JIRO YOSHIHARA AND THE GUTAI:  BRIEF OVERVIEW 

      Jiro Yoshihara was an influential artist in Japan with a long career spanning the pre- and post war eras.  While in his early work he was occupied with explorations of the surreal, in his later works he explored abstract, calligraphic expression, and the spiritual principles of Zen Buddhism.  His role as a leader and patron was invaluable to the development of Japanese art. Contributing to the Bokujin-kai calligraphic movement with Shiryu Morita, Yoshihara also helped to found the aforementioned Genbi, the Contemporary Art Discussion Group,  Yoshihara’s most notable contribution to Japanese avant-garde art was   as the leader and founder of the Gutai Art Association, which  he founded in December of 1954.    Having inherited a prominent private business from his father, Yoshihara was  able to fund the Gutai group’s activities and to subscribe to international art journals and magazines, which allowed  artists to   be informed about  global art movements and ideas.1  Yoshihara was a strong leader of the Gutai and   maintained legendarily high standards for innovation, which he believed would allow the artists under his guidance to attain unbounded creative expression and global recognition for their work. 

      Formed by a group of roughly 25 artists, the Gutai group emerged from Osaka in the Kansai region, unexpectedly since at the time, one of the prominent art trends was the social realist, Reportage painting found in Tokyo, the major art centre of the era.  In contrast, the approach of the Gutai emerged out of a need to re-invent the traditional Japanese arts in ways that embraced the abstract and the non-representational, resulting in reluctance among the Japanese public to accept the Gutai.2  Their debut was marked by their participation in the 7th Yomiuri Indépendant exhibition, at which they signed all of their works “Gutai.”3 The group also uniquely included and promoted women painters, whose opportunities in the group were equal to that of its male members.  Significant among these female artists was Atsuko Tanaka, whose performances incorporating the body represent pioneer moments of feminist expression.4   

GUTAI AND  EMBODIMENT  

To today’s consciousness, the art of the past, which on the whole displays an alluring appearance, seems fraudulent.  …  

Lock up these corpses in the graveyard. 

Gutai Art does not alter the material.  Gutai Art imparts life to the material. (…)

In Gutai Art, the human spirit and the material shake hands with each other, but keep their distance.  The material never compromises itself with the spirit; the spirit never dominates the material.  When the material remains intact and exposes its characteristics, it starts telling a story, and even cries out.   
 

      -Jiro Yoshihara5

            “Gutai Art Manifesto,” 1956 (see the complete manifesto here) 
 

      The word Gutai stands for concreteness or embodiment.6 The traditional, historical forms of Japanese painting were interpreted by Gutai artists as insufficient to express the universality and potency of the human condition.  In the Gutai Manifesto, Yoshihara describes art of the past as fraudulent:  when paintings the materials are manipulated to signify human ideas; they are camouflaged under the “pretence of production of the mind,” and effectively silenced.  This form of art, according to Yoshihara, is forever describing nature from a distance, a separateness that stems in becoming, rather than being.  In reaction to these older forms of passive and indirect painting, the Gutai responded that their painting “should not represent or suggest nature – it must embody, or function as   a “work” of nature itself.”7  In their avoidance of the ideology of “fine art,” the Gutai artists were drawn to the art of children and attracted to their seemingly uncensored creativity. They saw children as “capable of producing unique and surprising results from an empty white space in an unconscious manner.”8 They sought to create art that would situate the human spirit, and the spirit of the materials employed by the artists, on an equal playing field.  The interaction of both spirits would become cathartic, thus releasing their energies in an epiphany of creation.9  Artists would thus enable their chosen materials to express their inherent qualities and essences. Yoshihara declared: “Gutai art puts the greatest importance on all daring steps which lead to an undiscovered world … our work is the result of investigating the possibilities of calling the material to life.”10  The importance of discovery, of newness, was an integral aspect of Yoshihara’s vision.  He demanded that Gutai artists avoid being imitative or dependent on traditional forms, encouraging them to create in the spirit of utmost originality and innovation. 

      The works of the Gutai incorporated a myriad of materials in new and unfounded ways.  While in the performance Passing Through, Murakami Saburo physically broke through a series of paper screens, transforming the material with the imprint of his body, Shiraga Kazuo painted with his feet. Similarly, Shimamoto Shozo’s Holes recorded his interaction with the material: his accidental puncturing on the surface of the canvas became a means of expressing the qualities of the materials in their uninhibited interaction.11 All forms of Gutai art can be interpreted as extensions of painting in various ways:  the artists entered into the realms of space, time, light, technology and involved spectators as participants. They did not seek to “attack the validity of painting, but rather to expand the vocabulary, and thus the potency of painting.”  Thus, for the Gutai, painting is an art form that “records the process of its creation. It could be made of any materials, painterly or not, and executed by any means – dance, machine or accident.”12  It is an experience of the material that embodies and unites, and that demands   a full and uninhibited bodily engagement.  These interactions and collaborations between artists and their materials often incorporate chance, thus “allowing” the material to assert its own qualities and express its own voice.   

REINVENTION OF INSTITUTIONS 

        Gutai artists were also constantly finding new forums in which to display their work, differentiating themselves from traditional art institutions.  One of these forums was the Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun, which Gutai organized in the summer of 1955 in a pine grove park in city of Ashiya.13  Taking place in the open air and subject to the natural elements of wind and sun, the exhibition prompted the Gutai artists to adapt to their environment by developing ephemeral, site specific works.  Some experimented with materials that would withstand weather, while others used the surroundings to enhance their art.  Motonaga Sadamasa, for example, filled clear polyurethane sacs with water and tied the sacs to the trees in lines of elegant, sweeping arcs. As the day progressed, these translucent pockets glowed in the intensifying sun and came alive in the light of day and space of the exhibition, but inevitably deteriorated because of the low quality of the materials.14 

      The Gutai also created new and unique indoor spaces. Yoshihara built the Gutai Pinacotheca to serve as an exhibition space and as a more permanent base for the group, which attracted new members and international visitors.  It provided a constant, stable space in which Gutai artists’ works could be exhibited – allowing their increased respect in the local Kansai region and thus legitimizing their activities.15 

      Inspired by their outdoor exhibitions, the Gutai artists later used the stage as another unconventional space for painting.  Gutai Art on Stage was performed in 1957 after 12 years of preparation; many of the works performed had been practiced in earlier versions in prior exhibitions.16 While we know of the works that appeared in Gutai Art on Stage, we are of course unable to experience the performances.  Using the rectangular framing of the space as a kind of canvas for their performances, each performance fulfilled the Gutai’s intention to expand the act of painting.  In Shiraga Kazuo’s Le Sambaso ultramoderne, one of the on-stage performances, the artist appeared in a costume with exaggeratedly elongated sleeves and pant legs, masked.  Using minimal gestures he was able to create an abstract work with line and movement, his outstretched limbs forming dramatic red streaks across the black backdrop of the stage.17 In another work, Stage Clothes, AtsukoTanaka dressed in a “trick” costume from which she stripped away layers in unexpected ways, each layer expressing a new visual form.

      Printmaking, which appeared in journals and magazines, was another important aspect of Gutai practice.  Yoshihara was connected to widespread art movements through his subscriptions to internationally distributed publications, which enabled him to be connected to a greater global art world. Yoshihara helped to establish the Gutai art journal. Published twelve times during a ten year period, the journal consisted of short artist writings and documentation of Gutai work and was distributed to important art figures across the world.18 

      In 1951 Yoshihara was exposed to many Western artists, but the most inspiring was that of American abstract artist Jackson Pollock, whose work revealed, he believed, the “scream of the material itself, cries of the paint and enamel.”19 In Europe, news of the Gutai reached Michel Tapié, the leader of the Art Informel movement.  The Japanese Informel-influenced artist Hisai Domoto gave him a few copies of the Gutai journal and initiated the meeting of Tapié and Yoshihara, leading to an important relationship between the two leaders.  Motivated by his admiration of Gutai art but also by the need to revitalize Informel, Tapié invited Gutai to join Informel.  The relationship was mutually beneficial: Yoshihara and Tapié had equal desires to see their groups elevated to an international status.20  However, the juxtaposition of Gutai paintings with those of other Informel artists in European and American galleries  obscured the  unique histories of the Gutai paintings’ and has ultimately confused the ideology and identity of Gutai with that of Informel.21 An important figure in recognizing Gutai on the international stage was Allan Kaprow, who later acknowledged Gutai artists’ performances   as the first form of the ‘Happening.’22 While there are many debates about the nature and extent of contact between East and West and the directions of influences, it is clear that for the Gutai these international contacts initiated a dialogue and cultural exchange that spurred mutual growth.

      With the death of Yoshihara in 1972, the Gutai members decided to disband.  The works of the Gutai continue to influence and inspire a new generation of artists, through time becoming better acknowledged in art history as the knowledge of their work becomes concrete.