Gutai: Decentering Modernism

by Ming Tiampo

Gutai is the first book in English to examine Japan’s best-known modern art movement, a circle of postwar artists whose avant-garde paintings, performances, and installations foreshadowed many key developments in American and European experimental art.

 

Working with previously unpublished photographs and archival resources, Ming Tiampo considers Gutai’s pioneering transnational practice, spurred on by mid-century developments in mass media and travel that made the movement’s field of reception and influence global in scope. Using these lines of transmission to claim a place for Gutai among modernist art practices while tracing the impact of Japan on art in Europe and America, Tiampo demonstrates the fundamental transnationality of modernism. Ultimately, Tiampo offers a new conceptual model for writing a global history of art, making Gutai an important and original contribution to modern art history.

 

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

264 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2011

Reviews

[哈哈小姐 · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a kind of art history written from a transnational perspective, I especially enjoyed the middle chapters in which the author laid out Gutai’s complex reception across US and Europe. Despite the book’s particular emphasis on writing a global history of Gutai, I found the missing discussion on the group’s domestic networks and reception problematic. Postwar internationalism never seemed to exist without nationalism. So what was the group’s position within Japan and what was the relation between the group and the local art scene are something I hope to read more about.

Moreover, Gutai itself is a diverse group with generations of artists. Treating the group as a whole sometimes flattens its changing internal dynamics. The evolution of the group I believe has much to do with the their international exchanges. Visual analysis could be strengthened as well. Overall a very good book that demonstrates how to write contemporary art history of a collective using its exhibitions.

[Susan Ackley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most important and comprehensive source of Gutai-related materials in any language. Although I find the term "cultural mercantilism" a bit misleading given that the Gutai's main achievements were their radical experiments in painting and performance, no other book offers the same kind of range of sources. It is unfortunate, however, that the book is in black-and-white -- for images, please refer to the excellent Guggenheim catalogue.