NYAB Event - "Gutai: A 'Concrete' Discussion of Transnationalism" Symoposium

"Gutai: A 'Concrete' Discussion of Transnationalism" Symoposium

This event has ended.
At Guggenheim Museum
Media: Art Talk

Fifty-five years have passed since the Gutai Art Association (Gutai) was founded in the city of Ashiya, west of Osaka, in 1954. The group’s aspiration to “present concrete (gutai-teki) proof that our spirit is free” resulted in an amazing body of work, ranging from gestural abstraction to performances, outdoor and indoor installations to Conceptualism. Already in the 1950s, Gutai’s work prefigured many of the newest and most important tendencies of 1960s art. Their radical experimentalism was enabled and disseminated by leader Yoshihara Jirō’s engagement with the international art world. Using his extensive library and connections, he kept the group in dialogue with artists internationally, even bringing the group’s journal Gutai to the library of Jackson Pollock, among others.

Today, as the contemporary art world becomes more globalized, Gutai’s transnationalism feels even more compelling and relevant than before. In the panel, art historians working at the forefront of Gutai scholarship in a “concrete” manner will explore Gutai’s transnationalism.

Participants: Paul Jenkins, Alexandra Munroe, Ming Tiampo, Judith Rodenbeck, and Reiko Tomii

This program is conceived by PoNJA-GenKon in conjunction with “Under Each Others’ Spell”: Gutai and New York, on view at New Jersey City University’s Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery (through Dec 16).

[Image: Copies of Gutai 2 & 3 (1956), sent to Jackson Pollock by Gutai member Shimamoto Shozo. Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton, New York]