The Gutai group Gutai Bijutsu
Kyōkai is the first radical, post-war
artistic group in Japan. It was founded
in 1954 by the painter Jiro Yoshihara
in Osaka, Japan, in response
to the reactionary artistic context
of the time. This influential group
was involved in large-scale
multimedia environments, performances,
and theatrical events and emphasizes
the relationship between body
and matter in pursuit of originality.
The movement rejected traditional
art styles in favor of performative
immediacy.
Butoh, Butō is a form of Japanese dance
theatre that encompasses a diverse range
of activities, techniques and motivations
for dance, performance, or movement.
Following World War II, butoh arose
in 1959 through collaborations between
its two key founders Hijikata Tatsumi
and Ohno Kazuo. The art form is known
to "resist fixity" and be difficult to define;
notably, founder Hijikata Tatsumi viewed
the formalisation of butoh with "distress".
Common features of the art form include
playful and grotesque imagery, taboo
topics, extreme or absurd environments,
and it is traditionally performed in white
body makeup with slow hyper-controlled
motion. However, with time butoh groups
are increasingly being formed around
the world, with their various aesthetic
ideals and intentions.
Shozo Shimamoto and Jiro Yoshihara
founded Gutai together in 1954,
and it was Shimamoto who suggested
the name Gutai. The kanji
used to write 'gu' meaning tool,
measures, or a way of doing something,
while 'tai' means body. Yoshihara
considers it to mean "embodiment"
and "concreteness." The group
was officially known as Gutai Bijutsu
Kyokai; Art Association of Gutai.
Butoh first appeared in post-World
War II Japan in 1959, under
the collaboration of Hijikata Tatsumi
and Ohno Kazuo, "in the protective
shadow of the 1950s and 1960s avant-garde".
A key impetus of the art form was
a reaction against the Japanese dance
scene of the time, which Hijikata felt
was overly based on imitating
the West and following traditional
styles like Noh. Thus, he sought
to "turn away from the Western styles
of dance, ballet and modern",
and to create a new aesthetic
that embraced the "squat, earthbound
physique... and the natural movements
of the common folk". This desire found
form in the early movement of ankoku
butō. The term means "dance of darkness",
and the form was built on a vocabulary
of "crude physical gestures and uncouth
habits... a direct assault on the refinement,
miyabi, and understatement, shibui
so valued in Japanese aesthetics."
Coming about during postwar Japanese
reconstruction, Gutai stressed freedom
of expression with innovative materials and
techniques. Gutai challenged imaginations
to invent new notions of what art is with
attention on the relationships between body,
matter, time, and space. After the war, attitudes
regarding cultural exchanging changed amongst
nations as the art environment involved great
optimism for global collaboration. Since artists
were pursuing advances in contemporary art
transnationally, the art environment of the time
fostered thriving conditions for the Gutai group.
For example, with the Treaty of San Francisco
in 1951, there was an increase in cultural
exchanges between Japan and its new western
allies. Gutai artwork began being shown
in exhibitions in both American and European cities.
With post-occupation Japan's emphasis
on freedom, the United States' goal was
as well to promote abstract art in order
to promote democracy. Like the social
reforms of the Allies occupation of Japan
after the war, the United States wanted
to steer Japan, and other axis nations,
away from the more communistic art style
of socialist realism. This helped spread
Gutai art since it sponsored its creation.
One example is the Guggenheim International
Award exhibition that begun after the war
and tactfully included work from Japan,
a former axis state, in order to invite
non-western art into the purview
of contemporary abstract art as it cooperated
with the democratic propaganda.
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