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), Genbi and
Ashiya City Exhibition participants, decided to create a new group under the name of Gutai (the name was proposed by Shimamoto) 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. 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!”, 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”. 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: “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.” 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, such as
Jackson Pollock, Ben Friedman, George Wittenborn,
Ray Johnson, Michel Tapié, Martha Jackson,
Henk Peeters, Jean Clay and
Allan Kaprow. The journals consisted of documentations of members’ works and the group’s exhibition projects through plates, photographs and articles. 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,
Outdoor exhibitions Gutai organized and participated in several experimental outdoor art projects, such as the
Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Midsummer Sun at the Ashiya Park in July 1955, an open-air exhibition that was open twenty-four hours a day for two weeks. the participants, who also included amateurs and school children, had to follow the exhibition committee’s requirements to withstand weather conditions such as sun, rain and wind as well as take into consideration the characteristics of the exhibition venue, and the risks of damage and theft. In response, they created large-scale three-dimensional works made of industrially produced materials for everyday use, construction materials, and scrap material: Sadamasa Motonaga suspended a vinyl bag filled with coloured water from the branches of a tree; Yasuo Sumi set up wire mesh covered with enamel paint; Atsuko Tanaka’s pinned a pink nylon sheet just above the ground that rippled in the wind; Kazuo Shiraga built a tent-like structure with wooden poles, which he slashed with an axe from inside. Tsuruko Yamazaki’s
Danger consisted in a row of sharply-edged tin plates hanging from the trees. Engaging with natural and technical conditions, the participants created numerous experimental works including performative, interactive and installation artworks that explored the relationship between object, site and beholder and which pre-dated artistic tendencies that arose in Europe and the US in the 1960s, such as performance, site-specific, earth, environmental and installation art. The photographs were never published in
LIFE, but the photoshoot is evidence of an early international interest in Gutai, as well as the scale of the group’s ambition. At the
Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition in summer 1956, again held at the Ashiya Park, the participants further explored the interactivity of their works with visitors and the natural environment, including works that used the effects of electric light in the dark, such as Yamazaki’s large cube of red vinyl hanging from the tree, or Jirō Yoshihara’s column made of paper lanterns,
Light Art, or Michio Yoshihara’s work in which electric bulbs were set up in the ground. the
Zero op Zee (Zero on Sea) exhibition planned by the Dutch group Nul as a large scale show at the Scheveningen Pier in The Hague in 1966 (which was never realized), and Gutai’s collective large-scale garden sculpture for the
Expo ‘70.
Gutai Art Exhibitions Adapting the practice of established art associations, Gutai held its own annual group exhibitions to display their works in indoor settings beginning in 1955. Until the group’s dissolution, 21
Gutai Art Exhibitions were held at venues such as the Ohara Hall in Tokyo, the Municipal Museum of Art of Kyoto, and gallery spaces of the Takashimaya and the Keio department stores in Osaka and Tokyo. At the
1st Gutai Art Exhibition in October 1955, Kazuo Shiraga stripped to his underwear and wrestled a heap of mud, leaving the traces of his struggle in the kneaded material (
Challenging Mud, 1955). In the exhibition rooms, Saburō Murakami used his body to punch and tear through sets of large paper screens (
6 Holes, 1955), which remained on display. At the
2nd Gutai Art Exhibition (fall 1956), Gutai members presented their artistic processes for the press/photographers. On the building’s rooftop, Shimamoto shattered glass bottles filled with paint on canvases/paper laid on the ground, Murakami tore and stumbled through 24 paper screens
Passage (1956), and Shiraga demonstrated his method of foot painting. Also, some of the photos shot by the photographer Kiyoji Ōtsuji at this occasion were used to frame the “Gutai Art Manifesto”, which was published in the art magazine
Geijutsu shinchō in December 1956. The
Gutai Group Exhibition at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York in fall 1958, which was retroactively renamed the
6th Gutai Art Exhibition, was the group’s first exhibition outside of Japan. The show was facilitated by the French art critic Michel Tapié, who, having learned about Gutai via Japanese painters Hisao Dōmoto and Toshimitsu Imai in Paris, had travelled to Japan in fall 1957 to meet the group. Tapié at that time was promoting Informel as a global art movement and was advising the New York art dealer Martha Jackson. Yoshihara travelled to the US to participate in the preparations. Tapié and Yoshihara mainly selected Informel-style paintings by Gutai artists for this exhibition, which, in the context of the shift of the New York art scene from abstract expressionism towards …, led to criticism of their works as being derivatives of Pollock, (Dore Ashton) However, Tapié’s European networks provided Gutai the opportunities to exhibit in art spaces in Turin in 1959 and 1960. Their group exhibition at the Galleria Arti Figurative in Turin in 1959 was renamed as
7th Gutai Art Exhibition. The
Gutai Art Exhibitions provided the main venue for the members to show their works, supplemented by the
Gutai Art Small-Works Exhibitions, the
Gutai Art New Artists Exhibitions, and the
Gutai Art New-Work Exhibitions, as well as the members’ solo exhibitions at the group’s own gallery Gutai Pinacotheca in Osaka, which was opened in 1962. The
21st Gutai Art Exhibition in 1968 was the last show. With the growing recognition of members as solo artists and the emergence of commercial art galleries for contemporary art in Japan, members such as Yoshihara, Shiraga, Motonaga, and Tanaka increasingly participated in other major group exhibitions of contemporary Japanese art in Japan as well as abroad. The Ashiya City Exhibition continued to provide an important platform, however, for most Gutai members throughout the years.
Stage shows In 1957 and 1958, Gutai presented two live stage shows entitled
Gutai Art on the Stage that were presented at the Asahi Halls in Osaka and Tokyo. The shows consisted of a dramaturgically staged suite of individual performances by the members. During the show in 1957, Kanayama painted red and black lines on a large balloon resulting in a web-like pattern. This balloon was inflated slowly, becoming a sculptural piece that rotated under lights of changing colors. The balloon was then cut and deflated, almost returning to it its original state. Shimamoto hit electric bulbs hanging from the ceiling with a stick, and Murakami adapted his method of paper-tearing into a stage version of hitting large paper screens with a stick. Tanaka ripped and stripped off multiple layers of clothes in a performance, but she also set up her giant
Stage Clothes from the outdoor exhibition 1956 and her
Electric Dress from the
2nd Gutai Art Exhibition. Kazuo Shiraga performed his own modern version of the traditional Sanbasō dance from traditional Kyōgen and Noh theater, wearing a red costume with exaggeratedly extended sleeves and hat. or by US-American performance artist Allan Kaprow.
Gutai Pinacotheca, 1962 In 1962, Gutai’s own art space Gutai Pinacotheca opened on the Nakanoshima sandbank in the center of
Osaka. It consisted of three old storage houses owned by Yoshihara, which had been converted into a fashionable modern gallery space. With an exhibition space of app. 370 qm, The more recent gestural canvas paintings Yoshihara had brought with him were not shown.
Dissolution, 1972 As a large group of many artists with individuals approaches, shifts and tensions within the group were a constant factor. Also facing the developing solo careers of individual members such as Shiraga, Tanaka, and Motonaga around 1960, Yoshihara, managed to keep the group together by constantly recruiting and bringing in new and younger members. More than half of the founding members had quit in the first months of 1955, and first-generation members, Tanaka and Kanayama in the mid-1960s, and Murakami and Motonaga around 1970, began to detach themselves from Gutai, but maintained their membership. In February 1972, Yoshihara died while preparing Gutai’s participation in the
Floriade garden festival in Amsterdam. Subsequently, the group’s members unanimously decided to end Gutai and publicly announced the dissolution in March 1972. == Critical reception and legacy ==