“Challenging Mud” 1955 - Kazuo Shiraga
Kazuo Shiraga performing "Challenging Mud" at the first Gutai Open Air Exhibition, Tokyo, 1955.
Post-war artist Kazuo Shiraga’s, ‘Challenging Mud’ (1955), is a performative painting of Shiraga propelling himself through a pile of shapeless wet mud in an outdoor exhibition. The artist begins by stripping off his clothing to only white shorts and enters a shallow mound of wet mud, rocks and clay. As Shiraga sinks into the pool of mud, he begins to agitate, transforming the mud into compositional shapes with his body. The ‘Challenging Mud’ performance took place in ‘The First Gutai Art Exhibition’ in 1955, a non-traditional outdoor exhibition in Tokyo. The work is presented as a performance and site of action, with active audiences that kept multiple forms of documentation. The active real-time engagement of the community and audience of this performance presents a dialogue between the collective and the individual. Shiraga’s ephemeral performance transcended the limitations of painting, space and the canvas, becoming an extension of his practice and political resistance.
Kazuo Shiraga was a Japanese Modern artist associated with the post-war Gutai collective of avant-garde artists. The group name Gutai, translates to ‘concreteness’ or ‘embodiment’, indicating the over-arching interest of materiality and representation[1].The Gutai collective sought to further the dialogue and physical interaction between the artist and its material. Strongly informed by Jackson Pollock’s practice, the Gutai’s were interested in the all-overness quality of his paintings and the spaciousness of the canvas. The Gutai’s extended the idea of spaciousness and painting through radicalising the physical context of their art to the outdoors. The outdoor context transcended the limits of the canvas and redefined the relationship between painting and representation.[2] Challenging Mud became a direct confrontation of the artist and his material, inspired by Pollock’s physical relationship with painting on the floor. ‘Challenging Mud’ was a painting in space, Shiraga radically re-defined the notion of painting and subverted Clement Greenberg’s hegemonic account of Modern art, as ‘an acceptance of the limitation of the medium.”[3] Alexandrea Munroe, curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim Museum, argues that the Gutai’s practice was about ‘moving art from depicted reality to experiential reality’, moving the painting from the wall into space.[4] While the Gutai radically dismantled the definition of painting, their first appearance at New York in 1958 was not welcomed by many. The collective was criticised and dismissed for being imitators and derivative of Pollock, and The New York School[5]. However, since then, critics have sought to over-turn the reductive and hegemonic interpretations of their works and values the Gutai collective as epochal to the avant-garde movement.
Post-war Japan in 1955 was recovering from the distrust of the broader society and questioned the social uniformity that permeated throughout imperialist Japan. The notion of individuality was reconsidered as a way to liberate artists and intellectuals, and to re-envision and express their new social reality. The Gutai collective sought to relinquish any belief in ideology that was imposed upon the society by the state. Shiraga saw the importance of individualism and argued that ‘everyone should develop their own way of feeling, talking and painting’[6]. ‘Challenging Mud’ can be interpreted as a reflection on the war responsibility, and the extremist militarism that was present during the war. Shiraga stressed the significance of individuality and its power to liberate and resist ‘the darkness of the first half of the twentieth century’.[7] This contrasted to the dominant formalist school of thought in the New York avant-garde, that art is considered independent from social and political influences[8]. Shiraga highlighted the power of the individual through his physical exploration of the body in the performance, the resistance of the collective as a nation and social uniformity is demonstrated through his manipulation and physical assertion in the mud.[9] The broader distrust of ideology was expressed through the use of ‘concrete’ and objective materials embodying the power of objectivity and the individual. The tension between the individual and collective permeates throughout the performance.
Kazuo Shiraga and his avant-garde collective, Gutai, continues to leave resonance in the contemporary scene today. They radically redefined the notion of painting and its relation to space and sought to liberate the trauma and extremist ideologies from the war through individual expression. The ephemeral 'Challenging Mud’ now exists beyond the western canon, and continues to shed light on the significant contributions made to abstract painting by non-western movements. More than ever, scholars are seeking to dethrone the hegemonic framework of Modern Art, and to consider a transnational approach in art that was once overlooked.
[1] Ming, Tianpo. “Gutai Chain: The Collective Spirit of Individualism”. Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, Duke University Press, 2013. p.383
[2] Ming, Tianpo. “Gutai: Decentering Modernism”. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
p.50
[3] Ming, 2011. p.51
[4] Strickland, Carol. “Seeing Red: Understanding Kazuo Shiarag’s Sudden fame’, Momus, April 8th, 2015. Accessed April 10th, 2020. https://momus.ca/seeing-red-understanding-kazuo-shiragas-sudden-fame/
[5] Ashton, Dore. “Art: Japan’s Gutai Group’ - New York Times, 25 September 1958, p.66
[6] Ming, 2013. p.386
[7] Ming, 2013. p.387
[8] Greenberg, Clement. "Modernist Painting," [1960] in Clement Greenberg: The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p.88
[9] Ming, 2013. p.390
Image:
Shigara, Kazuo, Challenging Mud, 1955, performance art, accessed 11th April, 2020,
