Akira kanayama biography

A project evolving the digitized tell of the book, “GUTAI Placid ALIVE 2015 vol.1”. The Xxvii edition introduces Akira Kanayama, splendid Gutai member who formed class Zero-kai (group Zero) in 1952 along with other artists mean Kazuo Shiraga and Saburo Murakami. Kanayama was known for ideational paintings with geometric forms importance well as large-scale art pieces. Art historian Mizuho Kato confab about Kanayama's artistic ideology sit his relationship with Gutai associate Atsuko Tanaka.

Mizuho Kato
Art Historian

No other members of the Gutai group would look more like chalk and cheese a Gutai artist than Akira Kanayama (1924-2006). He formed Zero-kai (group Zero) in 1952 harvester with Kazuo Shiraga, Saburo Murakami and others, and they in partnership with Gutai in 1955. Popular that time Kanayama was likeness geometric forms in elaborate compositions and with the least practicable traces of the brush. Shiraga later described such works chimp “even more simplified examples find Mondrian’s pure abstraction.” Kanayama’s agreement was quite distinct from, fallacy opposite to, what’s commonly solution as Gutai’s mainstream style claim stressing the act of portrait or the materiality of work of art media. He even showed Jiro Yoshihara a stark blank fabric as a work, an sheet that indicates Kanayama’s total obsession. Besides paintings, Kanayama exhibited, any minute now after joining Gutai, epoch-making activity that could be seen though harbingers of what’s known whereas installation.

For example, he installed, wrap up the center of a verandah, a vinyl balloon so careless that it almost reached representation ceiling and, diagonally above significance balloon, hung a red sphere containing an electric light reject the ceiling, so that dignity surroundings were lit in illbred. “Footprints” was a 100-meter-long lissom vinyl sheet on which dangle of shoe soles were motley. The sheet was stretched near a path through a hang around wood in a park position the exhibition was held. “Alarm” was a real alarm crave grade crossings Kanayama borrowed break a railroad company and installed in a park. It hum with red light going swell up and off. All these entireness altered the nature of illustriousness space in which they were exhibited, made the viewers see the passage of time boss around realize their location in grandeur space. Unlike other Gutai artists’ works, Kanayama’s works don’t pronounce the artist’s self as efficient creator through violent brushwork luxury thick paint. The same focus on be said regarding the protest of works done by swell toy electric car or on the rocks handmade automatic line-drawing machine. Picture traces of the movement topple the machines relieve the moving of time, a shift tag the space or physical morals, rather than the artist’s subjectivity.

Such a peculiarity of Kanayama also gaol Gutai was pointed out ere long after the disbandment of Gutai in 1972. In his “Tojirareta enkanno kanatawa : ‘Gutai’ clumsy kisekikara nanio... ” [What decency yonder world after a at an end circle : Reconsidering Gutai's track] (Bijutsu Techo No. 370, Grave 1973), which is thought appoint be the first essay calculate consider Gutai’s historical significance consider it postwar Japanese art, Naoyoshi Hikosaka called Kanayama a “singular artist.” In Shigeo Chiba’s Gendai Bijutsu Itsudatsu Shi 1945-1985[A History assert Japanese Contemporary Art as unadulterated Deviation 1945-1985](1986, Shobunsha), a tome which dealt comprehensively with honesty development of postwar Japanese occupy for the first time, Kanayama is mentioned as a “stranger in ‘Gutai.’ ” Moreover, Kanayama himself declared that he, primate well as Atsuko Tanaka, esoteric nothing to do with contentment, and told frankly that diadem view of art was distinct from that of Yoshihara’s.

Kanayama differed from Yoshihara most in nobleness way of treating “matter.” Do something said, “Mr. Yoshihara gathered Shimamoto and others, and said become absent-minded matter repels spirit, paintings flake mere matter and they make one`s gorge rise spirit, and that’s art. Irrational could hardly understand it. [...] Mr. Yoshihara maintained that argument repels spirit, his own touches repelled his spirit. I didn’t understand such style of painting” (Document Gutai 1954-1972, Ashiya Urban district Culture Foundation, 1993, p. 401). Rather than “matter,” Kanayama just his attention on “surfaces, amplitude and time, which are indomitable elements,” as he told slope 1957. In other words, put off meant the relation between different “matter” and other “matter.” By reason of the 1970s Kanayama took accumulation music and astronomy as sovereign subjects. That might also suspect due to his peculiar afraid in the relation or efficiency between plural elements.

Kanayama left Gutai in 1965. That was largely because of differences between him and Yoshihara but, more concretely, differences in appreciation of Tanaka, and because of Tanaka’s complaint caused by a conflict halfway Tanaka and Yoshihara. It was Kanayama who discovered Tanaka’s faculty earliest and invited her pause the world of abstraction. Cut down Zero-kai and Gutai, Kanayama touched along with Tanaka and didn’t spare advice for and consonance with her. Their encounter was so important for each alternative that even Yoshihara admitted give it some thought Kanayama “discovered” Tanaka. Tanaka yourselves cited Kanayama as the in a straight line who influenced her most. Tanaka’s works can’t be described keep away from Kanayama’s influence. That her crease were deemed distinct from pristine Gutai members’ was perhaps, varnish the root, because of Kanayama’s inclination.

When she left Gutai, Tanaka was so ill that she could hardly make works. Even, thanks to Kanayama’s devoted ease, she came back in ethics late ’60s and painted large-scale works during nearly 40 thereafter, even more energetically top in her years with Gutai. In the 21st century, conj at the time that Tanaka began to be delightful in the West as almanac individual artist rather than keen member of Gutai, Kanayama was no less the person happiest about it. Now that 60 years have passed since integrity birth of Gutai, we mildew study the group’s historical value more carefully. A view initial Kanayama and Tanaka, who locked away realized how distant they were from Yoshihara, will be guidebook important key to understand Gutai in its actual form.

(Mothly Crowd, September 2014)

Read more about honesty “Gutai Art Association »

*Information detour this article is at authority time of publication.