ed. Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Tokyo: Geika Shoin, 2010, suppl. vol., 9. Many of the Gutai artists, such as Yoshihara, Shimamoto, Yamazaki, Yōzō Ukita, Murakami, and Tanaka participated in art education, particularly for young children. They gave art classes, assisted with child art exhibitions such as the Dōbiten (Young children art exhibition) organized by the Ashiya City Art Association, and contributed to the children free poetry magazine Kirin, where they advocated for the fostering of children’s free creative expression.
When published in Geijutsu shinchō in December 1956, the text of the “Gutai Art Manifesto” was framed with pictures of Gutai members showing their creative procedures at the occasion of the 2nd Gutai Art Exhibition in Tokyo in October 1956, shot by the magazine's photographer Kiyoji Ōtsuji.
Gutai journal The group's journal Gutai served as an important vehicle to promote members’ works and to connect with art audiences all over the world across art genres, including artists, critics, art historians, book dealers,Shoichi Hirai, “On Gutai”, Gutai: Dipingere con il tempo e con lo spazio / Gutai: Painting with Time and Space, exh. cat., Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Lugano, Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2010, pp. 142–161. such as Jackson Pollock,Tetsuya Oshima,“‘Dear Mr. Jackson Pollock’: A Letter from Gutai”, Under Each Other’s Spell: The Gutai and New York, exh. cat., Pollock-Krasner House, 2010, 13–16. Ben Friedman, George Wittenborn, Ray Johnson, Michel Tapié, Martha Jackson, Henk Peeters, Jean Clay and Allan Kaprow.Mizuho Katō, “世界への掛橋—1956–59年の『具体』” (A Bridge to the World: Gutai, 1956–1959), Gutai, Facsimile Edition, ed. Ashiyas City Museum of Art & History, Tokyo: Geika Shoin, 2010, supp. vol., pp. ##–##. The journals consisted of documentations of members’ works and the group’s exhibition projects through plates, photographs and articles. While the first issue of Gutai, published in January 1955 as first official act of the group, mainly consisted of photographic plates of members’ works, beginning with the second issue (October 1955), the journal adapted a square format and lavish design that freely arranged drawings, graphic prints, photographs, and texts. The issues experimented with different qualities of paper, included cutouts and original paper works. In total, between 1955 and 1965, 12 of 14 issues of Gutai appeared, with issues numbers 10 and 13 never having been published.Shōichi Hirai, “具体美術境界と『具体』誌について” (###), Gutai, Facsimile Edition, ed. Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Tokyo: Geika Shoin, 2010, pp. ##–##. As evidence of Yoshihara’s global ambitions, the names of the members were written in roman letters, and Gutai issues included texts written by Gutai members with English, and later also French, translations, as well as contributions by artists and critics from abroad. The edition of the issues nos. 8, 9 and 10 were supervised by Yoshihara and Tapié. A facsimile edition of the Gutai journal, supplemented by English translations and scholarly essays, was published in 2010.具体 復刻版 / Gutai, Facsimile Edition, ed. Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, Tokyo: Geika Shoin, 2010.
Outdoor exhibitions