BRUSSELS.- During the turbulent years that followed the end of the Second World War, Japan experienced an extraordinary artistic revival. Barely a decade later, around 1957, the French art critic Michel Tapié was invited to Japan to present a series of works from a collection he called Art Informel. This included paintings by innovative western artists, such as Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Karel Appel and Georges Dubuffet. This had an immediate and powerful influence in Japan.
Strongly impressed by the vivid colours and energetic brush strokes of the western avant-gardists, a number of Japanese artists began to experiment with great ease and almost naturally with raw matter, form, texture and movement which in appearance differed from traditional convention. By incorporating these new elements into their culture and traditional practices, they truly revolutionised part of the artistic scene in Japan, but not only. Some of the Japanese artists travelled to Europe and the United States, where they left their imprint on the art of performance.
The Far East and the West, tradition and modernity came together.
To celebrate 150 years of friendship between Japan and Belgium,
BOZARs exhibition, A Feverish Era in Japanese Art. Expressionism in the 1950s and 1960s, provides a fresh insight into the leading Japanese artists of this avant-garde generation who sought feverishly, and sometimes through a radical and influential artistic transformation, to break with the system of conservative standards in their country.
The exhibition, A Feverish Era in Japanese Art. Expressionism in the 1950s and 1960s, presents around fifty previously unseen works from collections belonging to the largest museums in Japan, namely the National Museum of Modern Art,Kyoto, the National Museum of Modern Art,Tokyo and the National Museum of Art,Osaka. The exhibition features works from Kazuo Shiraga, Jiro Yoshihara, Hisao Domoto and Taro Okamoto, among other artists.
On 14, 15 and 16 October BOZAR will welcome one of the last representatives of the Japanese avant-garde movement, Sadaharu Horio, for a series of performances which will be energetic, experimental, fun and interactive.
Through fifty works of art, this exhibition showcases the exuberance of and the multiple developments in Japanese art in the 1950s and 1960s. Art critics and artists in post-war Japan identified four basic elements in the expressionist works presented by Tapié which they used as the unifying themes for a new type of art. These four elements make up for the four chapters of the exhibition : (1) Repetition, Aggregation, and Covered Pictures; (2) Texture and Matter; (3) The Body, Action, and Flowing Lines; (4) Primitive, Primordial, and Ecological Images. Each of the elements reflected the problems that emerged in post-war Japan an increasing ethnic consciousness due to the defeat, a more conservative political and social climate and a general mood of resistance to obvious art. The result was an abundance of unique works.
While the works on display may be fifty or sixty years old, their message is still relevant today. The way the Japanese reacted to the international artistic themes and styles at this time reminds us of todays world where globalisation and nationalism co-exist.
Some works (8) will be rotated every six weeks owing to their fragility.