Gutai Art Association

Jirō Yoshihara, Work (Colored Chickens), 1956.

Atsuko Tanaka wearing Denkifuku [Electric Dress] (1956) at 2nd Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan, Tokyo, October 1956. Pompidou.

Saburō Murakami, Sakuhin (Tsuka) [Passage], 1956. Performance at 2nd Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Hall, Tokyo, October 1956. 1994 video.

Gutai Art Association, Gutai Card Box, 1962. Wood, aluminum, acrylic board, and buzzer, 182.9 × 91.4 × 91.4 cm. Courtesy Mukai Shūji. Installation view at 11th Gutai Art Exhibition, Takashimaya department store, Osaka, 17-22 April 1962.

The Gutai Art Association (具体美術協会, 1954–72) was an avant-garde collective of 17 original member artists, formed by artist, critic, and teacher Jirō Yoshihara (吉原 治良), along with Shōzō Shimamoto (嶋本 昭三), in the cosmopolitan town of Ashiya, near Osaka, in western Japan. Yoshihara's primary directive to the membership was, "Do something no one's ever done before." In the summer of 2012, the National Art Center in Tokyo exhibited Gutai: Spirit of an Era, the first major retrospective examination of the movement in the nation's capital.

Publications

• 具体 [Gutai], 14 numbers, Nishinomiya-shi: Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai (具体美術協会), 1955-1965; facs.repr. as Gutai, 12 vols., ed. Chinatsu Kuma, Tokyo: Ashiya City Museum of Art & History, and Tokyo: Geikashoin, 2010. Magazine. Reprint, 2010 (Japanese)
• Jirō Yoshihara, "Gutai bijustsu sengen (Gutai Manifesto)", Geijutsu Shincho 7:12, Dec 1956, pp 202-204. (Japanese)
  • "Gutai Art Manifesto", trans. Reiko Tomii, in Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky, ed. Alexandra Munroe, New York: Harry N. Abrams, and New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1994, p 370, HTML; repr. in Gutai: Splendid Playground, New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2013, pp 18-19. (English)
• Gutai Pinacotheca series, 26+ publications.
• more

Recent exhibitions

• Gutai, permanent exhibition, Osaka City Museum of Modern Art, Osaka.
• Gutaï: exposition, Jeu de Paume, Paris, May-Jun 1999.
• "Under Each Other's Spell": Gutai and New York, Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, NY, Jul-Oct 2009; Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery, Jersey City, NJ, Oct-Dec 2009; UB Anderson Gallery, U Buffalo, Spring 2010. Catalogue.
• Gutai: Painting with Time and Space, LAC, Lugano, Oct 2010-Feb 2011.
• Gutai: The Spirit of an Era, National Art Center, Tokyo, Jul-Sep 2012. Review.
• A Visual Essay on Gutai at 32 East 69th Street, Hauser & Wirth, New York, Sep-Oct 2012.
• Gutai: Splendid Playground, Guggenheim Museum, New York, Feb-May 2013. Catalogue, Munroe's essay. Review: Kunimoto (Art Journal).

Literature

See also catalogues above.

• Alexandra Munroe, "To Challenge the Midsummer Sun: The Gutai Group", in Scream Against the Sky: Japanese Art After 1945, ed. Munroe, New York: Harry N. Abrams, and New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1994, pp 83-124.
• Joan Kee, "Situating a Singular Kind of 'Action'. Early Gutai Painting, 1954-1957", Oxford Art Journal 26:2 (2003), pp 123-140.
• "1955: Nonwestern Avant-Gardes (Gutai)", in Art Since 1900, eds. Hal Foster, et al., London: Thames & Hudson, 2004, pp 373-378.
• Ming Tiampo, Gutai and Informel: Post-war Art in Japan and France, 1945-1965, Northwestern University, 2004, xxii+347 pp. PhD dissertation.
• Ming Tiampo, "Create What Has Never Been Done Before! Historicising Gutai Discourses of Originality", Third Text 21:6 (2007), pp 689-706.
• Ming Tiampo, Gutai: Decentering Modernism, University of Chicago Press, 2010. Introduction, [1].
• Doryun Chong, "The Dawn of Cross-Genre: Jikken Kōbō and Gutai", in Tokyo 1955-1970: A New Avant-Garde, ed. Diana C. Stoll, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2012, pp 46-57.
• John Held, jr., "Why Gutai?", SFAQ 11, San Francisco, Nov 2012-Jan 2013, pp 92-107.
• Ming Tiampo, "Gutai Chain: The Collective Spirit of Individualism", positions 21:2, May 2013, pp 383-415.
• Gabrielle Schaad, Performing Environmental Textures: Intersected Bodies of Gutai and Metabolism (Japan, 1955-1972), Zurich: ETH Zurich, 2016, 253 pp. PhD dissertation.

Encyclopedic entries

en Tate, Wikipedia. fr Universalis. it Treccani. cr Šuvaković.

Bibliography

• "Gutai: An Annotated Bibliography", compiled by John Held, jr., SFAQ, 2012, PDF.

See also

• Japan#Anti-art, Non-art

Links

• Gutai Pinacotheca on the WEB: Yoshihara Jiro and the Gutai Art Association
• Gutai & Fluxus blog.
• http://archives.carre.pagesperso-orange.fr/Gutai.html

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