Gutai

In terms of our awareness today, conventional art works generally appear to be counterfeits assuming a meaningful look. It is time to bid farewell to the fakes high up on the altars, in the palaces, in the drawing rooms, or in the antique shops. A substance called paint, a piece of cloth, metal, soil, or marble is given meaningless meaning by human beings. Using a magic called material, they are turned into phantoms bearing the deceptive look of some other substance. Under the pretext of spiritual products, these substances are entirely slaughtered so that they are incapable of speaking up. Such corpses should be confined to the cemetery. Gutai art does not transform the substance. Gutai art gives the substance life. Gutai art does not falsify the substance. In Gutai art, the human spirit and the substance shake hands while remaining in rivalry. The substance does not assimilate to the spirit. The spirit does not require the substance to be subordinate. When a substance exposes its character intact as a substance, it begins to remark and even exclaims. To make the best use of the substance is a way to make the best of the spirit. To enhance the spirit is to lead the substance into the scene of an enhanced spirit. Art is a field of creation, but the spirit has never created a substance. The spirit no more than creates a spirit. The spirit has always produced life in art. However, that life transforms and becomes extinct. Nowadays, there appears to be no more sense of life in the great lives produced in the Renaissance than an archaeological existence. What barely manages to maintain, though passively, a sense of life to this day would be primitive art and art from Impressionism onwards. Fortunately, these arts were either incapable of making free use of the substance, i.e. the paint, to fully deceive the viewers or, as in the cases of Pointillism and Fauvism, could not manage to slaughter the substance although it was employed to represent nature. However, nowadays, they can no longermake a deep impression on us. They all belong to a world of the past. An interesting point here is the contemporary beauty which can be identified in the damage due to the passage of time or the destruction due to disasters of artworks and architecture of the past. Although this is treated as a decadent beauty, surprisingly enough, it may be a beauty in which the original character of the substance has begun to show from the shadow of the artificial embellishment. Ruins welcome us unexpectedly warmly and intimately. They talk to us through the beauty of their cracks and peelings. This might be a sign of revenge as the substance has recovered its intrinsic life. In that sense, among contemporary art, I have respect for the works by Pollock and Mathieu. In these works, the substance, i.e. the oil paint or the enamel itself, lets out screams. The work by these two artists is carried out in an appropriate way following the discoveries each one of them made according to their innate disposition. Rather than coping with the substance, they appear to be serving it. Differentiation and integration produce tremendous effects. Informel issues by Mathieu and Tapié have been introduced recently by Soichi Tominaga and Hisao Domoto. They are extremely interesting. Although I do not know the details, I agree with the majority of the gist. Their expression differs from ours. Yet, I was surprised to find out that it corresponds miraculously with our advocacy in demand of vividness. For example, instead of adhering to existing forms, they demand the emergence of fresh forms that have just appeared. However, in pursuing the possibilities, they do not explain how the abstract formative units of colour, line or form are grasped in relation to the characteristic of the substance. I do not understand what they mean by the negation of abstraction. However, we clearly could not find charm in standardized abstract art, and moving further forward from abstract art was one of our slogans when we formed the Gutai Art Association three years ago. Indeed, that is why we chose the term Gutaishugi (concretism). It was particularly inevitable that we could not but consider a centrifugal start as opposed to the centripetal formation of abstractionism. In those days, and even today, we believed that the greatest legacy of abstractionism was the point that it moved on from representative art and opened up the possibility of creating a new independent space truly worth being called creativity. We decided that we would vigorously pursue the potential of purely creative activities. In order to grasp an abstract space in concrete terms, it appeared necessary to join the human disposition with the characteristic of the substance. When the individual’s disposition and the selected substance were combined in the melting pot of automatism, we were surprised to find that a yet unseen and inexperienced space was formed. Automatism inevitably transcends the artist’s image. Rather than relying on our own images, we made every effort to grasp the space’s own method to create. For example, in the case of one of our members, Toshiko Kinoshita, career-wise she is no more than a chemistry teacher at a girls’ high school, but she has created wondrous spaces by mixing chemicals on filter paper. Although it is possible to make certain forecasts, the result does not come out until the day after the chemicals have been mixed. Even so, the aspect of these mysterious substances is hers. There is no telling how many tens of thousands of Pollocks appeared after Pollock, but his glory never fades away. It is the discovery that is esteemed. Kazuo Shiraga placed a lump of paint on a huge sheet of paper and began to spread it vehemently with his feet. This unprecedented method has been focused on in journalism for the past two years or so as a so-called art at which the artist hurls his entire body. Yet, it is not as if Shiraga intentionally presented this strange spectacle. He simply attained a way to confront and synthesize the substance his disposition had selected and the movement of his own spirit in an affirmative state. Compared to Shiraga’s organic method, for the past few years, one might say that Shozo Shimamoto has shown continuous enthusiasm for mechanical operation. He has displayed breathtaking freshness through his splash paintings, onto which he powerfully throws glass bottles filled with lacquer, and the large paintings made by filling a small handmade cannon with pigment, making it explode with acetylene gas, and allowing the pigment to be scattered in an instant. In addition, there are the works by Yasuo Sumi employing a vibrator and works by Toshio Yoshida composed of a single lump of paint. We want you to understand that these acts of production have plenty of serious and respective pluck. The pursuit of an unknown original world has resulted in many a work in the form of a so-called object. These may have been inspired partly by the conditions set for the open-air exhibition held in Ashiya every year. These works treating a variety of substances are different from the objects in Surrealism in that they dislike titles and meanings. The objects in Gutai art are a single sheet of iron painted and folded (Atsuko Tanaka) or hard red vinyl in the shape of a mosquito net (Tsuruko Yamazaki). These objects were indeed no more than an appeal made through the characteristic and the colour or form of the material. However, it is not as if we have imposed regulations as a group. As long as there were opportunities for free creativity, various experiments began to be carried out very actively. That is to say, there is art to be appreciated with the entire body, tactile art, and even Gutai music (which Shozo Shimamoto has been experimenting with from a few years ago in the form of highly interesting works). Shozo Shimamoto has produced a bridge-like work that sinks in as you walk on it. Saburo Murakami has produced a telescope which you put your whole body into to observe the sky. Akira Kanayama has produced a work with the organic resilience of plastic bags. Atsuko Tanaka has produced what she calls a “dress” made of light bulbs that turn on and off. Sadamasa Motonaga has begun to give form to water and smoke. Gutai art esteems all bold advances towards unknown worlds. Although we are often compared or confused at first sight with Dada, while reconfirming their achievements, unlike Dada, we believe that we are the products of where potentials are pursued. There is always a lively spirit flowing in the Gutai exhibitions and we always long for new discoveries of life in a substance letting out an awesome scream.

​Nika Association, Gutai Art Association (First published in Geijutsu Shincho, vol. 7, no. 12, Shinchosha, December 1956, 202–04. Reprinted in Fukkokuban Gutai (Gutai Facsimile Edition), edited by Ashiya City Museum of Art & History (Ashiya: Geika Shoin Co., Ltd., 2010). Courtesy Shinichiro Yoshihara. Japanese–English translation by Kikuko Ogawa).