Collectivism after Modernism - autonomous learning - Blogs

collectives turned the local populace of the rural villages and towns—who
had practically no familiarity with contemporary art—into willing and crucial
collaborators to produce site-speciWc installations, performances, and
video art, sometimes making them the main subjects and/or objects of the
works. 70 In contrast to HRC’s self-effacing public gesture or Zero Dimension’s
shock parades or Bikyoto’s radicalized actions, today’s descent to everyday
life is not necessarily a gesture of rebellion or dissent, but it can provide an
opportunity to begin a broadly based partnership in grass-roots public engagement,
while incorporating a broader global dimension. More than four
decades after its Wrst descent to the everyday, contemporary art today Wnally
meets with everyday people on friendly terms.
NOTES
After the “Descent to the Everyday” 71
I am indebted to many people in preparing this text. Nakajima Masatoshi and
Nakajima Yasuko, as well as Hirai Shoichi, Ikegami Hiroko, Kondo Tatsuo, Kuroda
Raiji, Yamada Satoru, and Yamamoto Atsuo, among others, generously assisted my
research. The artists who provided me with valuable information and material include
Akasegawa Genpei, Hikosaka Naoyoshi, Hori Kosai, Horikawa Michio, Ikemizu
Keiichi, Ina Ken’ichiro, and Kato Yoshihiro.
East Asian names are given in the traditional order, except for individuals who
primarily reside outside their native countries and adopt the Western system (e.g.,
Yoko Ono, Ushio Shinohara, and Yasunao Tone).
Bilingual titles (which may or may not indicate bilingual publications) are separated
by a slash (/); and translated titles created for this publication are enclosed
in square brackets.
All translations from Japanese material are by the author, unless otherwise noted.
1. Hirai Shoichi, ed., “Gutai” tte nanda?/What’s Gutai? (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppansha,
2004), 18–21.
2. Alexandra Munroe, Japanese Art after 1945: Scream against the Sky (New York:
Abrams, 1994), 87. This volume serves as a basic literature in English on postwar
Japanese art, especially for the 1950s and 1960s.
From the same period, there were a few comparative collectives led or guided by
the prominent prewar Wgures: Jikken Kobo (Experimental Workshop) under the
guidance of the critic Takiguchi Shuzo, the abstract painter Eikyu and his Democrat
Artists Association (Demokurāto Bijutsuka Kyokai), and the critic Tsuchioka
Hidetaro’s Hokubi (“Northern Art”) Culture Association (Hokubi Bunka Kyokai)
based in Fukui.
3. “Kaiin zaiseki kikan ichiran” [List of members and their membership periods],
in Gutai shiryo-shu/Document Gutai, 1954–1972, ed. Ashiya City Museum of Art &
History (Ashiya: Ashiya City Culture Foundation, 1993), 404–5.
4. Yoshihara Jiro, “Sokan ni saishite” [Upon the inaugural publication], Gutai,
no. 1 (January 1955); reprinted in “Gutai” tte nanda? ed. Hirai Shoichi, 37.
5. Ming Tiampo, “Gutai 1954–1972: Breaking Open the Object,” in Resounding
Spirit: Japanese Contemporary Art of the 1960s, exhibition catalog (Potsdam, N.Y.:
Gibson Gallery, SUNY, 2004), 31–46.