白髪一雄

Shiraga Kazuo was born on August 12, 1924 in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, the eldest son of Shinjirō, a local kimono merchant, and Fumi. While in his second year at Hyogo Prefectural Amagasaki Junior (today Senior) High School, he joined the newly established art club. Encouraged by a teacher, he aspired to study at Tokyo Fine Arts School (present-day Tokyo University of the Arts), but Japan was already facing wartime food shortages, causing his family to oppose this plan. Instead, in 1942 he enrolled at Kyoto City Technical School of Painting (present-day Kyoto City University of Arts), which was within commuting distance from home. While he initially hoped to study Western-style painting, the school only offered courses in Japanese-style painting and design at the time, and he reluctantly majored in the former. In 1944, while still a student, he was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army Reserve Officers’ Cadet School in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture. After graduating the following year, he was kept in Japan as part of the homeland defense force, and was visiting his hometown of Amagasaki at the time of Japan’s surrender in 1945. He resumed his studies the same year. Shiraga graduated from Kyoto City Technical School of Painting in 1948, and the following year he enrolled at the Osaka Municipal Institute of Art (affiliated with the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts), where he shifted his focus to Western-style painting. Around 1950 he began visiting the studio of Itō Tsugurō, a Western-style painter living in Ashiya, Hyogo, and showing work in exhibitions held by the Shinseisaku Art Society, of which Itō was a member. In 1952, at the invitation of friends from the Shinseisaku Art Society, he participated in meetings and exhibitions organized by the Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Contemporary Art Study Group, known in Japanese as “Genbi” for short), which had recently been founded in Osaka. Through this group he got to know Yoshihara Jirō and artists under Yoshihara’s influence such as Shimamoto Shōzō, Yoshida Toshio, and Uemae Chiyū, who would later be fellow members of the Gutai Art Association (referred to below as “Gutai”). Around the same time, Shiraga formed Zero-kai (Zero Society) with fellow Shinseisaku Art Society members Murakami Saburō and Kanayama Akira as well as non-member Tanaka Atsuko. The group’s name signified the belief that art should start from nothing, and they expanded this concept by making a pact to explore opposite directions from this zero point, with Kanayama as “minus” for his pursuit of geometric abstraction while Shiraga was “plus” for his diametrically opposing approach. This contributed to a rapid shift in Shiraga’s style, from dark, fantastical figuration to abstraction. Aiming for what he called “paintings like sea cucumbers” (Shiraga Kazuo, Hariu Ichirō [talk], “Kamigata akushon dangi,” “Shiraga Kazuo: Works of the Past Twelve Years,“Tokyo Gallery, 1973) with no particular color palette or composition, he began in 1953 to produce all-over paintings by spreading single colors of paint over canvases with a painting knife or handmade spatula. He subsequently replaced these tools with his fingers or palms to further heighten the paintings’ fluidity, settled on crimson lake reminiscent of blood as his color of choice, and by 1954, arrived at a unique method of spreading paint with his feet over canvases laid on the floor. In 1955, at the invitation of Shimamoto Shōzō, he joined Gutai along with fellow Group Zero members Murakami Saburō, Kanayama Akira, and Tanaka Atsuko. Around this time, he developed the approach of suspending a rope from the ceiling, swinging from it with both hands, and sliding over the canvas, producing paintings that incorporated physical action. This raw engagement with the materials elicited visceral sensations, which were also evident in his first exhibited works as a Gutai member. These included “Please Come In” (in which viewers entered a conical structure formed of red logs and viewed marks made by Shiraga with an axe) at the Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Mid-summer Burning Sun in Ashiya Park in July 1955, and “Challenging Mud” (a work displaying the aftermath of his wrestling in a mud pit) at the 1st Gutai Art Exhibition at Ohara Hall, Tokyo in October of that year. These non-painting works further explored spiritual elements inherent in the body (what Shiraga termed “shishitsu,” or “innate characteristics”). In 1955 and 1956, he frequently contributed to the group’s magazine “Gutai,” expressing a distinctive perspective on art which emphasized the supreme value of “shishitsu.” With this mindset, he increasingly found no meaning in paintings that were simply the outcomes of actions, and virtually all of his works from this period were discarded after being shown and are no longer extant. A turning point that drew Shiraga back to painting came in 1957, with Michel Tapié’s visit to Japan. Tapié, a French independent curator, championed the new abstract art that had emerged in postwar Europe and the US, which he described collectively as Informel (Informalism), and aimed to spearhead a global movement. He developed a keen interest in Gutai after encountering their magazine in Paris. Tapié was particularly impressed with Shiraga’s works, and entered into a contract under which they would be shipped to Europe individually. Tapié introduced Japan to the frenetic action painting of artists such as Georges Mathieu and Jackson Pollock, igniting what was called an “Informel whirlwind” in the Japanese art scene. As a result, Shiraga’s barefoot action painting (which he termed “Foot Painting”) finally garnered attention in Japan as well. Gutai leader Yoshihara essentially prohibited members from naming works, but Shiraga had become increasingly prolific, making it difficult to tell his works apart. As a workaround, in 1959 he began naming works after heroes from his favorite childhood book, the Chinese classic “The Water Margin.” This series continued until 1965, when he deemed it complete for the time being at 106 paintings. Through Tapié, Shiraga gained increased opportunities to exhibit his work in the West as both a Gutai member and as an individual artist, earning accolades such as the Acquisition Prize at the XI Lissone Prize (XI Premio Lissone internazionale per la pittura), Galleria La Bussola, Turin in 1959, and in Japan, an invitation to the 4th Contemporary Japanese Art Exhibition in 1960. In 1962, he had one solo exhibition after another, at Galerie Stadler in Paris, the International Center of Aesthetic Research in Turin, Tokyo Gallery, and Gutai Pinacotheca in Nakanoshima, Osaka. In 1965, Yoshihara Jirō was concerned that Gutai members’ works were becoming formulaic due to over-alignment with Tapié’s outlook on art, and aimed to invigorate the group by bringing in many new members. In response, Shiraga broadened his technique beyond Foot Painting and began using boards and rods to spread paint, producing fluid surfaces and exploring new forms. His confidence grew after his painting “Niaka,” made with this technique, won the Grand Prize at the Japan International Art Exhibition (Tokyo Biennale) in 1965. From 1966 onwards he pursued the Fan series, using one end of a board or rod as a pivot to spread paint in semicircles like the windshield wipers of a car. Meanwhile, believing that spiritual discipline was essential for his artistic growth, Shiraga turned to esoteric Buddhism. In 1971, he was ordained at Enryakuji Temple on Mount Hiei, receiving the Buddhist name Shiraga Sodō, and after Yoshihara’s death in March 1972 and the subsequent dissolution of Gutai, Shiraga deepened his religious commitment. In 1974, when he completed 35 days of intensive training at Ganzandaishidō on Mount Hiei, and through 1975, he produced many works primarily featuring perfect circles, which he named after Buddhist and esoteric teachings. While this Circle series was an evolution of the Fan series in formal terms, his practice of visualizing specific Buddhas before painting was a departure from his earlier Foot Painting approach as he sought to fuse consciousness and unconsciousness on the canvas. This radical change in painting style, and the dominance of Conceptualism in the art world, caused Shiraga’s status to decline in the 1970s. However, with the emergence of Neo-Expressionism in Europe and the US towards the end of the decade, Shiraga returned to foot painting in 1978. In the 1980s, as interest in postwar art from non-Western regions grew in the context of postmodernism, the Gutai group and Shiraga’s Foot Paintings returned to the attention of the West. Riding this momentum, in 1992 he had a solo exhibition at Galerie Stadler in Paris (his first there in 30 years), and subsequently showed new works in Europe, including at Galerie Georg Nothelfer in Berlin in 1999 and at Annely Juda Fine Art in London in 2001, which were highly lauded. In 1987, he was awarded the Hyogo Prefectural Cultural Prize for Excellence. After returning to foot painting, Shiraga moved away from the grisly expanses of paint dominated by crimson lake that characterized his 1960s work, expanding his range by making extensive use of vivid colors and sometimes painting solely in black and white. In 2001, his first major retrospective was held at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Modern Art (now Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art Oji Branch Haradanomori Gallery), and in 2002, he received the Art Prize of Osaka City. On April 8, 2008, Shiraga Kazuo died of sepsis in Amagasaki City at the age of 83. In 2009 and 2010, a national touring retrospective that had been in the planning stages during his lifetime was held as a memorial exhibition at the Amagasaki Cultural Center and three other locations. Apart from a brief period during World War II, Shiraga spent his entire life in Amagasaki, and his paintings fusing extremes – spirit and matter, consciousness and unconsciousness, themes from classical literature and antiquity and groundbreaking techniques – show strong links with the unique culture of his home city. Amagasaki flourished as a transit hub between Kyoto and Osaka, and developed a distinctive culture that merged aristocratic and populist elements, and this has contributed to Amagasaki’s active celebration of Shiraga’s legacy since his death. In 2013, the Shiraga Kazuo Memorial Room was established within the Amagasaki Cultural Center; in 2021, the Kazuo Shiraga Contemporary Art Award was introduced; and in 2024, a series of commemorative events was organized by the Amagasaki Cultural Foundation, the Amagasaki Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and Amagasaki Shinkin Bank to mark the centennial of his birth. (Hirai Shōichi / Translated by Christopher Stephens) (Published online: 2025-01-15)