부산대학교 도서관

Summary: In response to a general interest in subjectivity and the rejection of conventional systems in early postwar Japan, modernist artists confronted two major issues: how to incorporate human experience into art, and how to challenge the criticism of being derivative of West. Yoshihara Jiro developed a model of materiality and human subjectivity that ingeniously incorporated the human presence into non-figurative art, thereby attempting to overcome the problems of national "authenticity" in modernist styles. Applying Yoshihara's concept in conjunction with their own theorization of painting practice, Gutai artists, including Shimamoto Shozo, Shiraga Kazuo, and Tanaka Atsuko, developed highly individual works ranging from sculptures and installations to performance. Although Gutai members consciously planned their presentations to generate critical conversations, critics and artists in Japan failed to acknowledge the group's ground-breaking interpretation; this neglect greatly affected Gutai's decision to return to painting. Through careful examination of the wider historical, intellectual, and cultural context, this dissertation demonstrates that Gutai's innovative concept of materiality and human subjectivity was a lone response to the problems shared by Japanese artists in the mid-1950s, while also prefiguring many new developments in modern art of the 1960s and beyond.