The Sōgetsu Art Center (SAC) was a Tokyo-based experimental art space. The center was established in 1958, and its activities ceased in 1971. It was founded by Sōfū Teshigahara, creator of the Sōgetsu-ryū (草月流), a school of ikebana (Japanese floral art), that he founded in 1927. It was directed by Teshigahara's son, Hiroshi Teshigahara.
It is considered a major hub for post-war Japanese art, especially for experimental and avant-garde activities. The SAC was a pivotal venue for those involved in the phenomenon of Tokyo pop, whether Japanese or international. Events held there brought together musicians, visual artists, designers, critics, and curators around multidisciplinary and collaborative events, on the margins of conventional art institutions. Activities at SAC converged towards a search for new forms of expression, at the crossroads of different artistic genres.
The SAC was also an international platform, providing a venue in which the Japanese art world witnessed happenings and Fluxus events (notably in performances by Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono and works including Instructions for Paintings), or radical musical and artistic approaches (through the invitation of John Cage, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg). The ambition to highlight international art was central to the SAC creators' approach, which proved to be a complex undertaking, as Japanese avant-garde artists both idolized and destabilized the dominant cultural discourse created by figures such as Cage and Rauschenberg.
History
Establishment The Sōgetsu Art Center (SAC) was founded in 1958 and directed by Hiroshi Teshigahara, who was then known as an avant-garde film director. He received permission to use the auditorium/lecture hall in the newly constructed Sōgetsu Hall (headquarters of the Sōgetsu School of ikebana) in Tokyo's Akasaka district.
Sōfū Teshigahara was extremely supportive of the SAC and its activities from the beginning. He invited Georges Mathieu and Sam Francis to create mural paintings for the auditorium of Sōgetsu Hall. The history of this artistic commission was emblematic of the SAC's international ambitions and outlook: following the success of 1956's Sekai konnichi no bijutsu ("Art of Today's World ") exhibition held at Takashimaya Department Store and curated by critics Shin'ichi Segi and Michel Tapié, which set in motion what is known as the Anforumeru senpū ("Informel whirlwind'), Michel Tapié and Georges Mathieu came to Japan, at the invitation of Jirō Yoshihara and Sōfū Teshigahara.
Programming The SAC space hosted a wide variety of activities: musical performances, film screenings, journal publishing, and educational space (study groups, workshops). The space was also made available to many artists, both local and international. For a modestly scaled institution, it instigated important changes in the local art scene by connecting Japanese artists and artists from abroad. Although, as outlined below, the SAC hosted diverse activities, its most consistent engagement over the course of its history tended to be with experimental music and film. Throughout its active years, SAC also enjoyed longstanding collaborations with many prominent graphic designers, including Kōhei Sugiura, Makoto Wada, Tadanori Yokoo, Akio Kanda, Ikkō Tanaka, and Kiyoshi Awazu, who designed posters and promotional materials for the center's activities.草月アートセンターの記録刊行委員会『輝け60年代 : 草月アートセンターの全記錄』「草月アートセンターの記錄」刊行委員会, フィルムアート社, 2002, 67-86.
1958–1961 In the early years, programs were divided into three categories: the first two were focused on music: the Sōgetsu Contemporary Series (avant-garde classical music) and the Sōgetsu Music Inn (jazz); and the third, the Sōgetsu Cinemathèque, primarily screened films. The program of the Sōgetsu Contemporary Series, for the first few years, was conducted by members of the Sakkyokuka Shūdan (Composer's Group), including composer Tōru Takemitsu and Toshirō Mayuzumi. The SAC's film activities can be traced back to 1957, when Hiroshi Teshigahara and fellow director Susumu Hani founded the Cinema 57 group, which screened independent films. Sōgetsu Cinemathèque was launched in 1961 and was the SAC's longest-running series. It showcased both new and experimental films as well as revisiting key films from history, such as silent films.『草月とその時代 1945--1970』, p. 213
1961–1965 From around 1961–1965, the SAC greatly expanded its programming beyond the three earlier series and welcomed various creators. Notably, the center sponsored performances by prominent artists and musicians from outside Japan, including John Cage, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg, and Nam June Paik, as well as solo performances from Japanese artists and composers such as Yoko Ono, Toshi Ichiyanagi, and Tōru Takemitsu. These performances, all by creators with some connection to Fluxus, introduced these new ideas to a Japanese audience. Because of the international notoriety of Fluxus, these performances continue to be some of the best-known events that occurred at the SAC. Group Ongaku, a young Japanese ensemble that composed and played musique concrète, also performed at the SAC several times around this period, and via the SAC was able to connect with Ichiyanagi and establish contact with the international Fluxus network (see more on Group Ongaku below).編集芦屋市立美術博物館, 千葉市美術館 『草月とその時代 1945–1970』草月とその時代展実行委員会, 1998, p. 248
The SAC also expanded its film programming during this time. For example, the center hosted screenings of a new animation group known as Animeshon Sannin no Kai ("Association of Three Animators"), as well as three Animation Festivals which invited other animators inside and outside Japan to submit works for screening.『草月とその時代 1945–1970』, p. 209
The SAC also experimented with hosting a variety of dance and theatrical performances. Major performances by international visitors included the Off-Broadway play The Coach with the Six Insides by Jean Erdman,『草月とその時代 1945–1970』, p. 231 and the first showcase in Japan by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.『草月とその時代 1945--1970』, p. 239 There were noteworthy performances by Japanese creators as well, including dance recitals by Akiko Motofuji, Butoh works by Tatsumi Hijikata, works by Jūrō Kara’s Jōkyō Gekijō (Situation Theatre), plays by Tetsuji Takechi, and plays by Shūji Terayama.『草月とその時代 1945--1970』, p. 267『輝け60年代 : 草月アートセンターの全記錄』, pp. 12-22 Members of the Hanayagi school of nihon buyō (traditional Japanese dance), including Suzushi Hanayagi, also performed at the SAC.
There was some effort made by the SAC to start its own experimental theatre series, but the Sōgetsu Experimental Theatre only hosted one performance, by Group NLT (today Gekidan NLT), in 1964.
1965–1971 After 1965, the SAC programming shifted to mostly focus on film, with less activity in the performing arts, although there were still some notable performances of works by Shūji Terayama and others. The SAC launched several new film festivals, including the Sekai Zen’ei Eiga-sai ("World Avant-garde Film Festival"), the Underground Film Festival, the Sōgetsu Experimental Film Festival, and the Film Art Festival. Although these new film festivals underscored the SAC's support for avant-garde artists, the 1969 Film Art Festival was forced to shut down when several violent factions of the underground film scene occupied the auditorium and called for the festival's destruction. Although some of the SAC affiliates were able to de-escalate the mob, whose actual goals were unclear, the festival nevertheless closed. Yuji Takahashi states "When I returned to Japan briefly in 1969 and visited the Sōgetsu Art Center, the Cinemathèque venue was occupied in the midst of a protest rally with no end in sight. And so the art movements of the sixties came to an end."『輝け60年代: 草月アートセンターの全記錄』, p. 65 https://www.suigyu.com/yuji/ja-text/2001/sac.html
In the last few years of the SAC, most events were screenings part of the Sōgetsu Cinemathèque.『輝け60年代 : 草月アートセンターの全記錄』, pp. 26-31 In April 1971, the center closed, ending a significant period in avant-garde art in Tokyo.
Philosophy Although he was the director of SAC, Hiroshi Teshigahara advocated a collaborative and horizontal approach: "I had always been involved with activities that mixed up and brought together various art forms. So the art center was something that really concretized what I had been thinking about for a while. One thing that I insisted on was that it wasn't going to be a place where I would call on artists and ask them to do things. I really wanted people to come here on their own, and find it to be a place where they could be spontaneous and experiment. The artists themselves are the real producers... I think it was probably the first time that any organization was able to sustain and continue this sort of thing." Like the Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition (1949-1964), the goal (self-described) was to offer artists a "safe haven from the storm of capitalism that controlled the art market."
In connection to this horizontal approach, the SAC consistently attempted to blur the boundaries between different genres of art. The artist Kuniharu Akiyama explained that the SAC was "a forum for the interchange of each genre of art, it was a departure point for us to think about new integrated artworks and the integration of different arts."草月アートセンターの記録刊行委員会『輝け60年代 : 草月アートセンターの全記錄』「草月アートセンターの記錄」刊行委員会, フィルムアート社, 2002, p. 63 This impulse is visible even in the earlier programs of the SAC – despite being demarcated into jazz, experimental music, and film, it was often the case that films would accompany the jazz performances, or that composers would contribute scores to the films. In this way, the SAC is often considered to be a place where the boundaries between genres dissolved through collaboration.草月アートセンターの記録刊行委員会『輝け60年代 : 草月アートセンターの全記錄』「草月アートセンターの記錄」刊行委員会, フィルムアート社, 2002, p. 197
Influence on intermedia art The multimedia stage experiments at the SAC arguably helped give birth to so-called intermedia art in the late 1960s. Intermedia experiments of the late 1960s pushed beyond collaborations across artistic genres - they used multiple genres (and often integrated new technologies) to create projects that interrogated broad shifts occurring in Japanese environment, culture, and institutions. Several key early experiments in intermedia actually took place at the SAC - for example, the performance tied to the exhibition From Space to Environment in 1966 involved an intermedia apparatus built from sound and light systems.
Notable events
"Works of Yoko Ono" (1962) The SAC is often regarded as the birthplace of the happening in Japan. At Yoko Ono's recital in 1962, she debuted several pieces, which were some of the first and most noteworthy artistic happenings in Japan. In each work, she instructed a group of performers, primarily artists affiliated with the SAC, to fulfill various actions.草月アートセンターの記録刊行委員会『輝け60年代 : 草月アートセンターの全記錄』「草月アートセンターの記錄」刊行委員会, フィルムアート社, 2002, p. 58 In The Pulse, the group performed mundane acts such as eating fruit and breaking objects. The recital concluded with a piece in which every performer stood on stage, and stared at a person in the audience until they established eye contact. Once they established eye contact, they selected a different person in the audience. If the performers grew tired, they could sit down or even lie down on stage. The event ended once there was no one left in the audience. An unidentified reviewer of Ono's performance defined the happening as "not an art that has already been completed, but an art form that enables the audience to receive something by witnessing the unfolding of nonsense acts, experiencing the process together with the performers."