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Hidata mutsutani12/17/2023 ![]() ![]() Takesada Matsutani (left) and Jiro Yoshihara (right) at Matsutani’s 1963 solo exhibition at the Gutai Pinacoteca, Osaka. Meanwhile, Yoshihara himself gave the world’s first demonstration of ‘kinetic poultry art’ when he painted half a dozen live chickens in primary colours and set them scrambling through the mud and rubble. (Yoshihara came from a family of wealthy industrialists to whom the former factory belonged.) In the show Kazuo Shiraga hacked wildly at an assemblage of painted logs, while Sadamasa Motonaga used an elaborately constructed machine to pump smoke into the air. ![]() He called for artists to ‘Take leave of these piles of counterfeit objects on the altars, in the palaces, in the salons and the antiques shops’ and to ‘Do what has never been done before!’ Earlier in the same year, the Gutai Art Association, which Yoshihara had formed, had staged the ‘One Day Only Outdoor Art Exhibition’ in the cratered and flooded ruins of a colossal factory near Osaka. It was in this atmosphere that Jiro Yoshihara (1905–72) published the ‘Gutai Manifesto ’ in 1956. In the absence of galleries, impromptu shows were held in every imaginable space: in schools, on beaches, train stations, parks, and in the streets. I remember seeing Osaka burning, all the sky red, the next day a strange rain with ash or something, black rain.’ĭespite all this destruction, the period after the end of the US occupation (1945–52) was a golden age for the arts. Matsutani says, ‘My family was in the countryside, close to Osaka, towards Kyoto. By August 1945 cities that had previously formed the greatest concentration of docks, rail, and heavy industry in east Asia were a blackened wasteland. We had deep things before the war, we never lost those.’ The American firebombing laid waste to Osaka and Kobe. Discussing the difficult years immediately after the war, Matsutani says, ‘Materially, they destroyed us completely, but spiritually and artistically they couldn’t. He is an engaging and natural storyteller and reminisces about growing up in Japan during and after the war, a period that for all its hardship, he says, fostered astonishing developments in many art forms. ![]() Matsutani was born in Osaka just before the Second World War. Courtesy Hauser & Wirth © Takesada Matsutani But such success has taken years to arrive. Gutai Spirit Forever’ ran at the Galerie Richard, New York at the same time. He also took part in the Guggenheim’s ‘Gutai: Splendid Playground’ exhibition in 2013 a solo show called ‘Matsutani. In recent years there has been a string of retrospectives of his work at major Japanese museums, such as the Otani Memorial Art Museum, in his hometown of Nishinomiya and at the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura & Hayama. The exhibition sparked an interest in post-war Japanese art (including, but not confined to the Gutai group) that, in the US, has led to survey shows at the Getty (in 2007), at MoMA (in 2012), and at the Guggenheim (in 2013).Īs interest in the activities of the Gutai group has grown, Matsutani has become something of a grand old man. This re-evaluation can be traced back to ‘Japanese Art after 1945: Scream Against the Sky’, the influential exhibition curated by Alexandra Munroe, which began at the Yokohama Museum of Art in 1994, before travelling to New York and San Francisco. Gutai (the word means ‘concrete’, but can be translated as ‘embodiment’) is experiencing a moment in the sun, but it is only recently that the importance of post-war Japan’s art scene as a whole has been properly recognised. The 79-year-old artist is slight, and just faintly stooped, but still displays the mental and physical energy that might be expected of a veteran of one of the most dynamic avant-garde movements of the post-war period, the Gutai Art Association. They range from Matsutani’s early vinyl-glue pieces, to prints from his time as Stanley William Hayter’s assistant at Atelier 17, and more recent works, which are dark agglomerations of vinyl, ash, graphite, and ink. Then there are the artworks themselves, made at every scale imaginable. ![]() Every surface of the artist’s studio is covered in papers, electric fans, and strange, fish-shaped postcards books take up an entire wall. 1937), pointing to the paintings, drawings, and writings on the floors, pillars, and walls of his crammed studio, a former cabinet-maker’s atelier in Paris’s 11th arrondissement. ‘It’s important to allow your early work to continue to influence you,’ says Takesada Matsutani (b. ![]()
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