Kazuo Shiraga

Seisho Gallery, Tokyo

Private Collection, London 

Acquired directly from the above by the present owner 

Colour: The colour in the printed catalogue is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is brighter in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. Inspection under ultra violet light reveals some lines of retouching in places along the overturn of the top edge.
"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."

A leading member of one of Japan’s most significant post-war art collectives, The Gutai Art Association, Kazuo Shiraga’s work typifies the group’s central aim to reject traditional artistic conventions in favour of an expressive, gestural abstraction that broached innovative forms of display and facture. A critical re-examination of both Shiraga’s work and that of the wider Gutai group through remarkable exhibitions such as Gutai: Splendid Playground, at the Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2013, have laid the foundations for Shiraga’s revaluation as one of the most important and innovative artists of the post-war period. Executed in 1988 in striking yellow, orange and crimson hues, Dattan resonates with all the fiery vigour and vibrancy of Shiraga’s best paintings. An extraordinarily fitting title for this flaming work, Dattan is the name given to the important Buddhist shuni-e ritual performed by priests parading through Japanese temples whilst swinging burning hot torches of fire. The rippling cascades of bright sparks that this ritual gives off are believed, in Buddhism, to ward off evil. Perfectly translating this spiritual phenomenon into concrete form, in the present work dazzling flashes of yellow and crimson streak across the canvas surface.  

Shiraga’s preoccupation with the material potential of oil paint drew him to the young art collective Gutai. With the shared ambition of creating a novel kind of art suitable for a newly democratic society, the Gutai group was born. Founded by the pioneering artist Jirō Yoshihara in 1954, the group’s core members included Shimamoto Shōzō, Kanayama Akira, Tanaka Atsuko, Murakami Saburō, Motonaga Sadamasa and Shiraga. Influenced by the climate of post-war Japan, the group sought to stimulate a society saturated in tradition with radical modern stimuli by following Yoshihara’s dictum: “Never imitate others! Make something that has never existed!” (Jirō Yoshihara quoted in: ibid, p. 15). In particular, their revolutionary exploratory processes involved devising new presentation formats that stretched the limits of the conventional exhibition space. Anticipating later developments in performance and conceptual art, they ingeniously began to incorporate aspects of performance and interactive environments into their work.

Perfectly exemplifying Gutai’s forward thinking attitude, Shiraga came to find the conventional practice of painting with a brush restrictive, and instead, in 1954, he fastened himself to a rope and used his feet to spread thick visceral layers of paint across the canvas surface in vital, gestural moves. By actually stepping into the painting, Shiraga enacted a dynamic synthesis of artist and work. As he explained: "I want to paint as though rushing around on a battlefield, exerting myself to collapse from exhaustion" (Kazuo Shiraga quoted in: ibid, p. 59). The first Gutai exhibition of October 1955, where Shiraga executed his now infamous performance Challenging Mud (in which the artist wrestled with a mountain of clay and mud in a series of three twenty-minute performances), prompted the second change in technique from systematic to dynamic. From thereon in, the footstrokes in his work became freer and more dynamic than his earlier more clustered works. Shiraga's drastic act of discarding the paintbrush in favour of the human body aligned him with celebrated Western artists such as Yves Klein, who utilised naked women as ‘human paintbrushes’ in his Anthropometries of 1961.

Executed in 1988, almost 35 years after Shiraga first swung across a canvas, Dattan is a refined and dexterous example of the artist’s later practice. As striking and fresh as the artist’s earliest examples, here heavy layers of radiant reds, vibrant oranges, dazzling yellows and rich crimsons trace across the canvas as though indexical referents of the artist’s vigorous movements. Despite the apparent violence of the enthralling visceral struggle between these contrasting colours, there is a certain elegant lyricism that arises from the loose natural strokes, which is reminiscent of the classical Japanese tradition of calligraphy. Embracing vitality and action as his main mode of expression, in Dattan Shiraga challenges the parameters of painting as radically as any great avant-gardist of the post-war period.