Human subjectivity and confrontation with materials in Japanese art: Yoshihara Jiro and early years of the Gutai Art Association, 1947--1958.

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the remarkable approaches toward materials in art objects taken by the Japanese modernist art group the Gutai Art Association (Gutai) and its leader Yoshihara Jiro (1905-1972) in the mid-1950s. Responding to the Japanese art community's concerns with representation of human experience and national identity, Yoshihara and the Gutai members placed special emphasis on how the intervention of the artist became inscribed in the materials of the object. Their recognition of the importance of the artist's engagement with materials as an expression of human presence in visual art radically departed from the contemporary Japanese art practice of representation and interpretation of the physical world. By expanding the use of tools and materials beyond oil paint, paintbrush and canvas, Gutai transformed the practice of Japanese modernist art that had evolved in dialogue with Western art since the late 19th century. In the process they grappled with the thorny issue of national identity in cultural production. In response to a general interest in subjectivity and the rejection of conventional systems in early postwar Japan, modernist artists confronted two major issues: how to incorporate human experience into art, and how to challenge the criticism of being derivative of West. Yoshihara Jiro developed a model of materiality and human subjectivity that ingeniously incorporated the human presence into non-figurative art, thereby attempting to overcome the problems of national authenticity in modernist styles. Applying Yoshihara's concept in conjunction with their own theorization of painting practice, Gutai artists, including Shimamoto Shozo, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko, developed highly individual works ranging from sculptures and installations to performance. Although Gutai members consciously planned their presentations to generate critical conversations, critics and artists in Japan failed to acknowledge the group's ground-breaking interpretation; this neglect greatly affected Gutai's decision to return to painting. Through careful examination of the wider historical, intellectual, and cultural context, this dissertation demonstrates that Gutai's innovative concept of materiality and human subjectivity was a lone response to the problems shared by Japanese artists in the mid-1950s, while also prefiguring many new developments in modern art of the 1960s and beyond.