Right now we are preparing for a visit to the MOT this weekend and we decided to share some notes with you.
This winter, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (MOT) will hold simultaneous exhibitions on the three following keywords of Japanese contemporary art: ‘Gutai’, ‘Fluxus’ and ‘Experimental Workshop’. Being one of Japans most renowned avant-garde artists in 19th century, Atsuko Tanaka (1932-2005) is given a big retrospective called ‘TANAKA Atsuko - Art of Connecting‘ in February.
Atsuko Tanaka was born in Osaka, joined the Art Institute of Osaka Municipal Museum of Art in 1950 and the Department of Western Painting at Kyoto Municipal College of Art (now Kyoto City University of Arts) the following year. After having met the artist Akira Kanayama, Tanaka joined the avant-garde group Gutai Art Association (funded by artist Jiro Yoshihara) in 1955. Soon she got well known for her experimental drawings, sculptures and happenings.
In the recent years, her reputation has increased and in 2007 her works were exhibited at Documenta 12. The art critic Haruo Fukuzumi, editor-in-chief and founder of the Japanese art journal AIDA gave a talk on “TANAKA Atsuko and her environment – The position of female artists in Japan”. In the talk, he depicted the ambivalent position of women artists in Japanese society, which he meant had long been characterised by sexual discrimination. Find a review of it here.
Another voice on Tanakos works is Art historian Françoise Levaillant, here quoted by Yoko Hasegawa in “Performativity in the work of female Japanese artists”, Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, New York : Museum of Modern Art, 2010:
This winter, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo (MOT) will hold simultaneous exhibitions on the three following keywords of Japanese contemporary art: ‘Gutai’, ‘Fluxus’ and ‘Experimental Workshop’. Being one of Japans most renowned avant-garde artists in 19th century, Atsuko Tanaka (1932-2005) is given a big retrospective called ‘TANAKA Atsuko - Art of Connecting‘ in February.
Atsuko Tanaka was born in Osaka, joined the Art Institute of Osaka Municipal Museum of Art in 1950 and the Department of Western Painting at Kyoto Municipal College of Art (now Kyoto City University of Arts) the following year. After having met the artist Akira Kanayama, Tanaka joined the avant-garde group Gutai Art Association (funded by artist Jiro Yoshihara) in 1955. Soon she got well known for her experimental drawings, sculptures and happenings.
In the recent years, her reputation has increased and in 2007 her works were exhibited at Documenta 12. The art critic Haruo Fukuzumi, editor-in-chief and founder of the Japanese art journal AIDA gave a talk on “TANAKA Atsuko and her environment – The position of female artists in Japan”. In the talk, he depicted the ambivalent position of women artists in Japanese society, which he meant had long been characterised by sexual discrimination. Find a review of it here.
Another voice on Tanakos works is Art historian Françoise Levaillant, here quoted by Yoko Hasegawa in “Performativity in the work of female Japanese artists”, Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art, New York : Museum of Modern Art, 2010:
“In contrast to the approach of Tanaka’s male artist associates, who, when using their bodies in their artistic activities, did so in essentially energetic ways, often directly, expressionistically, or aggressively, Tanaka used the energy of the materials themselves to give the materials as much sculptural richness as possible. Paradoxically, by putting restriction on the female body, (Tanaka), liberated the female body from the terribly pumped up gestures that were a characteristic of the work of the group’s male artists when they used their bodies. All she did was pretend to exhibit/expose herself.”
The following text is an extract from the press release from the retrospective at the MOT:
"In 2012 the world’s eye turns its eye towards Japan’s avant-garde art of the fifties and sixties, such as ‘Gutai’ or ‘Experimental Workshop’. Stimulated by Western avant-garde art in the postwar years, Japanese artists decided that they wanted to create a form of art that ‘nobody had seen before’, and they set about it with a straightforward, yet fresh sensitivity and overflowing energy. Among them was TANAKA Atsuko who displayed an outstanding and unique talent as a woman member of the Gutai group. Unlike other Japanese avant-garde women artists of the time, such as ONO Yoko or KUSAMA Yayoi, she did not move to New York in search of expressional freedom and achieve fame there, instead TANAKA remained in Japan where she experimented with her own forms of expression. In the ‘Documenta 12’ exhibition in 2007 her ‘Electric Dress’ attracted great attention and then a large-scale work of hers, from the collection of MOMA, was featured in an exhibition in 2010, her reputation growing like a ‘late- blooming flower’."
Below is Tanaka's most famous work, Electric Dress from 1957. In this piece, where the traditional kimono is updated to a dress that consists of "approximately one hundred fluorescent tubes and approximately eighty light bulbs, painted in nine colors of enamel paint and worn like a garment" (the MOT press release), the old traditional Japanese society meets the new industrial, technological era. Tanaka costumed herself in the sculpture, as in the tradition of a Japanese marriage ceremony.
The following text is an extract from the press release from the retrospective at the MOT:
"In 2012 the world’s eye turns its eye towards Japan’s avant-garde art of the fifties and sixties, such as ‘Gutai’ or ‘Experimental Workshop’. Stimulated by Western avant-garde art in the postwar years, Japanese artists decided that they wanted to create a form of art that ‘nobody had seen before’, and they set about it with a straightforward, yet fresh sensitivity and overflowing energy. Among them was TANAKA Atsuko who displayed an outstanding and unique talent as a woman member of the Gutai group. Unlike other Japanese avant-garde women artists of the time, such as ONO Yoko or KUSAMA Yayoi, she did not move to New York in search of expressional freedom and achieve fame there, instead TANAKA remained in Japan where she experimented with her own forms of expression. In the ‘Documenta 12’ exhibition in 2007 her ‘Electric Dress’ attracted great attention and then a large-scale work of hers, from the collection of MOMA, was featured in an exhibition in 2010, her reputation growing like a ‘late- blooming flower’."
Below is Tanaka's most famous work, Electric Dress from 1957. In this piece, where the traditional kimono is updated to a dress that consists of "approximately one hundred fluorescent tubes and approximately eighty light bulbs, painted in nine colors of enamel paint and worn like a garment" (the MOT press release), the old traditional Japanese society meets the new industrial, technological era. Tanaka costumed herself in the sculpture, as in the tradition of a Japanese marriage ceremony.
No comments:
Post a Comment