Lot 204
  • 204

Kazuo Shiraga

Estimate
250,000 - 350,000 HKD
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Description

  • Kazuo Shiraga
  • Jikkai-zu Gaki Chikushokai
  • signed in Japanese, and titled on the reverse
    Executed circa 1976.
  • alkyd colour on paper laid on board

Condition

This work is in overall good condition. The paint layers are bright and intact. Upon close inspection, there is a thin incontinuous cut about 2cm from the bottom edge and 10cm from the right edge. There are no signs of retouching under UV light inspection.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

The Canvas as a Playground: a Private Collection of Gutai Paintings

“Gutai Art is the product that has arisen from the pursuit of possibilities. Gutai aspires to present exhibitions filled with vibrant spirit, exhibitions in which an intense cry accompanies the discovery of the new life of matter.” (Yoshihara Jiro, The Gutai Art Manifesto, originally published as “Gutai bijutsu sengen,” Geijutsu Shinchō 7, no.12, December 1956, p.204)

The Gutai group is Japan’s most-influential avant-garde collective of the postwar era. Started by the visionary artist, Yoshihara Jiro in the town of Ashiya, near Osaka in 1954, the group aimed to open a dialogue between the materials and the artist’s spirit while attempting to transform the material into something new. A society formerly dominated by military totalitarianism was meanwhile giving way to an avant-garde devoted to freedom of expression. The group’s young members burst onto the international art scene with groundbreaking paintings, performances as well as interactive environments.

The first large, in-depth exhibition devoted to the group, Gutai: Splendid Playground at the Guggenheim in 2013 have brought renewed critical attention to Gutai’s singular achievements in art history and have perhaps permanently dislodged any notion of postwar modernism as a strictly Western phenomenon. A New York Times critic, Roberta Smith notes: “They relocate some of the origins of participatory art, so much the rage today. Similarly the show reveals little-known precedents for all kinds of seemingly Euro-American-centred developments, including Happenings, Minimalism, specific objects and various strains of land art, installation art, Conceptual Art and relational aesthetics.”

The word gutai means “concreteness” or “embodiment”. It was chosen by Yoshihara to signify a departure from modernist abstraction and an embrace of the concrete materials and actions. Gutai artists sought exuberant new ways to paint concrete pictures, blurring representational significance by incorporating raw material, as well as specific environments, as the contents of art. In doing so, the artists opted for increasingly audacious and liberating modes of self-expression.

Famously, for example, Shiraga Kazuo painted with his feet while suspended from a rope, believing that his hands were too well-trained. Central to Shiraga’s oeuvre is the concept of shishitsu, referring to, in a philosophical understanding, a psycho-corporeal essence in oneself that defines and shapes individual human beings over time. For Shiraga, making art was a way of fully channeling one’s shishitsu and making paintings that resonate with it. The three Shiraga works on offer in the present sale are exemplary of Shiraga’s approach: the swirl in Kasuminova, the slash of blue in Taki or the stroke of bright yellow in Jikkai-zu Gaki Chikushokai are no longer representational; they are mere traces of the process in which the artist become one with matter and his action, a short-lived dance of shishitsu. Motonaga Sadamasa, whose Work (Water) was exhibited as a centrepiece across the rotunda of the Guggenheim, also contributed to the breadth of Gutai’s creative output. His Abstract is characteristic of his original technique of free-flowing colours on canvas or paper that resonates with Miro and yet exudes the cool air of Abstract Expressionism and Geometric Abstraction. Tanaka Atsuko’s Untitled, through its splendidly bright colours and layers of concentric circles, reveals the artist’s interest in schematic and technical representation, lights, and the human form. It evidently recalls the pinnacle of Tanaka’s career and her best-known work, Electric Dress (1956), where she wore a spectacular costume made of flashing incandescent light bulbs painted in bright colours for her performance during Gutai Art on the Stage (1957).

Other important Gutai works in the present sale include Mukai Shuji’s Work, which is exemplary of his signature all-over, graffiti-like iteration of symbols, Horio Sadaharu’s 1968 that demonstrates his interest in radically innovative painting materials, and Nasaka Senkichiro’s Work 192 that characterizes his early works of gestural flowing drips of paint, built-up surfaces and densely layered daubs and lines.

Breaking down the barriers between art, technology, the ordinary public, everyday life, and continuously challenging the definition of art by applying the body directly to materials, time and space, Gutai group was a fundamental influence on its contemporaries and later artists: Jackson Pollock owned a copy of the second issue of the Gutai journal, the father of “happenings” Allan Kaprow cited it as an influence, the pioneer of Tachism and Art Informel in Europe Georges Mathieu and critic Michel Tapié visited Gutai artists in 1957, and Gutai’s mark is strong on the works of Fluxus artists as well.