Hailing from Kazuo Shiraga’s post-Gutai period, Deishaku from 1987 is a uniquely superlative piece executed in tranquil hues of greyish lilac and light umber, exhibiting a serenely mesmerizing palette that stands in stark contrast to the violent exuberance of his earlier lexicon. The present work is also rare for its medium of paper – a medium central to Shiraga’s practice since 1954. Shiraga only selects the medium of paper for specific compositions and occasions, and large-scale works on paper like the present Deishaku reside in public collections including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In 1971, Shiraga began receiving intense training as a Buddhist monk, completing the training in 1974. The experience brought forth a significant evolution in his psyche as well as a heightened consciousness within his gestural art; emanating from Shiraga’s dexterous and dynamic action-based painting is a sense of transcendent wisdom enlightenment. As the only known grey monochrome composition in Shiraga’s oeuvre, Deishaku is a rare paradigm exhibiting the consummate choreography, centered balletic tension and sublime balance that communicate the artist’s spiritual mastery of his raw passions: in it we witness Shiraga raised from his angst, revelling in the authority of matter, body and spirit.

Born in 1924 in Aagasaki, Japan, Shiraga originally trained in Nihonga at the Kyoto City University of Arts. The artist soon turned to oil, creating markings or scratchings with his fingers; beginning with these early methods, Shiraga’s art form gradually abjured the brush and took its final form in his celebrated foot paintings. In the early 1950s, a period on par with Jackson Pollock’s action paintings, Shiraga shunned the orthodox artistic stance completely. Fastening a rope to the ceiling, the artist swung himself acrobatically across horizontally placed canvases, using his feet and body to cast, heave, kick and swirl thick slabs and layers of paint. Such uninhibited actions allowed the artist to immerse himself within his canvas as opposed to merely pouring or painting from above; by merging body with matter in a cathartic synthesis, Shiraga set himself apart from the mere gesturality of Western Abstract Expressionism and thrashed out an impassioned path of primal expression. Like no other artist before him, Shiraga’s performative abstractions were vehemently inspirited with movement—“not just the movement of his body […] but also the assertion of matter itself” (Ming Tiampo, “Not just beauty, but something horrible”, in Exh. Cat. Body and Matter: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino, New York 2015, pp. 21-22).

Concurrent to the development of his foot-painting technique, Shiraga’s career took flight in the late 1950s and 1960s as a result of iconic and internationally acclaimed performances. In his seminal 1955 Challenging Mud, Shiraga plunged himself into a vat of clay and sludge, engaging in a raw and vehement battle with the earth. Afterwards, fellow Gutai artist Akira Kanayama wrote that Shiraga arose from the mud “as if emerging from a bath, refreshed” (Akira Kanayama, “Shiraga Kazuo”, Gutai, no. 4, 1955, p. 9). Another pivotal performance was Shiraga’s 1957 Ultra-Modern Sanbasō. The 1957 “Gutai Art on the Stage” exhibition opened with Shiraga emerging alone on a lit stage, donning a theatrical red costume with a pointed hat and performing dramatic bodily movements. Accentuated by elongated wing-like sleeves, Shiraga’s arm actions created slashes of undulating color against the stage backdrop, constituting an homage to Japan’s oldest celebratory dance, Sanbasō ('divine dance'). As Alexandra Munroe notes, while Euro-American Happenings fused art with life as a critique of commoditized culture, Shiraga’s Ultra-Modern Sanbasō was an “affirmation of art in life after [the country’s] near annihilation of culture” (Alexandra Munroe, “To Challenge the Mid-summer Sun”, in Japanese Art After 1945: Scream against the Sky, Guggenheim, 1994, p. 97).

These performances underscore the centrality of Shiraga’s gesturality within his oeuvre, which is grounded in the concept of shishitsu, meaning “innate characteristics and abilities”, which serves as the driving force behind the shaping of the self. Making art was a way for the legendary master to fully connect with his shishitsu - a means to connect with himself, through himself. Such an understanding is crucial to a full appreciation of Shiraga’s body-based oeuvre: while Klein also utilized the body as paintbrush in his Anthropometries works half a half a decade later, Shiraga’s art utilized his irreducible corporeality to battle with and awaken the raw vitality of matter itself. Such a paradigm epitomized the mission of the post-war Gutai artists who, literally uniting ‘instrument’ (gu) with ‘body’ (tai), rose fearlessly from the rubble of post-Hiroshima Japan to advocate a reinvigorating philosophy of ‘concreteness’ in their war-torn country. Shiraga once said that his art “needs not just beauty, but something horrible” (Kazuo Shiraga, interview with Ming Tiampo, Ashiya, Japan, 1998); by engaging with, and transcending, violence, Shiraga was able to “wrestl[e] with the demons that haunted him and his generation, at the same time opening the possibility of hope for the years ahead” (Body and Matter: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino, New York, 2015, p. 23). In his post-Gutai years, Shiraga not only received training in Buddhism but also re-engaged with traditional ink and brush calligraphy to complement his technique and breadth of style. Such a re-embracing of his oriental roots lends Shiraga’s feet-strokes the essence and soul of masterful ink brushwork, gracing his by-then universally acclaimed canvases with transcendent traces of his Eastern origins.

《泥錫》繪於1987年，出自白髮一雄的後具體派時期，畫面上可見淡紫灰與淡琥珀色調互相交織，幽靜悠然，是這位藝術家獨一無二的卓越例作。本作用色秀麗迷人，與白髮一雄早期作品上濃烈澎湃的用色大相徑庭。自1954年起，白髮一雄以紙本作為主要的創作媒材，此畫正是其中一幅珍貴的紙本作例。白髮一雄只會為特定的構圖主題及場合創作紙本作品；如《泥錫》般尺寸宏大的紙本鉅作，現已由不同公共機構珍藏，包括巴黎龐畢度中心和紐約大都會藝術博物館。1971年，白髮一雄遁入佛門，精進修行，於1974年還俗。此經歷令他的心境產生重大變化，對筆下的動態藝術有了更深刻的自我意識。這些行動派畫作靈巧奔放、充滿動感，展現出超凡脫俗的智慧啟蒙。此作是白髮一雄目前唯一已知的灰色單色畫作品，畫作呈精湛巧妙的構圖安排、重點置中的優雅張力及完美的畫面平衡，體現了藝術家對內心澎湃情感的靈巧掌握，是一幅珍貴非凡的典範之作。透過此畫，觀者可見白髮一雄擺脫了從前的苦惱掙扎，全心沉醉於物質、身體與靈性精神賦予他的強大力量。

1924年，白髮一雄生於日本長崎市。最初，他於京都市立藝術大學修習傳統日本畫（Nihonga），後來轉向油畫，以手指或指甲蘸取顏料創作；從那時起，他便摒棄畫筆，將自己的藝術形式昇華到一個全心的層次，最終演化成著名的足繪作品。1950年代初，亦即傑克森・波拉克發展其行動繪畫的重要時期，白髮一雄終於突破傳統藝術規限，將畫布平鋪於地面上，在天花板上固定繩子，自己則執繩盪於空中，以足蘸濃稠的顏料，層層地踢抹、摔摜於畫布上。畫家並不滿足於把顏料潑或畫在畫布表面，而是藉著這種大膽狂放的創作方式，全身心投入到作品中去，將身體與物質融為一體，流暢迅疾、勢如流星。如此一來，他將自己與西方抽象表現主義的動勢繪畫區分開來，為當代藝術界闖開一片新天地。這位具體派畫家在青春正盛之時破天荒以足繪畫，開闢了一種狂野原始的藝術表達方式，其抽象藝術表演充滿激烈狂亂的動作——「不只是身體的動作（……）物質亦隨之騷動起來。」（蔡宇鳴撰，〈Not just beauty, but something horrible〉，《身體與物質：白髮一雄與星野曉的藝術》展覽圖錄，紐約， 2015年，頁21-22）。

隨著白髮一雄的「足畫」技藝逐漸發展，他的經典表演藝術於1950及60年代末名揚國際，迎來事業生涯的起飛。在1955年的重大表演藝術作品《挑戰泥土》中，他在水泥地中摔跤翻滾，與大片粘土與淤泥奮力搏鬥，直至筋疲力竭。此後，另一位具體派藝術家金山明寫道，當白髮一雄從泥土中站起身來，「彷彿剛剛沐浴過一般，煥然一新」（金山明撰，〈白髮一雄〉，《具體》，第4期，1955年，頁9）。繼《挑戰泥土》後，白髮一雄在1957年進行了另一場前衛藝術表演《超現代三番叟》。1957年「具體藝術舞台」展覽開場之時，白髮一雄在亮著燈的舞台上獨自現身，套上紅色戲服、頭戴尖帽，劇烈地舞動身軀。他那猶如巨翼般的兩袖在舞台的背幕前掀起一陣色彩的波浪，向日本最古老的祭典舞蹈「三番叟」致意。孟璐（Alexandra Munroe）認為，歐美的「偶發藝術」將藝術與生活合而為一，以批判當前的商品文化；而白髮一雄的《超現代三番叟》則「在（其國家的）文化近乎消滅之後，肯定生活中的藝術」（孟璐撰，〈挑戰仲夏驕陽〉，《1945年後的日本藝術：向天空吶喊》，古根海姆，1994年，頁97）。

這些表演藝術突顯了白髮一雄生平作品的中心主題，即以「個人本質」（shishitsu）的概念為基礎，作為塑造自我的原動力。藝術創作就是白髮一雄與「個人本質」完全連結的方式，透過創作與內在自我互相聯繫。這個概念對於理解白髮一雄以身體為創作工具的作畫技法可謂至為關鍵。伊夫・克萊因亦在《身體繪畫》系列裡以人體代替畫筆；白髮一雄則以純粹的身體力量，對抗、喚醒物質內在的生命力。日本戰後具體派的理念在他的作品中得以完全呈現——他將工具（「具」）與身體（「體」）結合，無懼地走出日本原爆後的頹垣廢墟，誓要讓因戰爭而撕裂的日本社會重新振作，高呼一種「具體」的新生哲學；他曾言，其藝術「不只要美，更要可怕」（白髮一雄，與蔡宇鳴對談，1998年）。 白髮一雄通過與暴力交戰、並從中獲勝，得以「與纏繞著他與那一代人的夢魘鬥爭，打開了未來的希望之路」（《身體與物質：白髮一雄與星野曉的藝術》，紐約， 2015年，頁23）。

離開具體藝術協會後，白髮一雄不僅學佛，也重新開始學習傳統水墨書法，以拓展藝術風格和技巧。這段回歸本源的經歷，為他那標誌性的足繪藝術增添了幾分水墨神韻，點明了他的東方本源。