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07-ippolito.ps - 3/14/2007 2:52 PM Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.2.142 by guest on 30 September 2021 07-ippolito.ps - 3/14/2007 2:52 PM HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE From the Avant-Garde: Re-Conceptualizing Cultural Origins GLOBAL CROSSINGS in the Digital Media Art of Japan ABSTRACT Misconceptions concerning Jean M. Ippolito digital artists in Japan make them out to be mere followers, savvy with technology but not necessarily the conceptual originators of their work. Examining the aesthetic and philosophical content of their work, however, reveals that their he point at which one stands while observing the international avant-garde arena. attitudes toward the exploration T of process, performance and a natural phenomenon can have an effect on how it is per- From this vantage point, this article ceived and catalogued in the memory. Similarly, from the reinterprets some of the underlying the inherent nature of materials come from innovative and daring perspective of an art historian, I perceive the work of inter- concepts and influences in the work avant-garde groups of the nationally renowned digital media artists Yoichiro Kawaguchi, of Japan’s early digital artists. 1960s and 1970s in Japan, Masaki Fujihata and Naoko Tosa as an immense historical ac- Re-conceptualization #1: The pio- including the Gutai and Mono-ha cumulation of cultural and philosophical influences that well neering computer graphic artists of groups, whose ideas predate those of the New York avant- up into a pinnacle within each complete work of art. This at- Japan are not simply emulators of garde schools, even outside titude toward the art object issues from a method of scholar- Western European and American of the technological milieu. ship developed within the field of art history. When examining creativity; they are unique contrib- a work of art, the art historian sees it not simply as the result utors to the artistic innovations and of a single artist’s conception but as a mirror that reflects the aesthetic thinking of their experi- currents of the era from which it comes. This critical approach mental art groups. is often in conflict with the artist’s own ideas about his or her Re-conceptualization #2: Artists of Japan who draw on Japa- work. It is a very personal thing to the artist, who is sometimes nese cultural influences are not limited to the incorporation hesitant to acknowledge a scope of influence broader than of known images from traditional Japan. that which comes from within, but if one looks at a work of Re-conceptualization #3: Although the content of Japanese art from a broad, conceptual view, the object itself, when one digital media art sometimes has no narrative, the meaning is is produced, is a product of the time and place from which it often profoundly complex and philosophical. comes. One can think of the object as a product of society, These re-conceptualizations are based on popular assump- something that belongs to and reflects society as a whole. In tions and stereotypes widely expressed on both sides of the this respect, the work of art is a conduit of both cultural and ocean. They sometimes appear as annoying hurdles that im- societal influences. pede a deeper philosophical understanding of the works of Having been trained in the traditional methods of art his- art and artists. The standard audience that may be interested tory, with specialization in Japanese art, I naturally look for in Japanese influences tends to look for readily recognizable Japanese influences in the art of Japan. This sometimes pro- images such as geisha and Mount Fuji or images from Edo- vokes fear in the minds of today’s internationally active Japa- period ukiyo-e woodcut prints. nese artists, since they certainly do not want to be associated with clichéd stereotypes. It is not cliché imagery that is of im- portance in my own assessment of digital art, however; it is the Fig. 1. Takamasa Kuniyasu, Return to Self, bricks and logs, fundamental approach to the medium that comes from deep- installation view at Hara Museum ARC, Gunma Prefecture, 1990. (© Takamasa Kuniyasu) rooted cultural immersion. My perception of traditional Japanese influences in Japa- nese digital art comes not only from an understanding of traditional Japanese art and culture but also from knowledge of the reactions of native Japanese artists to their own history and culture. An awareness of the struggles for recogni- tion by the avant-garde groups of Japan in the 1950s through the 1980s, as well as knowledge of similar struggles of Ameri- can and European artists, provides a unique perspective within Jean M. Ippolito (art historian), Art Department, University of Hawaii at Hilo, 200 W. Kawili Street, Hilo, HI 96720, U.S.A. E-mail: <[email protected]>. Article Frontispiece. Takamasa Kuniyasu, La Spirale du Midou, installation view, Le Musée Despiau-Wlérick, Mont-de-Marsan, France, 1997. (© Takamasa Kuniyasu) ©2007 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 142–151, 2007 143 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.2.142 by guest on 30 September 2021 07-ippolito.ps - 3/14/2007 2:52 PM perimenting with new materials and new methods of painting. The leader of the group was Jiro Yoshihara, and many of the participants were his students. They attempted to do away with the traditional GLOBAL CROSSINGS brush and canvas for painting. In the exhibition Experimental Outdoor Exhi- bition of Modern Art to Challenge the Mid-Summer’s Sun, held in a public park in Osaka in 1955, the exhibited works consisted of clear plastic tubes filled with colored water suspended from trees, paper plates lined up on the ground, plastic ground cloth stretched with foot- prints leading the audience/participants to a set location, etc. [3]. There were no works of art in traditional media—no paint on canvas. The artists of the Gutai group were exploring new materials with which to make art. This experimentation led to new processes and included performance art. The Gutai group staged performances at theater spaces in Osaka as well as Tokyo in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Members of the group also ex- perimented with different approaches to painting. Kazuo Shiraga, an ordained Buddhist priest, would swing from a rope and paint with his feet. Saburo Murakami would run through successive canvases Fig. 2. Conceptual diagram of the building blocks used in Yoichiro Kawaguchi’s growth made of paper on stretcher bars to cre- algorithm. (© Jean M. Ippolito) ate human-size holes through each [4]. Atsuko Tanaka is famous for her electric piece Bell and the electric-light dresses in which she would parade. Akira Kana- Even in Japan, these misconceptions Shigeo Chiba, an art historian and yama made drawings using a remote- have created roadblocks to my study of critic in Tokyo, wrote an article for Art- controlled toy car [5]. the cultural roots of digital media artists. Forum in 1984 that advises the casual art Members of the Gutai group were not Some Japanese artists that I interviewed observer from outside Japan: “Although acknowledged for their innovative work held back in fear of being associated with a show of interest in Japanese particular- in the international arena until very re- stereotypical imagery and refused to have ities is desired, dwelling on the exoticism cently. Even standard textbooks on 20th- anything to do with such research. They of Mount Fuji and Geisha girls is intoler- century avant-garde art movements did want to be a part of the international art able” [2]. not include the Gutai group’s contribu- arena and do not want to be pegged as For myself, I certainly enjoy traditional tion until the publication of more recent Japanese artists. In Japan, to be associated Japanese imagery in art; however, I have editions. The fourth revised edition of with such traditional imagery is to be found profound influences in digital Arneson’s History of Modern Art (1998), clichéd, and some artists are scorned for work that may be of concern to the con- however, does recognize that the per- capitalizing on stereotypes in order to noisseurs of more conceptual art in the formance art of the Gutai group predates get the attention of Western enthusiasts. international arena. Some of the work of that of Allen Kaprow and others of the Chuichi Fujii, a traditional-media artist these concept-based artists is often mis- early 1970s [6]. High Red Center, a coali- whose large sculptural pieces resemble understood because of the lack of nar- tion of three artists from Tokyo, also bonsai trees, admits to cultural influ- rative. The cultural influences of these staged performances, some of which ences, but hesitates to focus on them for artists stem, not from the popular art of were reenacted by members of the inter- fear of exploiting stereotypes: Japan, but from the avant-garde move- national Fluxus artists in New York [7]. ments of the 1960s and 1970s. The desires of the Gutai group to find Without saying that we are American or new processes and materials for making Japanese, we carry our cultures within art in the late 1950s and 1960s grew in us, and that emerges in a work. With- EARLY AVANT-GARDE ART parallel with the Abstract Expressionist out being conscious of it, culture just GROUPS IN JAPAN naturally is an influence. I don’t like it movement of New York in the early 1950s. when artists use their culture as a sell- One of the earliest independent avant- The Gutai artists were fascinated by ac- ing point.

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