Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

50 Reiko Tomii
formal and structured nature. The organizational names commonly ended
with the sufWx -kai (society) or with the word kyokai (association). In this
sense, Gutai belonged to the old school with its ofWcial name Gutai Art Association
(Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai), sharing part of its name with the conservative
Japan Art Association (Nihon Bijutsu Kyokai) and the vanguard Futurist Art
Association (Mirai-ha Bijutsu Kyokai). In contrast, some of Gutai’s contemporaries
preferred the archaic but native-sounding sufWx -ha (school),
which derived from the premodern painting schools such as Kano-ha and
Rinpa. The import word “group” (pronounced gurupu) was commonly used
to discuss contemporary collectives, and it was sometimes incorporated in
the names. In the 1960s and 1970s, the collectives were often called shudan,
another Japanese word that also means “group,” less formal in its assembly
than dantai. The theme of the 1973 Kyoto Biennale, “art by shudan,” capitalized
on its somewhat subversive nuance. For the past decade, another
import word, “unit” (yunitto), became quite popular: Bikyoto’s Hori Kosai
calls his current group of three “Unit 00.”
In concluding this short outline of modern collectivism, two things
should be noted concerning the postwar small collectives. First, they were
not a new invention of the postwar years. In addition to Mavo, prewar examples
encompass the “street exhibitions” (gaito-ten) with group identities,
such as “Black-Color Yoga Exhibition” (Kokushoku yoga-ten) of 1935. These
exhibitions, which helped foster abstraction and surrealism, were so called
because of their “street” location, distinct from the large-scale exhibition
halls at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in the Ueno Park—the venue
of the salon and major dantai-ten. 13 Second, this form of postwar collectivism
was accompanied by another huge sea change in artists’ lives—the spread
and maturation of individualism—encouraged in a postwar society liberated
from wartime conformism. Emerging artists were much less constrained by
the stricture of dantai-ten, enjoying more opportunities to gain initial social
exposure at such new outlets as the independent exhibitions and the “prize
exhibitions” (these included the “Yasui Prize Exhibition” and the “Shell Prize
Exhibition”); there was also a substantial increase in the number of rental
galleries, in which they could present their solo exhibitions. For more established
artists, the possibility of forging a gallery afWliation expanded as the
number of commercial galleries gradually grew, making it possible to leave
the art organizations altogether. In this respect, collectivism in the name of
art organizations mostly lost its vanguard relevance by the late 1960s. 14
“After Modernism” in Japan
In the history of post-1945 Japan, the 1960s constituted a major turning
point. The country’s postwar recovery and subsequent development were