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41-510: The Genbi group was founded in November 1952 by the painters Jirō Yoshihara, Kokuta Suda , Takao Yamazaki, Makoto Nakamura, and Kenzō Tanaka, and the sculptor Shigeru Ueki, with the support of the journalist Hiroshi Muramatsu, an arts and culture editor at the Osaka head office of Asahi Shimbun . The group was created as a platform for free cross-genre exchange between established and emerging artists from

82-638: A broad range of abstraction, from geometric to organic to gestural abstraction. They were joined by avant-garde artists of traditional Japanese arts such as calligraphy, ceramics, and ikebana; for example they included members of the Kyoto-based cermicist groups Shikōkai ("Four Plowmen Group") and Sōdeisha ("Running Mud Association"), and the calligraphy group Bokujinkai ("Ink People Society," commonly known as Bokujin), as well as by fashion, commercial, and industrial designers, photographers, art historians, collectors, critics, journalists, and gallery owners. Some of

123-413: A hobby gained popularity among Japanese women. Tanaka herself had applied to a dressmaking school and remained an amateur seamstress. By creating Electric Dress , which entrapped its wearer's body, Tanaka critically reconsidered the confinement imposed by fashion on the female body. Tanaka's performance Stage Clothes (1956) also critically engaged the issue of fashion, body, and gender. Tanaka designed

164-408: A multi-layer costume with trick sleeves removeable parts. In the performance, she peeled off the layers one by one to reveal the outfits underneath. A gigantic pink dress with 9.1 m long sleeves was placed in the background behind her. Although the performance resembled a striptease show, Tanaka's expressionless face and unemotional movements refused an eroticized reading of her body and actions. In

205-762: A new kind of art that would "create what has never been done before." In 1954, Yoshihara and other young artists, mainly like-minded students of his, founded the Gutai Art Association. Around June in 1955, Yoshihara sent Gutai artist Shimamoto Shozo to invite members of Zero Society, including Tanaka, to join Gutai. Tanaka, as well as other members of Zero Society, became central figures of Gutai after they joined. Their non-figurative artistic experiments contributed to further radicalizing Gutai art. Tanaka's works were featured in all exhibitions held by Gutai from 1955 to 1965. After she left Gutai, exhibitions in both Japan and

246-696: A reconstructed version of Electric Dress . In 2005, the University of British Columbia 's Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver mounted a major exhibition of Tanaka's work entitled "Electrifying art: Atsuko Tanaka, 1954-1968". Electric Dress and other works were on display at the 2007 documenta 12 in Kassel . A major retrospective exhibition, "Atsuko Tanaka: The Art of Connecting", travelled to Birmingham, Castelló and Tokyo in 2011-2012. Atsuko Tanaka's work

287-457: A string of twenty electric bells and a button with the sign "Please feel free to push the button, Atsuko Tanaka". In early versions of Bell , the bells were laid at two-meter intervals with each other to surround a gallery room. Once visitors pressed the button, it would make the bells ring in sequence for two minutes. The arrangement of the bells was adapted to different spaces at later exhibitions. The work enabled visitors to transgress

328-541: A traffic accident, aged 73. In 1952, Akira Kanayama introduced Tanaka to his colleagues in Zero-kai (Zero Society), an experimental art group he co-founded with Shiraga Kazuo and Murakumi Saburo . Tanaka soon joined this association. In the meantime, Jiro Yoshihara, an established artist and critic, was offering private lessons on Western-style oil painting. Influenced by abstract art that emerged in Tokyo, Yoshihara envisioned

369-540: Is included in a number of internationally important public collections, including that of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. MoMA's online collection features a large, untitled 1964 work by Tanaka (synthetic polymer paint on canvas). Nearly 12 feet (3.7 m) tall and over 7 feet (2.1 m) wide, this piece, according to MOMA's online description, "evolved from Tanaka's performance Electric Dress ", and "vividly records

410-553: The First Gutai Art Exhibition a month earlier. Consisting of 20 electric bells that visitors could make ring noisily by pushing a button, it created a kind of spatial painting, causing quite a stir among the jurors as it was questioned the definition of painting. In the same spirit, Tanaka also showed another Work made of three unpainted cotton cloths hanging on the wall in the same exhibition. In 1954 and 1955, Genbi also organized two Modern Art Fairs (Modan āto feā) at

451-745: The 2000s, Tanaka's works were featured in numerous expositions in Japan and abroad, including at the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art , the Nagoya Gallery HAM , the New York Grey Art Gallery and Paula Cooper Gallery as well as at the Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck . The Grey Art Gallery focuses on Tanaka's Gutai period and also includes a video and documentation of the movement plus

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492-553: The Art Institute of Osaka Municipal Museum of Art from 1951. During her study at college, Tanaka befriended her upperclassman Akira Kanayama . Kanayama advised her to explore new artistic languages and later invited her to join an artists' collective, Zero Society (Zero-kai), which he co-founded with other young artists, including Kazuo Shiraga and Saburo Murakami . During an extended period of hospitalization in 1953, Tanaka started to create non-figurative artworks. Inspired by

533-747: The Daimaru Department Store in Osaka, where works of the similarly wide range of mediums were presented together with contributions by architects and everyday objects of "good design" by leading brands. The Genbi Exhibitions and Modern Art Fairs included works by artists other than the regularly active Genbi members. For example, they included painters Tarō Okamoto , Masanari Murai, and Takeo Yamaguchi , ikebana artists Bunpo Nakayama , Hōun Ohara , and Sōfū Teshigahara , ceramists Yoshimichi Fujimoto, Junkichi Kumakura, and Kazuo Yagi, and fashion designer Chiyo Tanaka. Genbi exhibition salso included Katsuhiro Yamaguchi and Shōzō Kitadai , two members of

574-753: The Kansai region and sought to transcend the artists’ affiliations to established dantai art associations. Genbi grew out of existing artist circles for cross-genre discussion beyond dantai structures; yet, it was distinct in its members’ commitment to modern, non-figurative, abstract art. Genbi participants came from various artistic backgrounds. Many were painters and sculptors from established art associations such as Nika-kai ("Second Section Society," commonly known as Nika), Modan Āto Kyōkai ("Modern Art Association"), Kōdō Bijutsu Kyōkai ("Action Art Association," commonly known as Kōdō) and Kokugakai ("National Painting Society," commonly known as Kokuga). They were working within

615-532: The Modern Art Club of the Kansai region along with Yoshihara Jiro (1905–1972), Yagi Kazuo (1918–1979) and Tsutaka Waichi (1911–1995). In 1967, he became a teacher at Nishinomiya School. In the 1970s, he illustrated many travel essays and in 1985, wrote a book entitled Watakushi no zokei: Gendai Bijutsu (My Formulation: Contemporary Art), a philosophical volume concerning his thoughts and influences. Works by

656-529: The Stage, an event held by Gutai at the Sankei Hall in Osaka. As Tanaka's solo artistic career soared throughout the late 50s and early 60s, her relationship with Yoshihara Jiro became strained. Due to her mental instability and the tension within the group, Tanaka decided to leave Gutai in 1965 and married Kanayama. They moved into a house at the temple Myōhōji in Osaka. She produced most of her works at home and in

697-522: The Tokyo-based intermedia group Jikken Kōbō (Experimental Workshop). Genbi provided a well-organized inclusive forum for cross-genre, interdisciplinary exchange between artists, regardless of their affiliations, genres, generations, and social standings. It facilitated joint study and discussion of topics in relation to modern art and was unique in its members' commitment to non-figurative, abstract art as well as their avant-gardism that radically challenged

738-456: The West continued to include her iconic works such as Bell (1955) and Electric Dress (1956) as emblematic of the experiment carried out by Gutai. Tanaka's abstract paintings, sculptures, performances and installations challenged conventional notions of how works of art should appear or "perform". Her use of everyday materials, such as factory-dyed textiles, electric bells, and light bulbs revealed

779-528: The applied arts, the Genbi Exhibitions highlighted the Genbi artists’ interest in making art more accessible and in adapting to the changing material conditions of modern everyday life. By integrating applied and commercial arts and opening up the discussions to an extended range of topics, Genbi challenged the conventional definitions of art. It placed artistic production in new contexts and raised questions about

820-563: The artist can be found in the collections of: Atsuko Tanaka (artist) Atsuko Tanaka (田中 敦子, Tanaka Atsuko ; February 10, 1932 – December 3, 2005) was a Japanese avant-garde artist. She was a central figure of the Gutai Art Association from 1955 to 1965. Her works have found increased curatorial and scholarly attention across the globe since the early 2000s, when she received her first museum retrospective in Ashiya , Japan, which

861-581: The artist's gestural application of layers and skeins of multicolored acrylic paint on the canvas as it lay on the floor." The Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, owns a reconstruction of Tanaka's Electric Dress made in 1999 at the occasion of a Gutai retrospective held at the Jeu de Paume . Tanaka was highlighted as a pioneer of abstraction in the exhibition "Women in Abstraction", curated by Christine Macel and shown at

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902-404: The artistic beauty of mundane objects. In Yellow Cloth , Tanaka cut three pieces of plain cotton fabric and tacked them to a gallery's wall. The fabrics gently fluttered when viewers passed by. With little intervention from the artist, the work could hardly be differentiated from ordinary mass-produced fabrics. By calling this work a " painting ", Tanaka challenged the conventional definition of

943-469: The arts' role within modern everyday life. As a community that also shared insights on developments in the international art world, Genbi was crucial in "consolidating Kansai’s art identity, offering several ways of combining local artistic efforts with global thinking." Genbi laid the groundwork for the foundation of the Gutai Art Association, which introduced performative and relational elements to painting through its radically experimental projects. Not only

984-877: The boundaries of their genres, rejecting long-held conventions while introducing unconventional materials and production methods. They also shared a heightened awareness of the latest developments in the arts worldwide and a strong ambition in the pursuit of global recognition, on par with artists in Western Europe and the US. Painters, such as Kokuta Suda, Kenzō Tanaka, Jirō Yoshihara, Kazuo Shiraga, Chiyū Uemae, and Toshio Yoshida experimented with unusual methods of applying paint onto painting surfaces, such as rubbing, smearing or dripping. Others like Mitsuyoshi Kageyama or Atsuko Tanaka included aluminum, strings or textiles, or, as in Tanaka's case, eventually even exhibited unpainted textiles hanging from

1025-529: The building of the Asahi Shimbun head office in Osaka. Although it was not part of its original program, between 1953 and 1957, Genbi also organized five annual group exhibitions called Genbi-ten (Genbi Exhibition) in several Japanese cities. The range of mediums presented at these exhibitions went beyond painting, sculpture and calligraphy to include textile dye art, ikebana, pottery, photography, fashion, and commercial and industrial design and crafts. Most of

1066-758: The calendar with which she counted days, Tanaka began to make a series of works that consisted of handwritten numbers on various collaged materials, including hemp cloth, tracing paper, and newspaper. In some of these works, Tanaka repeated and fragmented the numbers to de-naturalize the meaning of numerical signs. In 1955, Tanaka, Kanayama, and other members of Zero Society joined the Gutai Art Association , an avant-garde artists' group led by artist Yoshihara Jiro. After joining Gutai, Tanaka created several iconic works such as Electric Dress (1956), Work ( Bell , 1956), and Work ( Pink Rayon , 1955) that earned both public attention and positive responses from art critics. She also performed Stage Cloth (1957) at Gutai Art on

1107-589: The classic concept of utility in pottery, i.e. as container, in order to create ceramic works that were deliberately nonutilitarian. Ikebana artists such as Toyotake and Fumiko Abe explored ikebana's affinities with sculpture and created works without any plants but made instead with board and nails. The original aim of the Genbi group was to organize monthly meetings at which a variety of topics related to modern art were studied and discussed. Topics included recent international developments in art, children's art, art education, architecture, commercial and industrial design,

1148-450: The conventions of traditional Japanese arts such as pottery, ikebana and calligraphy. The display of various art genres together created a multi-sensorial experience for viewers, allowing them to draw new connections between the works, irrespective of the art categories they belonged to. The exhibitions imparted the artists' shared interest in challenging the conventions and limits of their respective genres. Furthermore, by including works from

1189-427: The ear-piercing noise experienced embarrassment and uneasiness under the watch of others. The work thus also forced viewers to reflect on the limitations of their agency and presumed control of the external world. Tanaka's well-known Electric Dress (1956) was a garment made of 200 lightbulbs that weighed over 50 kg. At the "2nd Gutai Art Exhibition" held in 1956, Tanaka wore Electric Dress and walked around in

1230-555: The flat on the second floor of her parents' house, ten minutes from where she had lived. In 1972, Tanaka and her husband moved to Nara. In her post-Gutai period, Tanaka mainly created large paintings, applying synthetic resin enamel paints to horizontally laid canvases. She developed unique motifs of colorful circles and intertwining lines from her earlier drawings inspired by Electric Dress and Bell . Her paintings from this period continued to attract attention in Japan and from abroad. On December 3, 2005, Tanaka died of pneumonia after

1271-423: The gallery. Photographs of the performance show Tanaka covered from head to toe in the garment, with only her face and hands visible. The colored light bulbs flickered randomly, giving off the sensation of an alien creature and, according to Tanaka, "blink[ing] like fireworks." Tanaka was inspired by dazzling neon signs in urban Osaka to create Electric Dress . The work thus reflected the changing cityscape under

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1312-687: The rapid urbanization of post-war Japan. Simultaneously, the work confined its wearer's body and emanated menacing heat and blinding light. Tanaka herself noticed the trepidation at the moment when the electricity of the work was switched on: "I had the fleeting thought: Is this how a death-row inmate would feel?" The work visualized the power of a contraption made of industrial materials, which threatened human flesh. The saturated colors of Electric Dress also referred to fashion and advertisements. In post-war Japan, monochromatic wartime costumes gradually gave way to bright clothes, which were manufactured, advertised, and worn widely. Additionally, dressmaking as

1353-414: The taboos of gallery spaces by allowing them to both touch an artwork and make loud noise in a gallery. Gutai member Shiraga Fujiko's review of Bell interpreted the work as an empowering opportunity for viewers to "stand on the very edge of the act of creating" and experience the joy of making art. However, viewers also "experience[d] the terror of being responsible for yourself". Those who were triggered

1394-523: The use of materials such as plastic, exhibitions, films, music, psychology, philosophy, literature, music, Zen, and color science. Artists as well as scholars and experts were invited to these sessions as speakers or discussants, including art historians Shizuichi Shimomise, Yasuo Kamon and Itsuji Yoshikawa, philosopher and Buddhism scholar Shin’ichi Hisamatsu , French literature scholar Masakiyo Miyamoto, music critic Mitsuhiko Fujita and poet Tōsaburō Ono. From 1952 to 1957, 43 meetings took place, most of them at

1435-504: The wall. In an effort to modernize calligraphy, Shiryū Morita, Yuichi Inoue, and Sōgen Eguchi, positioned themselves parallel to European and US-American gestural abstract oil painting and introduced new materials such as enamel and oil paint. They proposed new interpretations of the relationship between characters and blank space in calligraphy, and challenged the principle of legibility. Avant-garde potters and ceramicists such as Yasuo Hayashi, Sango Uno, Yasuyuki Suzuki and Shogo Miura rejected

1476-438: The word. The work unveiled the inherent beauty of materials that were free of elaborate artistic manipulations. Tanaka's Gutai colleague Sadamasa Motanaga wrote about it: "Beauty is not technique. People experience the beauty of opening cloth even in their home. The artist pointed it out as beauty. This act is very precious." Inspired by her outdoor installation Pink Rayon (1955), Tanaka created Bell in 1955. It consisted of

1517-448: The works were "non-figurative" and "abstract", as announced explicitly on the poster for the 2nd Genbi Exhibition in 1954. For the first four Genbi Exhibitions, the works displayed were selected by a jury committee; however, this changed for the 5th Genbi Exhibition in 1957, which was instead an open exhibition. At the 3rd Genbi Exhibition in 1955, Atsuko Tanaka presented her interactive work Bell , which had been first exhibited at

1558-507: The younger participants, such as Michio Yoshihara, Shōzō Shimamoto , Tsuruko Yamazaki , Toshio Yoshida, and Chiyū Uemae, under the guidance of Jirō Yoshihara, went on to found the Gutai Art Association in 1954, and were later joined by fellow Genbi members Akira Kanayama , Kazuo Shiraga , and Atsuko Tanaka . It is estimated that Genbi had about 100 registered members of which around 30 to 40 were regularly active. Genbi's activities ceased in 1957. Genbi members explored abstract art and pushed

1599-415: Was Gutai founded in 1954 by Jirō Yoshihara with 16 younger Genbi members, but also it benefited from Genbi's interdisciplinary and global scopes. However, with Gutai's rise, their radical questioning of the very definitions of art genres, and their growing global ambitions, the Gutai members eventually withdrew from Genbi. Suda Kokuta Suda Kokuta ( Japanese : 須田 剋太 , 1 May 1906 – 14 July 1990)

1640-524: Was a Japanese artist of the 20th century. He is known for his paintings and calligraphy. Initially, in the 1930s, Suda painted in a figurative style ( Yoga ) before moving on to become an important abstract painter of the Japanese Avant-garde art scene throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s. In his later life, he focused on Zen calligraphy . He was an active member of numerous discussion groups regarding art and calligraphy and in 1955 he co-founded

1681-570: Was followed by the first retrospective abroad, in New York and Vancouver. Her work was featured in multiple exhibitions on Gutai art in Europe and North America. Tanaka was born in Osaka , on February 10, 1932. She had four older sisters and four older brothers. She studied at the Department of Western Painting at Kyoto Municipal College of Art (now Kyoto City University of Arts ) in 1950 and left to attend

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