The First Gutai Art Exhibition took place in Ohara hall, Tokyo, Japan, in October 1955. This exhibition was the first manifestation of Gutai and displayed wide-ranging types of works created by a group of young artists formed around association leader Jiro Yoshihara. In the spirit of avant-guard, Gutai Artists challenged the formats, materials, and boundaries of painting with innovative projects that explore space, time, and sound. The group’s interest is in direct emotion and direct connections between the spirit and the material, and their goal is to do something completely unexpected and create art that is unrelated to the concept of past.
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Background
During the post war year, as Gutai was emerging, originality became embedded in discourses of individualism as a resistance against the mass physiology of Japan’s militarist past. Paintings as it existed was no longer adequate to human condition. Artists are motivated to articulate a new form of expression that defined a new era of authenticity and creative autonomy. Jiro Yoshihara at this time, inspired by Jackson Pollock, started to explore the art that can go beyond abstract painting into nontraditional process and the performative. In the invitation of the exhibition, Jiro Yoshihara articulates the important goal of the Gutai artists:
“Today, the genre known as ‘pure art’ really seems to have come up against a huge wall. But with this outrageous methods and sincere approach, this new group of people is attempting to break right through that wall.”Artists challenged themselves to produce fresh and unconventional forms of art using various materials based on daily life such as wood, water, plastics, newspaper, sheet metal, fabrics, sand, light, smoke etc. Their aim is to open a dialog between the materials and the artist’s spirit while attempting to transform the material into something new:
“Gutai art does not change the material: it brings it to life. Gutai art does not falsify the material. In Gutai art the human spirit and the material reach out their hands to each other, even though they are otherwise opposed to each other. The material is not absorbed by the spirit. The spirit does not force the material into submission. If one leaves the material as it is, presenting it just as material, then it starts to tell us something and speaks with a mighty voice.”Besides the exploration of non-art materials, they also experimented with new forms that we now call performance art, installation art, sound art, and multimedia art. Three months before the first Gutai Exhibition in Tokyo, the Gutai artists hold the “Experimental Outdoor Modern Art Exhibition to challenge the Midsummer Burning Sun” in Ashiya City, which is actually their first groundbreaking show. The outdoor piece displayed a clear bag of red liquid and sharp sheets of metal hanging from the trees, and wooden posts scarred with axes and penetrated with nails. Continue on its radicalism, the exhibition in Tokyo later displays a wider range of works highlighting the impact of physical action on materials. The works of Gutai artists caught the attention of artist Allan Kaprow, who saw them as prefiguring Happenings, and of French critic Michel Tapie, who embraced the Gutai artists as contributors to the version of Abstract Expressionism he called Art Informel.
Participating Artists
Famous Works
Challenging Mud by Kazuo Shiraga
Kazuo Shiraga flailed for twenty minutes in a heap of building clay in the country yard of Ohara Hall. For the remainder of the exhibition, the mud remained on view, identified by a signpost bearing the title of the work.
Making Six Holes in One Moment by Saburo Murakami
Saburo Murakami stretched several layers of packaging paper over two sets of wooden frames. He tore through the paper six times on the opening day, and the resulting work remained on view in the first room of the exhibition hall.
Work (Water) by Sadamasa Motonaga
To create Water, Motonaga filled clear plastic bags with colored water, which he hung at varying heights from the celling. The piece was installed near a window to achieve the full effect of sunlight passing through the transparent vessels.
Exhibition layout
In the first room located on the first floor of the hall, were six works by Yasuo Sumi, eight works by Toshio Yoshida, and three works by Saburo Murakami including both frames from the performance Making Six Holes in One Moment. This room also displayed at least one of the twenty bells that formed Astuko Tanaka’s Work(Bell). Activated by flipping a switch, the bells rang in sequence throughout the rooms of exhibition.
The second room included Tsuruko Yamazaki’s 52 empty tin cans installed on the floor and Akira Kanayama’s balloon hung from the celling. This room also included works by Murakami, Shozo Shimamoto, and Kazuo Shiraga’s two abstract painting created by using his feet.
Fujiko Shiraga’s floor path ran throughout the gallery. Beside the path there were a stripe work by Yamazaki, a small painting by Jiro Yoshihara, and Tanaka’s Work, a hanging piece of pink fluorescent silk.
Critical Reception
The innovation in using new materials is appreciated by many critics. While there're still various kinds of doubts and offensive voices around the show, such as “From the viewpoint of the subconscious, the work is extremely simple.” “This is a new manifestation of Dada.” “Sensation alone is meaningless.”