Japanese art breaking rules

“Resounding Spirit: Japanese Contemporary Arts of the 1960s”

Various artists

Through… “Resounding Spirit: Japanese Contemporary Arts of the 1960s”

Various artists

Through December 9

University Art Gallery

Frick Fine Arts Building

While Andy Warhol was working on portraits of Marilyn Monroe, several Japanese artists were creating their own unconventional art. Japanese critics, unappreciative of the innovative creations, deemed the strange art that was beginning to emerge “poorly crafted” and “too chaotic.”

“Resounding Spirit: Japanese Contemporary Arts of the 1960s” displays this once-novel artwork at the University Art Gallery.

The artwork featured, abstract and oftentimes vibrant in color, is striking in appearance. Some of the paintings are visually simple, consisting of two or three bold colors arranged in an uncomplicated pattern or form. Other works consist of a multitude of colors and a complex or random arrangement.

In “Koh,” by Takeo Yamaguchi, a simple black figure is painted onto an orange canvas. The painting has an interesting texture: It looks like scraps of paper lie underneath the paint, as if the canvas were a flat papier-mache surface.

In “Visual Meditation,” a three-dimensional piece made of cloth is attached to a canvas that is painted bright red. The object looks like a boxy mouth, and the canvas has the texture of fine sand.

Visually complex paintings such as Toshimitsu Imai’s “L’Onde” use a great amount of oil pigment. Imai’s painting is splashed and sprayed with thickly layered red, orange, white and black paint that covers most of the canvas, beginning in the upper left corner and falling diagonally into the lower right corner. Empty, white space is left in the lower left corner, presenting a startling and effective image to the viewer.

The works of art in exhibit represent the evolution of postwar Japanese art in the 1960s. In painting, two currents came to coexist. The first form was modern yoga developed by the generation of artists born before 1920. The second current was the beginning of contemporary painting, or gendai kaiga. This form of painting addressed a set of new issues such as gesture, minimalism, monochromism, materiality and theoretical radicalism.

A painting by Ushio Shinohara boldly expresses this new movement in Japanese art. In his large painting, “Boxing Painting,” which stretches across an entire wall in one of the gallery rooms, green and white splotches dot a bright purple canvas.

Shinohara was forced to begin as a freshman at Tokyo National University of Arts when he was finishing his senior year because of his chaotic and unconventional style. After attending the university for six years, Shinohara finally left. He cut his hair into a mohawk and dressed in bright colors to launch himself into the mindset of Jean Paul Sartre’s existentialism.

Shinohara’s work is as vibrant as his style. His work can be related to the Gutai movement, in which artists experimented with art and painting, breaking previously held notions. A video in the gallery shows Ushio painting the green canvas. Wearing boxing gloves, Ushio dips each glove into a different color of paint and boxes onto the canvas.

“Resounding Spirit: Japanese Contemporary Arts of the 1960s” is located on the first floor of the Frick Fine Arts Building. The gallery is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Thursday evening until 8. The radical qualities of style found in the contemporary pieces convey a time when the course of art history in Japan changed drastically.