Irene Sieberger
Senior Specialist
PROPERTY FROM A PRESTIGIOUS AMERICAN PRIVATE COLLECTION
Lot 27*,TP
Kazuo Shiraga(1924-2008)Untitled (Red Fan)
1965
1965
Withdrawn
Amended
15 October 2021, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£1,000,000 - £1,500,000
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Kazuo Shiraga (1924-2008)
Untitled (Red Fan)
1965
lacquer on paper and wood
151 by 304.5 by 50.5 cm.
59 7/16 by 119 7/8 by 19 7/8 in.
This work was executed in 1965.
1965
lacquer on paper and wood
151 by 304.5 by 50.5 cm.
59 7/16 by 119 7/8 by 19 7/8 in.
This work was executed in 1965.
Footnotes
Provenance
International Gallery Orez, The Hague
Private Collection, UK (acquired directly from the above in 1966)
Private Collection, UK (by descent from the above)
Sale: Bonhams, London, Post-War & Contemporary Art, 11 February 2016, Lot 33
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Osaka, Gutai Pinacotheca, 15th Gutai Art Exhibition, 1965
Tokyo, Keio Department Store, 16th Gutai Art Exhibition, 1965
The Hague, International Gallery Orez, Facets of New Tendencies, 1966
Rotterdam, Experiment Studio Rotterdam, Gutaï Groep Osaka Japan, 1967, n.p., installation view illustrated in black and white
Klagenfurt, Galerie Heide Hildebrand, Gutai, 1967
Lugano, Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Gutai: dipingere con il tempo e lo spazio, 2010-2011, p. 210, fig. 42, illustrated in black and white
New York, Hauser & Wirth, A Visual Essay on Gutai at 32 East 69th Street, 2012, n.p., no. 4, illustrated in colour
London, Bonhams, ZERO | GUTAI | KUSAMA, 2015, pp. 6, 7, 42, 43 details illustrated in colour and pp. 45, 107 illustrated in colour
Literature
Jiro Yoshihara, Gutai 14 Journal, Osaka 1965, no. 28, illustrated in black and white
J.V., 'Kunsthandwerkers tonen produkten in Galerij Orez' in Het Binnenhof, 20 September 1966, detail illustrated in black and white
Document Gutai, 1954-1972, Ashiya 1993, p. 57, installation view illustrated in black and white; p. 193, installation view illustrated in black and white and p. 201, installation view illustrated in black and white
Ming Tiampo, Gutai: Decentering Modernism, Chicago 2011, p. 136, no. 5.10, installation view illustrated in black and white
Hirai Shoichi, GUTAI: The Spirit of an Era, Tokyo 2012, p. 136, installation view illustrated in black and white
Kazuo Shiraga, New York 2015, p. 264, installation view illustrated in black and white and p. 289, installation view illustrated in black and white
Body and Matter: Kazuo Shiraga | Satoru Hoshino, New York 2015, p. 119, installation view illustrated in black and white
Gabriel Ritter Ed., Between Action and the Unknown: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Sadamasa Motonaga, Dallas 2015, p. 79, fig. 32, illustrated in colour
One of only a handful of sculptural works created by Kazuo Shiraga, and the only to appear at auction, Untitled (Red Fan) is made from red lacquered tissue paper and folded in the manner of a traditional Japanese fan. At just over three meters wide and standing tall, the work has a truly majestic and arresting presence to it, emanating a serene air of calm, despite its intense red hue called 'Crimson Lake', the artist's favourite colour at that time. Primarily known for his mesmerizing performance paintings, sculptural works by the artist are a rare sight especially at auction. The first sculpture he ever executed was the monumental Red Timber (1957) which is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo and is rendered in the same intense colour as Untitled (Red Fan). In 1965, Shiraga executed three other fans, most notably Shiroi Ougi (White Fan) which now resides in the collection of the Artizon Museum in Tokyo. A green fan and a further red fan are both included in important private collections.
Shiraga always was a very physical artist. In the mid-1950s around the same time as the genesis of the Gutai group, Shiraga started to experiment with unorthodox painting methods. Having been educated in Nihon-ga (the traditional and extremely formal Japanese painting style) using a brush was second nature for Shiraga, yet in an act of artistic nihilism, he negated the brush in favour of using his body as a tool. Initially starting with his fingers, Shiraga soon used his feet to paint: he would attach a rope to the ceiling to carry his weight, whilst using his feet to drag paint across canvasses laid on the floor. The results were captivating and created a new painterly language rooted in the synthesis of matter and body, in acts of execution that were as much performances as they were a legitimate working method. In the mid-1960s he began to use boards in his practice, which led to the emergence of arc-like or fan shapes and circles on the canvas, mirrored in the present work.
The Gutai Art Association was founded in 1954 by the enigmatic Jirō Yoshihara, an eccentric millionaire and artist who exhorted his followers to: "make something that has never existed before". The group rose from the ashes of Post-War Japanese culture where a combination of defeat and a state founded on anachronism stifled creativity and fostered a lack of confidence that was shattered by the sheer exhilaration of this radical new practice. Between 1955 and 1958 Yoshihara organised four exhibitions in space (open air), and two in time (on stage). Saburo Murakami literally broke boundaries by jumping through large paper canvases, Shozo Shimamoto invited the spectator to walk on a work of his, consisting of firm and wobbly planks. Tropes as diverse as the elements, weather, smoke and spontaneous actions of spectators were all welcome in this new approach to the visual arts.
As a leading figure from the movement Kazuo Shiraga's approach to painting sent shockwaves through the global art world. Yves Klein visited Japan between 1952 and 1954 and the influence of Shiraga's espousal of using his body to replace a paintbrush can clearly be seen in Klein's Anthropometry series. Shiraga always considered his physical actions to be linked to spiritual experiences and in the early 1960s Shiraga became interested in esoteric Buddhism. Whilst out hunting wild boar he encountered many carved stone tablets. Buddhist teaching involves the transmission of secret texts through direct experience, often involving physically demanding austerities. Ten years later he would involve those principles in his artistic practice. The symbol of the circle then became a central feature in Shiraga's paintings; the Buddhist wheel or circle refers to the Wheel of Law or to the cycle of rebirth. Untitled (Red Fan) represents an early example of this religious interest. A fan is fundamentally symbolic in Japan, with the shorter end representing birth and the blades standing for the many possible paths leading away from this start in life. Fans are used in religious ceremonies; holding a fan is meant to be restorative to the soul. The integration of a traditional Japanese object with Buddhist connotations in a three-dimensional artwork is unique in Shiraga's oeuvre and in the tonally harmonious larger than life Untitled (Red Fan) he created a work that is all encompassing and contemplative. He would continue the Fan series into the 1960s and '70s though in much smaller formats.
1965, the year when the current sculpture was executed, was a turning point in the history of Gutai not least because it represented the first year in which the movement collaborated formally with what might be seen to be its European sister groups ZERO and Nul. These movements came into being independently but shared many of the same principles and approaches to medium and process. In that year, Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum organised the NUL 65 exhibition which included the German ZERO group and the Japanese Gutai group was invited as to participate as well. ZERO had come into being during evening exhibitions in the Düsseldorf studio of Heinz Mack and Otto Piene, in 1958. During the first phase ZERO concentrated on a severe formal and expressive reduction of artistic means, in monochrome paintings that were a reaction to the fashionable Abstract Expressionism of the 1950's. Around 1965, ZERO had embraced the elements as its material: earth, fire, water, air – not unlike Gutai.
Right after its execution, Untitled (Red Fan) was exhibited at the 15th Gutai Art Exhibition in Osaka and in the 16th Gutai Art Exhibition in Tokyo. In 1966 the sculpture travelled to Europe where it was shown in an exhibition at the Orez International Gallery in The Hague, Holland. The exhibition was a group show titled 'Facets of New Tendencies' which included work by several members of the Gutai group as well as other avant-garde artists such as Yayoi Kusama. In May 1967, Orez International curated a Gutai exhibition and accompanying catalogue at Studio Experiment in Rotterdam; this catalogue contains images of works by the participating Gutai artists including Shiraga's present work. One month later, Orez International Gallery curated a Gutai exhibition at Heide Hildebrand Gallery in the Austrian city of Klagenfurt. After 1967, Untitled (Red Fan) remained in a distinguished, private European collection for forty-three years until in 2010 when it was exhibited in the Gutai exhibition at the Museo Cantonale d'Arte in Lugano, Switzerland. There, it was re-united and proudly shared a room with Shiraga's other sculptural masterpiece, Red Timber from 1957. In September 2012, Untitled (Red Fan) was included in an exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in New York, in the very same building that once housed Martha Jackson Gallery where the first American Gutai exhibition took place in 1958.
Untitled (Red Fan) is undoubtedly one of Shiraga's most extraordinary and rare works in a long and celebrated career. The fact that it has been exhibited so widely and remained in the same collection for most of its existence makes its presence at auction remarkable. Its serene minimalist qualities give it a timeless elegance and the striking red colour commands the room and makes this a true stand out piece in any collection. It is only in the last decade that Shiraga and the Gutai group's true artistic significance has been acknowledged by the Western tradition, notably through the Guggenheim Museum's 'Splendid Playground' exhibition in 2013, the first museum retrospective in the USA devoted to Gutai. The artist has rightfully been included in other exhibitions at some of the world's most important institutions such as: 'A New Avant-Garde', MoMA, New York, 2012; 'Destroy the picture, painting the void, 1949-1962', Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2012 and 'Big Bang: Déstruction et création dans l'art du 20ème siècle', Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2005.
Only in recent years have Shiraga's artworks generated record prices on the market and consistently appear in the most important private and public collections in the world, not least the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Guggenheim Collection, New York and Tate Modern, London, amongst many others. The present work offers the rare opportunity to acquire a truly mesmerizing piece by one of the most important and sought-after artists of the second half of the Twentieth Century.
Saleroom notices
Please note that this lot has been withdrawn.
