🎭 Gutai Art: Japan's Avant-Garde Revolution 🛍 Shop Designer on Japanese eBay 🏡 Revive Heritage Homes: Japan's Modern Space Design 🛠 IKEA + Muji: The Ultimate Storage Wagon and more.

Ordermade #9

Oct 24, 2023

第9号

Welcome to the 9th edition of Ordermade (オーダーメイド).

Ordermade curates a weekly collection that captures the essence of こだわり or 'kodawari'—a deep dedication and care—in art, fashion, interiors, architecture, music, and literature with Japanese sensibilities.

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This issue features:

🎭 Intro to Gutai Art Association: Japan’s Most Avant-Garde Art Group In the Last Century.
🛍 Why you should shop designer pieces exclusively on Japanese eBay.
🏡 Specialized space design service for revitalizing vacant traditional houses with a modern touch.
🛠 Ultimate storage wagon built by combining products from IKEA and Muji
🌸 Stunning photos of Hitachi Seaside Park.

Enjoy.

🎭 Gutai Art Association: Japan’s Most Avant-Garde Art Group In the Last Century.

When I visited the Gutai exhibit in Japan, I found myself in awe and simultaneously puzzled. Many art pieces in the exhibit were simply titled "Work" without descriptions.

Adding to the confusion was the diverse range of art mediums on display. Exhibits included a "dress" constructed of lights, bells echoing fire alarm sounds dispersed throughout the venue, a cascade of multicolored ribbons spilling onto the floor, and three-dimensional styrofoam art that displayed intricate concentric patterns reminiscent of ripples, among others.

Electric Dress by Atsuko Tanaka by Kanayama Akira and Tanaka Atsuko Association

Swirl. Red and Yellow (left), Swirl. Blue and Red (right) by Kumiko Imanaka (source)

No coherent theme seemed to emerge. Yet, what unified these disparate works was the artists’ pursuit of unbridled freedom and creativity. Without much explanation of the art pieces, they communicated this unconstrained sense of freedom to the viewers.

Indeed, this was reflective of their underlying philosophy. Their first journal, published in 1955, states the association's goal was to "concretely prove that our souls are free."

Understanding Gutai.

Gutai Art Association was founded in 1954 by Jiro Yoshihara—a painter and businessman—in Ashiya, a city in Japan’s Kansai region. It was the first avant-garde group in post-war Japan. Initially, about 15 artists joined the association, and their collective activities spanned 18 years, disbanding in 1972.

Spirit and Matter Shake Hands.

Although Gutai's styles share similarities with other art movements at the time, they carved out a unique philosophy: to manifest the freedom of the human soul by pursuing uninhibited creativity, unfettered by past traditions or the grim memories of WWII.

Yoshihara, the leader of Gutai, would encourage the Gutai members to always "do what no one has done before!" What did originality and pure creativity mean for them? Their manifesto published in the art magazine "Geijutsu Shinchō" in 1556 answers the question:

In Gutai Art, the human spirit and matter shake hands with each other while keeping their distance. Matter never compromises itself with the spirit; the spirit never dominates matter. When matter remains intact and exposes its characteristics, it starts telling a story and even cries out… When the individual’s character and the selected materiality meld together in the furnace of automatism, we are surprised to see the emergence of a space previously unknown, unseen, and unexperienced. Automatism inevitably transcends the artist’s own image. We endeavor to achieve our own method of creating space rather than relying on our own images.
from gutai art manifesto

This guiding principle led the group—whose name translates to "concrete"—to transcend mere abstraction, focusing instead on the dynamic interplay between spirit and matter, steered by the concept of automatism.

Gutai’s Early Years.

The association’s early years (1954 - 1957) stand out as a period of bold experimentation where members boldly employed diverse techniques and mediums to defy conventional artistic methods.

Kazuo Shiraga rejected the idea of panting with his hands and instead swung from a rope and painted canvases with his feet.

Shozo Shimamoto’s “Throwing Painting” involved using a canon to shoot paint on a large canvas.

Shozo Shimamoto throwing glass bottles of colorful pigments against a stone at the center of a canvas © Seiko Otsuji / Courtesy of Musashino Art University Museum & Library, Tokyo Publishing House. From the portfolio Kiyoji Otsuji GUTAI PHOTOGRAPH 1956-57

Saburo Murakami affixed large sheets of paper to frames only to break through them.

Saburo Murakami - At One Moment Opening Six Holes, Tokyo, 1955 — Murakami breaking through sheets of paper (source)

Shiraga, for the first Gutai outdoor exhibition in 1955, swam through wet mud half-naked to transform the mud into compositional shapes.

gutai group artists performance work new painting works exhibition 1954 terms — Challenging Mud - Shiraga (source)

Atsuko Tanaka used uncommon materials for her art, and light, for her blinking Electric Dress.

Woman enveloped from head to toe in dress made of long and short light bulbs — Electric Dress (source)

Their focus on the interplay between spirit and matter influenced their emphasis on the artistic process, which often also became a part of the viewer's experience.

Many Gutai artworks are also just titled “Untitled” or “Work,” mirroring the artists’ belief that art should speak for itself. As I navigated through the exhibit, each artwork compelled me to delve into its underlying meaning, offering a palpable sense of the freedom the artists sought to express.

Between 1955 and 1965, Gutai also published 12 issues of their journal “Gutai,” featuring contributions from members, including artwork reviews and in-depth discussions on various art theories.

Art Informel and Gutai’s Transnational Manifestation.

The 1957 visit of the French art critic and curator Michel Tapié marked a turning point for the association, leading the Gutai artists to shift their focus toward Informalism, a style Tapié avidly endorsed.

Informalism, or Art Informel, is an artistic style characterized by abstract, spontaneous, and expressive art based on informal procedures, gestural paint application, and rejection of formal traditions.

Tapié introduced the Gutai Art Association to the international audience, establishing them as one of the leading Art Informel groups of the era.

The association’s desire for international reach was evident from the outset as their journals, although partially, were bilingual from the inaugural issue.

The association’s activities reached its peak in its 1970 participation in The Japan World Expo, and the death of Yoshihara in 1972 led to their disbandment. Even so, many Gutai artists still pay homage to Yoshihara by testing the boundaries of art and naming their artwork "Work."