WORK OF PAINTERS OF GUTAI ART ASSOCIATION WITHIN THE DEVELOPMENT OF POSTWAR JAPANESE ART IN THE 1950S
Abstract
The article is devoted to the analysis of the Gutai Art Association (1954–1972) as one of the most radical phenomena of the Japanese postwar avant-garde. It examines the period of American occupation, the trauma of war, ideological division, and economic recovery – the historical context against which new artistic strategies of the 1950s were formed. The author attempts to demonstrate how the members of Gutai, under the leadership of Yoshihara Jiro, rejected the traditional division of Japanese painting into Nihonga and Yōga, as well as the figurative socialist realism that dominated Japanese art at the time. The central focus of the article lies in the key principles of Gutai: the principle of “do not imitate,” the motto “Do what no one has done before,” the concept of concreteness (the animation of matter), and the destruction of boundaries between painting and performance, body and object, art and life. Particular attention is paid to the group’s early outdoor exhibition experiments (1955) and to the landmark projects by Murakami Saburo (“At One Moment”), Shiraga Kazuo (“Challenge to Mud”), Tanaka Atsuko (“Electric Dress”), and Yoshida Toshio. The article traces the influence of European Informel (Michel Tapié, Georges Mathieu), simultaneously highlighting the group’s aspiration to overcome this European influence. It explores the artistic and aesthetic pursuits of the Gutai members. In conclusion, it is argued that this group became one of the first movements to radically dismantle the boundaries between art and everyday life, thereby laying the foundations for the development of performance, happening, installation, and conceptual practices in Japan during the second half of the 20th century, while preserving its national distinctiveness amid the globalization of artistic language.
Keywords
Art Association Gutai; postwar Japanese avant-garde; Yoshihara Jirō (1905–1972); Murakami Saburo (1925–1996); Shiraga Kazuo (1924–2008); Tanaka Atsuko (1926–2024); Yoshida Toshio (1911–1995); performance; Concrete art; Japanese Art Informel; Japanese art of the 1950s;
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WORK OF PAINTERS OF GUTAI ART ASSOCIATION WITHIN THE DEVELOPMENT OF POSTWAR JAPANESE ART IN THE 1950S // . СПб. : СПб. акад. художеств, 2026. с. C. . https://doi.org/10.62625/2782-1889.2026.77.77.014
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