Challenge to the Mud the Parallel of Art and Life
Jane DeBevoise in conversation with Reiko Tomii (on the occasion of a historical investigation of Shiraga's piece of work, Challenging Mud, as re-staged at MoMA NY on July 23 2011)
In October 1955, Shiraga Kazuo, a prominent fellow member of the group Gutai, executed his signature performative work, Challenging Mud, in the front end yard of the Ohara Kaikan hall in Tokyo, as part of the 1st Gutai Art Exhibition. Although his radically violent human activity of rolling in the mud has since entered the history of functioning art, little detail has been known about it.
Jane DeBevoise (JD): Last summertime at MoMA you lot re- enacted, or investigated past re-staging, a functioning called Challenging Mud, by Gutai artist Kazuo Shiraga. The problems that this re-staging raises are fascinating.
Reiko Tomii (RT): Nowadays not only installations are reconstructed or remade only performances are re-enacted, based on different conditions in unlike contexts. I call back our give-and-take is very timely.
JD: As an archive, and plain a new archive, we accept been thinking a lot nigh these issues, specially in Asia, where performance forms a significant role of what emerging artists practice, particularly [those] in under-resourced or politically constrained areas or those who accept limited access to materials or a supportive infrastructure. Nosotros accept been concerned about documenting this practice or activity.
RT: Documenting performance art in Japan [in the] 1950s and 60s was an even bigger issue. Back then, owning a camera was a big deal. Cameras were all the same not easily accessible in the 1960s, and filming was even more rare. However, Gutai was far better documented than other artists and collectives.
JD: Let's talk a little almost the original piece of work. When I was rereading the materials that yous put together, I saw that it was photographed. As I understand it, there were 3 events, and i was fifty-fifty filmed.
JD:What strikes me near these photographs is how composed they look, or how self-consciously the artist seems to take performed the piece. In fact, the group invited the press to record and study on the work. Tin you talk a little virtually the documentation of the piece of work? Who did it? How was it done? Where is the documentation now? How has it been passed down?
RT: There are two aspects of the documentation. First, the Gutai members staged certain painting demonstrations for the printing, say Life Magazine photographer or Mainichi Newspaper. 2d, the artists themselves would take photographs. In Shiraga'south detail case, he actually created a scrapbook of the documentation and included in it a sequence of photographs that he felt all-time represented this piece of work, Challenging Mud. The set he chose was taken from the tertiary human action he executed. There are other photographs from the kickoff and 2d acts. Interestingly, Gutai was usually very good at collecting and gathering these photographs, so there is a rich photographic archive. What nosotros are relying on now for research is in fact the materials collected and preserved by the Gutai members. It's more difficult to locate the press materials, for example the Mainichi Newspaper film. Nosotros but located its footage fabricated into a newsreel, the kind that was shown in movies theaters. This newsreel showed maybe v or ten seconds of Shiraga at piece of work, and in full merely two minutes of the whole exhibition. Motion-picture show athenaeum in Nippon are not that accessible, and photographs taken by [the] press may or may non be constitute in the archives of the paper or mag companies. Then generally, unless the artists themselves kept prints, we tin can't see them.
JD: Does the independent documentation differ from or claiming in some fashion Gutai's own documentation and presentation of the work?
RT: For example, in Shiraga'south scrapbook, some photographs he included show the best 'views,' taken from above, from the ladder. By contrast, the photos taken from a horizontal view requite a greater sense of motility. The photos taken from higher up certainly look great, and he knows that! That set was likewise published in the Gutai Journal.
JD: These are fascinating photographs, the way they testify Shiraga's body twisting, almost like a reptile squirming in the muck along a riverbank.
RT: These photos represent closely to his later business relationship of how he twisted his body and then gave a 'flourish.' This is quite a feat, in fact, because the mud is quite heavy. It is heavy to move wall plaster (kabetsuchi) mixed with cement, so he had to apply his shoulders to move information technology around. He then gave information technology a flourish, much similar a painter would utilize pigment to a sail, beginning spreading the paint and and then twisting the brush to requite it a flourish. It actually corresponds to how I envision a painter might pigment; Shiraga was really painting with his body and using mud as his material.
JD: To me his actions seem quite theatrical. But you are saying he used his materials – mud and his body – much like an expressionist painter might wield a brush, to create expressive gestures.
RT: The gestural, performative part of his work has been emphasized because of the documentation, and because what he did is amazing, so nosotros tend to think most this piece of work every bit 'activeness fine art.' We talk most the physicality of his deed and the materiality of mud in relation to his trunk, its resistance and gestures, and so on. But hither we see two photographs of the final product. In one he was posing with it. That was made into a Gutai postcard.
RT: [So we also need to recognize that] he fabricated ii kinds of painting, one made with his feet on canvas and one made with his body outdoors. They are of equal value.
JD: So this is an object created equally a consequence of an action, and both the action [the process] and the painting [as object] are valid.
RT: Oh, yes. When he demonstrated his human foot painting for the press, the result was hung on the wall and stayed in that location for the duration of the show.
In the mud painting, he mixed cement in wall plaster. Exercise yous know why? Because the object had to stay on view for the 10 mean solar day duration of the exhibition. If he only used soil, the slice would have crumbled by the second or third day. And then mixing in cement in wall plaster was crucial to keep the painting intact and on view for ten days. Of the three acts he performed, he didn't mix cement in the second 1, probably because the first mixture he used got too hard. I imagine he did the 2nd i without it, but that didn't piece of work out either, so he went dorsum to using cement in the 3rd act. The experimental process is very interesting.
JD: One of the things that I really liked about your commentary [every bit you were explaining the performance to the audition at MoMA] is how you brought into relief the materiality of the medium, the difficulty of the do, the challenge of physically making the work. One wouldn't have understood this by only looking at the pictures, nor would you accept necessarily thought about it as an integral part of the operation. And then when you were maxim that cement is really very heavy and hard to dispense, versus making a mud pie or working with wet sand, we can brainstorm to appreciate that the physical strength needed to motility this 'mud' the way he did was an important part of the slice.
RT: The way I staged this piece and demonstrated the human activity was well-nigh like a lecture. I showed the consistency of the mud. By watching me play with mud in my easily or kick information technology, the audience could actually meet the physicality even though they were not playing with information technology themselves. When I moved it, I would sometimes have to grunt, then they could 'hear' the weight by watching me. In this situation, it was important for me to make it clear that I was non the artist doing his act, but rather an fine art historian trying to figure out what the act was. In a sense the audience became my accomplice.
JD: Some other interesting aspect of your commentary was how you self-identify as a woman during the class of the performance. Going into this act, you explained who yous were and what you were versus who he was and what he was. That self-definition may have allowed the audience to amend understand, interpret, or translate the piece. For example, when you lot said that he was a macho-man [laughter]…
RT: He was. [laughter]
JD: But I think [it] is important that you showed that executing the piece of work required a certain muscularity and a certain aggressiveness which [was] perhaps an of import part of the piece of work. By contrast, when you approached the mud, I must say you seemed to approach it somewhat gently [laughter] or gingerly [more laughter]. I besides liked when you expressed your fright as you approached the deed, because it makes me wonder what was going through his heed.
RT: Yes, you are right. I have no idea what he was thinking although we take some interviews in which he talked nearly this work. I wish nosotros could channel him here because now that I have had this experience, I take lots of questions. How did you actually feel? Was it different from doing painting? Was information technology really that heavy?
Just going back to my cocky-identification before the audience, I thought it was important that the legitimacy and authenticity of the work that he had made was not undermined by what I did without actually knowing what had really happened. It was really an historical reconstruction.
One audience member, an art historian, commented to me after that my commenting on my being a woman, a middle anile adult female [laughter] was an interesting way to bring in the gender issue. At the aforementioned time, I could comment on how much I could move compared to how much he could motion. That contrast, I idea, was very interesting.
JD: Yep, your self-identification opened up the give-and-take and raised questions about how to re-enact a work, even interpret it, too every bit aspects of the performances that might not accept been and so credible if yous had not self-identified as a adult female.
RT: Right. Normally, if I were to commission a re-staging of this performance, I would non have idea of a woman; this would be inauthentic because he was a man. I don't think I would have thought of an historian either. Normally historians can't paint [laughter]. I would accept thought about a male in his 20s or early 30s, close to Shiraga's age at the time, because I would desire to try to create as authentic a situation as possible, but perhaps that'due south non enough. Conversely, as you pointed out, when I identify myself and made the differences so clear, the investigation actually became more authentic.
JD: By describing the mud as wet, heavy, and scratchy, and past expressing the fact that you didn't want your body to get mauled, you emphasized the challenge of the human activity.
RT: Yes, the word challenge in fact is very apt. In his case Shiraga did not actually care well-nigh getting injure.
JD: To become back a little, why did you do this functioning?
RT: This is really a performance within a performance. The Museum of Mod Art (MoMA) deputed Ei Arakawa and his group Grand Openings to stage a thirteen-mean solar day operation program. The way he envisioned this series was to interact with the functions of the museum equally a collecting, research, and educational institution. He wanted to explore each attribute. He positioned this re-staging of Challenging Mud in the context of archiving. He seemed to somehow starting time with the idea that performance is incommunicable to annal. He kept telling me about creating metaphor for archiving. To me information technology was very hard to think about metaphors, as an historian who is very fact oriented. So we had some commutation about how to do it. He suggested this or that, but my response was always that what he suggested was non authentic, that was non what Shiraga did. In the finish, Arakawa decided I had to do what I had to do, or what I can exercise best.
The program that day was divided into three parts. I went first and staged the human action. In the 2nd role, MoMA'southward archivist talked about archiving imperceptible materials, using such examples equally the Fluxus archive. In the third function an archivist from Tokyo (Sen Uesaki) tried to sort out what I did. In a metaphorical sense, archivists ever have to think virtually how to sort things out, after what an artist does, or what an art historian excavates. He was charged with demonstrating these theoretical problems, past clearing the mud.
JD: So he was in charge of archiving your act? By chopping it upward, putting it into bags and labeling them?
RT: Really he didn't bring any labels. He regretted that [laughter].
JD: Did he preserve these pieces? Did he 'collect' them?
RT: Theoretically speaking, information technology should be MoMA'southward belongings, considering MoMA commissioned the functioning. He only did the metaphorical sorting out. One time the Museum took over, I have no idea what happened.
JD: Some 24-hour interval yous might find it somewhere. Or maybe they just scanned it and put it on a disc…
RT: Peradventure. [laughter] One artist of the group wanted to apply it later for another purpose, to recycle the relics for his own performance.
JD: This could proceed and on. Mayhap it'due south in a plant somewhere, helping it grow…
RT: No, no, information technology is not usable. Maybe they could use it as a doorstopper, but not much else [laughter].
JD: How authentic or how close were the materials you used at MoMA to the original materials used by the artist? How does it thing?
RT: The mud was prepared by Arakawa and the museum staff. They procured garden soil and cement because they were virtually readily bachelor. I think they went to see wall plaster, but I don't even know what type of wall plaster Shiraga used. And naturally the Japanese kind and the American kind would take been different.
JD: What kind of wall plaster did Shiraga apply, the kind to fill the cracks in sometime wooden farmhouses, like wattle?
RT: I actually don't know what type of wall plaster he used, and that is one of the questions that became quite vexing for me. Shiraga never talked about it in detail, he ever used the Japanese word kabetsuchi, which is used in houses merely could be used in the interior or on the exterior. And so using garden soil and cement was as good an approximation as nosotros could go, especially considering availability and toll.
For me some other major event was what I should wear, because Shiraga was basically naked with shorts. We offset thought about a bathing adjust, merely I said no way. I don't feel comfortable in a bathing conform in public. We also wanted to avoid the association with mud wrestling as much equally possible. Arakawa definitely didn't want that. So I just decided on a unproblematic pair of yoga pants and t-shirt. That was easiest for me.
1 of the most difficult issues was how to mix the mud. We had 2 people (Arakawa and a group fellow member) doing that. I thought mayhap we should make a dry out mix get-go considering garden soil is basically dry, and cement is basically dry out. That's what you do when you lot make pasta or cake, right? Mix the dry ingredients first.
JD: Do you lot know how he did it?
RT: Nosotros know the ratio he used: 1 to 3 parts, with 1 being cement. When he procured the wall plaster, information technology was probably already wet, unless he had to mix information technology himself.
Even that, I am not sure. So nosotros started with the dry mix. We tried the i:3 ratio, but it didn't look right. We added more soil, then we had a mound of dry mix. It was really similar cooking.
JD: I liked your description of cooking muffins versus breadstuff dough.
RT: We didn't know how fluid or dense it should exist, so we looked at the documentary photographs, and so discussed how our mud should await. In this photograph the mud looks looser, it was the 2nd performance; the next one expect thicker; it was the third i.
JD: How big was the space was he using?
RT: He used the front yard of the headquarters of a flower arrangement school. It is a very big one thousand, a big outdoor space, as you can see, and so putting down mud at that place was not an issue.
At the MoMA, on the other hand, the floor [of the Sculpture Garden] is marble and so spreading mud there was more than of an issue. The curator said it was OK, but they made a shallow box.
JD: Like a child'south sand box.
RT: Exactly. So that was my infinite. Originally, Shiraga's work was most 3 tatamis in size, meaning slightly less than three meters long. MoMA's box was smaller than the original slice, probably well-nigh three-quarters of the original size. In fact, afterward spending 30 minutes to get to the right consistency, I realized we needed twice as much mud. Simply that would take taken another xxx minutes. Preparing the mud was really laborious. Preparing it takes real concrete labor. I know he didn't have an industrial mixer. So he would have had to do it manually.
JD: Do you recollect he mixed the mud past himself?
RT: I think other Gutai members helped him, because they always helped each other. That's another thing that we can ask, or could take asked.
JD: When you look at these photo documents, it looks as if he was acting solitary. Practise we know how many people assisted him or were nowadays?
RT: Here we have photographs of him existence filmed by a cameraman. So we practise know that at the time he was acting for the camera. But to answer this question accurately, we would need documentary photos of the overall scene, which I haven't seen all the same.
JD: What other kinds of questions came to your listen every bit you were doing it? Or issues that y'all have thought about in the process?
RT: Considering he was really making a painting, I would beloved to ask him what he was thinking when he was making information technology. I know that when Pollock did baste paintings, he worked on it for a while, then left information technology lone, and so he came back to look at it again earlier he decided what to practise next. It was a painter's process. Even though Shiraga's operation was very curt, 15 to xx minutes, I wonder what he was thinking. Was he looking at the composition? I certainly did. Especially because I am not a especially athletic type, I really had to remember what the next move was. Evidently I was also conscious of existence watched, I didn't desire to bore the audience past doing the aforementioned thing. So I was thinking things like what was the next stroke, whether I should apply a big brush or a small brush. I was very conscious of making a painting. So I became very curious what he was thinking. When nosotros meet him rolling effectually in the mud, information technology doesn't seem he was very conscious of what he was creating; but if we look at the outcome, we run across a composition.
JD: Yes. When you await at the 'finished product', it well-nigh looks like a starburst or sunburst. At that place's a sense of an axis and axis to it. You lot have a sense of it dispersing and shattering, with ragged and splayed edges. It looks pre-conceived to me.
RT: To some extent, that'due south due to the physical restriction. Yous first with mud in a mound, equally we see in some of the pictures, and then you spread it out. Likewise, he usually put the paint on sheet at the pes painting, and then spread it out. That was his basic maneuver, if I can use that word. Whether he used a big mound or a pocket-sized mound, his basic maneuver was to place a primary substance and move it out.
JD: These mud paintings tend to have a somewhat circular feeling to them. Is this kind of composition typical or would he sometimes drag the paint or mud, to make it asymmetrical.
RT: Earlier works were more condensed. He actually started in a very systemic way of making marks with his feet, well-nigh like quasi-minimalist, serialized patterns on the canvas.
And so he gradually unpacked it. Juxtaposing the mud painting of 1955 and his sit-in painting from 1956 is interesting. Subsequently the mud painting, his gestures on canvas became much broader. Y'all begin to see more slipping strokes and more complex waves. In terms of the whole development of his painting, I believe Challenging Mud was crucial for him to think in terms of body instead of just making marks with his feet.
JD: Before Challenging Mud, had he experimented with materials other than paint?
RT: Say, he sliced meat and spread it on a plate. That was a kind of painting, also, right? Challenging Mud took identify in Oct 1955. In the summertime of the same year Gutai had their outdoor exhibition, for which he created a mound on the basis in an oval shape, similar a sea cucumber, that was covered with plastic or something. That was another use of dirt. Merely for his works on canvas, paint would probably be the only material he used. As you know, he started with nihonga painting, which is a difficult, slow procedure, but he loved the fluidity, the viscosity of oil paint. For his outdoor painting, he wanted to use something equally fluid equally possible. He first talked near using his body with actual paint, just thought it would be too messy. Actually he thought mud would be better to use outdoors. He so thought about covering the wall with mud-like wall plaster and then slashing into it. Merely he realized that was Fontana and so he didn't practise it. These are different ideas with different types of materiality.
JD: As you know, I come from a Chinese art groundwork and there were artists in Mainland china, particularly in the mid 1980s and early 1990s, who engaged their bodies with materials to create piece of work, but the material these artists used tended to be ink. It seems similar ink was a natural, fifty-fifty a default determination for Chinese artists, mayhap because of its availability and cost, maybe for practical reasons, only perhaps also because of its cultural connection. Anyway, ink seemed to have been the cloth of choice, fifty-fifty when the artists were not trained as traditional [Chinese] painters. It'due south interesting that Shiraga didn't piece of work with ink or more traditional Japanese or Asian materials.
RT: He had started as a traditional Japanese painter. The discovery of oil paint was a major breakthrough, a parting point for him.
JD: When y'all think of oil paint, its backdrop are so different from ink. One is water-based, which gets absorbed into the newspaper; oil does non. It has an identity of its ain, its trace is very obvious. While it's possible to layer ink to build bulk, it takes a long time, and its own physicality disappears in almost cases, merging with the paper. In a sense ink isn't insistent on its individuality and becomes part of the thing that is being fabricated, whereas oil paint maintains itself in some mode. It insists on its own materiality, its own substance and property, and then past definition it's more sculptural and more tactile.
RT: His paintings throughout have e'er been very physical. Viscosity and fluidity is likewise important to him throughout. At one point in the mid 60s, when he got a piddling tired of using but anxiety, he used a stick of forest to scrape the paint on the sheet into a fan-like shape. Viscosity, fluidity, and tactility all came into play for his choice of what he could exercise next.
JD: As a viewer you lot can run across that, but did he write about it?
RT: Yes, Gutai had a periodical. Really the commencement collective activity the group did was publishing the first upshot of its journal Gutai in January 1955. The first group exhibition was not until October 1955. Shiraga himself actually appreciated the fact that he had to write for the journal; writing helped him to think further near what he was doing and why he used his feet. Articulating that led him to use his whole body to create painting. Then the journal helps usa understand in hindsight what he was thinking.
JD: Who was the audience for all this, who was he speaking to, writing for? What was the rebellion and what was the message that he and his grouping were trying to convey through these writings and actions?
RT: Rebellion is actually an interesting selection of words. Compared to a traditional avant-garde movement like Dada or Surrealism, I wonder whether Gutai was nigh rebellion every bit such. They were very hungry for something new. They wanted to create a new art. It was postwar Japan, unshackled from the previous authoritarian repressive regime. The dream for democracy was coming in; they all hoped for something new. Creating something new was a mandate, especially for this particular grouping. We likewise have to acknowledge that Jackson Pollock's influence was pretty big. That came both via print media and actual works. The Gutai leader Yoshihara Jiro knew about the Lifemagazine commodity. In 1951 the work of Pollock as well every bit some other American abstract painters was shown in Japan. Well-nigh importantly Yoshihara noticed how important Pollock could be, equally opposed to French painters. In Tokyo at the time, French painters were more appreciated than Pollock. Shiraga, also, acknowledged that he saw Pollock and recognized his importance. That was a shared sentiment between Yoshihara and Shiraga. So there was a dogged pursuit for something new with Gutai. Their mission was not so much about creating the ground for rebellion but the footing for something new. Equally the leader, Yoshihara encouraged the members to claiming, not imitate. If that idea was dogmatically exercised, it could be counterproductive, but when Yoshihara saw new kinds of art, similar Shiraga painting with feet, he encouraged him to extend that idea and explore more. That was an interesting mode to develop experimentalism.
JD: Over again, some things going on hither remind me of Red china the 1980s, which every bit you know was just emerging from the Cultural Revolution. But the impulse of many immature artists at the fourth dimension was confronting the constraints of the previous regime or previous dogma. There was a destructiveness, fifty-fifty nihilism in their intention, which was repeated in the manifestos of the time, in which they said: we accept to destroy something before we tin make something new. What you are describing is not so much virtually revolt or destruction. It's not well-nigh destroying an old tradition, but rather about an aspiration for something new, such as freedom, if you lot want to put it that way. It's more an active aspiration and hope rather than an active refusal or revolt.
RT: Information technology's very interesting to compare the 1980s in China with the 1950s and 60s in Nihon. You are correct. In Japan information technology was non and then much about destroying the onetime, but about parting from the old. That's why I said it was an aspiration for the new. To some extent, in an platonic world, the old could have already cocky-destructed. In comparison, the Chinese advanced artists in the 80s had something to destroy. In Japan while these artists opposed European-based modernism, which started in the tardily 19thursday century, in that location was a sense that you lot didn't necessarily have to destroy the old. Each can live his life in his own way, while a new forum for new do could be developed. In a sense, that has always been the way in which the Japanese fine art globe expands. At that place are e'er new artists or groups in addition to the erstwhile, and some of these get stable, with their ain forums, their own styles and their own voices, finally becoming the next confront of the art establishment. Y'all can see this chain of events leading up to the offset of the war in the 1940s. Later the war, that was already the design. That is not to say there weren't people who tried to boom the old establishment. There were. Accept the Yomimuri Contained Exhibition, for case, which tried to create a not-hierarchical art organisation, where anyone could show what they wanted. While it may have worked to create a new art, it didn't work to dismantle the sometime system. Based on experience, it seems devastation doesn't work well in Nippon.
JD: What you are maxim is interesting. Y'all are pointing out a cultural pattern in which ability struggles are resolved. In China it might have been harder for alternative systems to co-exist.
RT: In a mode it's all about how civilisation evolves in Nihon; information technology is frequently condiment. In that location is Kabuki too as modern theatre. We have old fashion modernism as well – nosotros don't write most it, only it's there. Other types of contemporary art, similar those coming out of the 60s and 70s, are present too. So we have Morimura, who might actually exist a little one-time past now, especially with newer generation artists like Murakami and Tabaimo. And then there is Ei Arakawa. They all have their ain forum for substitution in Nippon. They all accept their own outlet for soapbox; sometimes some are stronger than others, simply they all have a identify. They all co-exist. Now, we have to think well-nigh other types of visual culture: anime, manga, and experimental or independent films…to me it is mind-extraordinary to think about how many types of visual culture co-be, and how bachelor they are through communication. If you lot want to be conservative, you lot certainly have somewhere to go, and if you want to be new, you have a identify to go too. Prc is similar as well, it seems.
JD: Yes and no, but it is true that things are changing quickly. With ascension wealth, peculiarly in the existent manor sector, nosotros meet opportunity for the evolution of forums independent of the institution, contained of both the academy system and the authorities. Then in that location are an increasing number of outlets, but ultimately, because ability is still so centralized, joining the establishment still holds a lot of appeal, providing a lot of opportunities. I don't know if there are parallels in Japan – of artists who in their youth endeavour to pause away, but terminate upwards later being drawn back in.
RT: Nosotros do have some parallels. For case, Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku [Tokyo Academy of the Arts], which is the equivalent of Central University of Fine Arts [in Beijing], started hiring several of the 60s, 70s artists and now, other gimmicky artists too.
JD: Allow'due south move away from China. Were there whatsoever women in Gutai?
RT: Yes, there were several. Atsuko Tanaka, Yamazaki Tsuruko… in that location were women artists in the younger generation. While Tanaka made Electric Clothes, Yamazaki had an interesting use of materiality. I recollect at that place was a shared interest in materiality and performance amidst the female artists. A cohesive kind of femininity.
I think Yoshihara was very shrewd to gear up situations for experimentalism. If he had non engaged the artists in these particular situations, I'm non sure they would have been as experimental on their own. It's almost like beingness given an assignment from a mentor, and you're given time to call up nearly how to piece of work through it. For example, the fundamental 'consignment' he gave to the members was 'to come up with something that never existed before,' which got Tanaka thinking. While at the Osaka station she looked upwards at a neon sign and voila! 'That is something I may be able to utilise,' she thought. Yoshihara was a smashing mentor in that sense, constantly encouraging a growing vocabulary of contemporary enquiry and ideas through new cloth and performance. Through his 'assignments,' he directed the artists' attention to new practices and environments. If you came up with a proficient thought, you would be granted his approval – his nod. [laughter]
JD: Why did he accept so much influence?
RT: He was at least two generations [twenty years] older than about of the members. By the time he founded Gutai with them, he was already a prominent modernist painter in Nippon. This meant he knew what was happening within the establishment too. At that time, he was profoundly inspired past postwar Nihon, and wanted to pursue the possibility of creating a new art, comparable to things that were taking place elsewhere in the globe. From around the early 1950s, I have a feeling Yoshihara decided that if he wanted his creative aspirations realized, he would take to work with the younger generation of artists. Shiraga graduated from the Painting Department at the Kyoto University of Fine Arts. Tanaka went to the Kyoto schoolhouse as well as Fine art Plant of Osaka Municipal Museum of Art. The artists in Gutai had unlike degrees of artistic training [ranging from academic training to being self-taught]. In a sense, these artists gravitated to Yoshihara to become his students because the education he could provide them was something they could non get elsewhere.
JD: And so what you're saying is that they all had a propensity to experiment and were thus attracted to Yoshihara'south methodology, because he enabled their experimentation.
RT: Or, rather, those who were inclined to experiment stayed with the group, while some initial members who wanted a more than conventional career left the group. Yoshihara was a stern teacher as well, which I retrieve was good. An interesting thing is, his art may not look as 'new', peculiarly his modernist paintings. Yet, because he had to create his art past learning from others, he knew the limitations of that kind of process, especially in a new environs. He became his own counter-example, and was able to encourage young artists to experiment. Earlier the mid-60s, some Gutai artists would be brought to his dwelling to help Yoshihara prepare for an exhibition – and they would exist scolded if they could non come up up with expert advice! [Laughter] I could talk about him for a long time – he was a fascinating figure who lay the foundation of Gutai.
JD: Had he traveled overseas at that bespeak?
RT: Not until afterward the war. Yoshihara was the son of a president of a vegetable oil company, and was thus financially secure. The important thing is, because he was an heir to the family business, he was not immune to travel abroad to study art before the war. He didn't travel abroad until Gutai came to New York.
JD: Interesting. Maybe we tin can finish on New York. And the famous exhibition there that was panned for its 'derivative-ness.' Equally you know well, art from Asia is nonetheless widely described by Western critics equally derivative. Did you see the recent Lee Ufan review in the NY Times? Can you talk to me a picayune bit about the issue of the 'influence' when information technology comes to Gutai artists? How do you talk about this when y'all are teaching or writing about the group?
RT: There are two kinds of issues nosotros face. If we expect at Japanese art in this time period – the 1950s and 60s – they were really doing something new – nosotros can recognize that in hindsight. For example, allow's take their onstage performances of 1957. These were a kind of Happenings, but there was no linguistic communication to sympathise it or fix it autonomously from annihilation else. Ane of the fascinating things nearly Gutai's 1958 New York debut was that these performances were called by Dore Ashton 'staged fine art' or 'theatrical art' non 'operation art' considering performance art was a term and concept devised much later. Maybe Gutai was also new. Being new was really important at that time – fifty-fifty more so than now. There was competition for the new, subconsciously or consciously. In the eyes of critics, American art was on meridian of the world, but for the Japanese, art had to exist new and then that maybe someday artists around the world would be 'imitating' Japanese art, not just American art. Speaking of influence, everyone had his or her own influences. Throughout the history of art, artists make something new based on something erstwhile. But, because we come from Asia, we are criticized for being derivative, perhaps because nosotros belong to a different chronology and that's not readily understood outside Asia.
JD: Exercise y'all think that Westerners call [art in Asia] derivative because information technology challenges the thought of progress, threatening the integrity of the grand narrative?
RT: I think threats come in different means. You described information technology every bit the desire to protect what you have or what y'all know of as your cultural legacy. Merely we have to make an try to learn or re-learn that which we think we already know. The lack of noesis is not necessarily the problem; it's that we have to take further steps to learn more well-nigh things we call back nosotros already understand.
I can totally understand the insecurity of Westerners looking at Asian art, because when I get-go studied American art, I was also insecure and second-guessed myself oftentimes. But there is no way of getting around that [insecurity] by saying 'I don't' understand.' If y'all piece of work in the field of modern and gimmicky art, it is mandatory to sympathise American fine art. You can say you don't like Pop or Abstract Expressionism, but yous should be able to talk over it and explain why you dislike it. You should exist able to discuss in gild to dismiss. In society to empathize Shiraga'due south decision, or Lee Ufan's conclusion, Murakami'southward decision – you demand more try than with Klein or Warhol or Pollock.
In my listen, saying something is 'derivative' is not the biggest obstruction, because you tin can prove that is not the case through discursive strategies. Only to say 'I cannot evaluate a work of art because the context is unfamiliar' is a bigger problem, especially within the fine art or fine art historical community, which affect large audiences and has wide influence – it's a project I have always in heed.
JD: That'south a very big project, educating the Western community of the myriad obstacles to their learning. [laughter]
RT: I've been working on this for about twenty years by now. I express mirth because information technology is indeed a challenge but information technology is crucial in moving forward.
JD: But since Gutai's 1958 debut in New York, there has been a gradual only increasing recognition of the importance of their piece of work. That's progress.
I am impressed how your re-enactment excavated new information and questions most the original act. I also think your prose reaction helped, in a very unorthodox mode, to reveal how you felt, which is an important art of the interpretive procedure. Without your text I may have disengaged earlier. Information technology is lively, emotional, and personal, providing another approach to effective instruction.
Please click here to read "I challenged mud, after…" past Reiko Tomii
RT: That's why I wrote the text the style I wrote it after the MoMA performance; in terms of art historical information, I had already published an essay most Shiraga, including this work. But it was still of import to annotation that I only did 1 of the three sets [as get-go performed by Shiraga] – and my work was immediately destroyed by the mode! [laughter].
Information technology was an educational opportunity. I used the didactic strategy during my act, just the human action itself was quick. It was fifteen to xx minutes of rolling in mud for Shiraga, and for me, information technology was three minutes. I was kind of scared, because I can give a lecture anytime but not a performance! The interesting thing is, mixing [to create mud] is really helpful. Information technology helps concentration. Needless to say I did my homework prior – I had seen the picture show long earlier my performance. So, by the time we talked about dry mixing and consistencies of the mud, the people who helped me had thought I had done information technology one time earlier. Mixing the mud helped me gain a sure confidence and inspired a confidence in others also.
JD: I detect this issue of re-presenting and installing artworks, whether imperceptible or otherwise, an interesting part of the process of understanding artwork. It besides raises important questions about the role and responsibilities of archiving. Thank you Reiko, for taking the fourth dimension to brainwash u.s.. We have a lot to larn.
Reiko Tomii is an contained art historian and curator, who investigates postal service-1945 Japanese art in global and local contexts. Long based in New York, she received her masters caste from Osaka Academy and her doctorate from the Academy of Texas at Austin. Her research topic encompasses 'international contemporaneity,' collectivism, and conceptualism in 1960s art, every bit demonstrated by her curatorial and authorial contribution to Global Conceptualism (Queens Museum of Art, 1999), Century Metropolis (Tate Modern, 2001), and Art, Anti-Fine art, Non-Art (Getty Enquiry Institute, 2007). Her recent publications include Kazuo Shiraga: Six Decades (2009) and contributions to Yanagi Yukinori: Inujima Note (2010) and Xu Bing (Albion Editions, 2011). As a co-founder of the listserv group PoNJA-GenKon (Post-1945 Japanese Art Discussion Grouping-Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai), she has organized conferences and panels with Yale University (2005), Getty Research Institute and UCLA (2007), Guggenheim Museum (2009), and University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (2010).
All executions of Challenging Mud were presented at 1st Gutai Art Exhibition, Ohara Kaikan, Tokyo
All works by Shiraga Kazuo © Shiraga Fujiko and Shiraga Hisao
All photos of Reiko Tomii's performance © Ming Tiampo
Source: https://www.aaa-a.org/programs/conversation-with-reiko-tomii
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