Shigeo Anzaï: Index I&II

Index I Photographs from a pivotal era in Japanese art 1970–76

Index II Portraits of international artists and their work 1970–97

Shigeo AnzaĂŻ : Index

Index

Shigeo Anzaï White Rainbow 2016

Index I Photographs from a pivotal era in Japanese art 1970–76 Index II Portraits of international artists and their work 1970–97

White Rainbow would like to thank the following for their invaluable contribution to the two exhibitions and to the catalogue:

Contents

Shigeo Anzaï Dr Yasufumi Nakamori Rafal Niemojewski Dr Jo Melvin Rika Suzuki Mizuki Takahashi Zeit-Foto Salon — Published by White Rainbow, London on the occasion of the exhibitions: Shigeo Anzaï : Index I 25 November 2015 – 23 January 2016

Foreword

8

Shigeo Anzaï : Index II 17 May – 9 July 2016

Timeline

10

Artworks © Shigeo Anzaï Texts © White Rainbow, Yasufumi Nakamori Catalogue © White Rainbow, London, 2016

The emergence of Shigeo Anzaï as a ‘contemporary art companion’ Dr Yasufumi Nakamori

16

Plates

25

A conversation with Shigeo Anzaï

26

A pivotal era in Japanese art

80

Index I and Index II : List of works

94

— Reproduction of works courtesy the artist and Zeit-Foto Salon — Edited by Edward Ball Design by Placefield Set in OurType Arnhem, Arnhem Fine and Fakt Print by Xtraprint — White Rainbow 47 Mortimer Street London W1W 8HJ white-rainbow.co.uk +44 (0) 207 637 1050 — All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing of the copyright holders and of the publishers.

— Front endpaper: Kishio Suga Gallery 16, Kyoto 14 July 1974 270 × 165 mm

Back endpaper: Rei Naito Potential Aspect of Life Gallery Shimoda, Tokyo 22 March 1994 233 × 175 mm

Foreword Edward Ball

In the spirit of mapping Shigeo Anzaï’s trajectory from Tokyo 1970 through to his travels in Europe and America, this timeline presents a cross-section of data. Divided both chronologically and geographically, it highlights where Anzaï was at key points in his career, and key events both in Japan and internationally.

Shigeo Anzaï began his artistic practice as a painter, moving towards photography in the late 1960s. This led to a career documenting artists and their work, with over 3,000 works shot both in Japan and internationally over the last four decades.

Anzaï’s photographs are notable for their instinctive and sensitive capturing of what the artist wished to communicate in a work. His photographs, while valuable historical records of exhibitions, have a quality beyond mere documentation for their ability to evoke the experience of an installation or artwork.

Over the course of a long and varied career, Anzaï established himself as the foremost photographer of Mono-ha (School of Things), a movement which saw artists explore the interdependency of natural and industrial materials, resulting in work that was often ephemeral. Many of these – frequently performances, happenings and installations – survive today only as reconstructions or in his photographs. Anzaï’s images allow these works to be seen and understood within their original context: a valuable resource when information on exhibitions or documentation of works is scarce.

White Rainbow Gallery presented two exhibitions of Anzaï’s work: Index I (25 November 2015 – 23 January 2016) focused on Anzaï’s role as a witness to the landmark exhibitions, events and happenings of the avant-garde in Japan 1970–76, with particular focus on the 10th Tokyo Biennale, 1970; Index II (17 May – 9 July 2016) featured Anzaï’s portraits of the artists he came into contact with during his long career, including Bruce McLean, Yayoi Kusama, Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys, among others.

Index aims to bring these two strands of Anzaï’s photographic practice together in a single volume. This book sets out to follow Anzaï’s artistic and personal trajectory across portraiture, installation photographs and more candid snapshots, taking in locations from Tokyo to New York, and documenta in Kassel, across a period of over thirty years. The life and work of the artist – his index – allows us to think about an art history not through artworks or exhibitions alone, but instead to plot a more idiosyncratic and individual course.

In 2010, the research and publishing organisation Afterall launched a new series of exhibition histories, wholly devoted to the study of landmark exhibitions. The aim was to examine art in the context of its presentation in the public realm, thinking of alternative ways of viewing art history – which, in this case, meant primarily through the prism of exhibitions. White Rainbow’s research into the life and work of Shigeo Anzaï has from the beginning sought to contextualise his practice through exhibition histories.

A key concern of White Rainbow’s exhibition programme is to further knowledge and awareness of Japanese post-war art. Documenting his close relationships with artists internationally, Anzaï’s photographic practice weaves a history of seminal moments in Japanese art that is global in scope. Further, his intuitively communicative way of documenting artworks allows us not to lose sight of the works themselves.

The approach to this book has been to explore an interrelationship between exhibition histories and Anzaï’s own personal account. This has been done through close contact with the artist, and through allowing Anzaï’s photographs to shape the publication’s structuring logic. White Rainbow is grateful to the artist for providing illuminating descriptions of the contexts for his photographs in an extended Q&A. In particular, this has recovered previously hidden details of the 10th Tokyo Biennale, 1970, where Anzaï’s photographic career began in earnest, and also where White Rainbow’s research project began its enquiry. The generosity of the artist has allowed an insight, not only into his travels and friendships up until the turn of the century, but also a unique picture of key exhibitions – such as the 10th Tokyo Biennale – that remain under-represented.

Yusuke Nakahara, the commissioner of the 10th Tokyo Biennale wrote: ‘Plurality is essential and meaning lies in plurality.’ ¹ This statement not only describes his curatorial approach to a landmark exhibition, but also evokes a way of thinking about exhibition histories and contextualising the life and work of Shigeo Anzaï. Perhaps plurality is what Anzaï continues to offer us today.

1 Tokyo Biennale ’70: Between Man and Matter, exh. cat.

(Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1970), unpaginated.

8

9

Anzaï Asked by Yusuke Nakahara at the Venice Biennale 1968 to assist international artists for Tokyo Biennale ’70.

January 1970: Studio is demolished.

Wins an award for his monochrome paintings at the ninth Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan.

Meeting with Lee Ufan – Anzaï is encouraged to take photographs with his newly acquired camera until he feels ready to take up painting again.

Photographic career begins.

Assists Richard Serra, Daniel Buren and Sol LeWitt, among others, in the production of their work at Tokyo Biennale ’70. These become long lasting friendships.

Travels to Copenhagen with Nobuo Sekine to see several participating artists from the Tokyo Biennale in Japan på Louisiana.

Contacts Barry Flanagan in London and travels there by himself.

Meets several artists in London, including Michael Craig-Martin, Gilbert and George and Bridget Riley. Spends a lot of time at art space The Garage.

Meets Bill Viola for the first time in Tokyo, who encourages him to apply for a residency in New York.

Receives fellowship to live in New York for one year. Photographs performances and events in The Kitchen, by artists including Bruce McLean and Laurie Anderson.

Takes photographs of Film Performance Festival, Tokyo. Reunites with Meredith Monk, Bill Viola and Laurie Anderson for first time since The Kitchen, 1978.

At the Venice Biennale, photographs several participating artists.

Anzaï and Daniel Buren together in Nagoya, Japan.

Photographs Richard Long and Anthony Caro in London.

1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981

Japan

Japanese GDP hits second in world rankings, marking emergence from post-war economic slump.

Expo ’70, the first Asian edition, takes place in Osaka, themed Progress and Harmony for Mankind with 64,218,770 visitors.

May 1970: the Mainichi newspaper company mounts Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.

Genpei Akasegawa, member of collective the Hi-Red Center found guilty in the Thousand Yen Incident and is issued a suspended sentence after a final appeal.

Anpo protest takes place against the second extension of the US–Japan Security Treaty, providing logistical support in the Vietnam War. Aspects of New Japanese Art, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.

Trends in Contemporary Art, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.

May 1971: The 10th Contemporary Exhibition of Japan, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.

Gilbert & George in Tokyo.

Seven Italian Artists and Seven Japanese Artists, Italian Cultural Institute, Tokyo.

The first Tokyo Video Festival. Bill Viola receives a fellowship to live in Japan, and Viola and Anzaï become close friends.

Donald Judd and Jasper Johns in Tokyo.

Nam June Paik at Sogetsu Video Art Festival.

George Segal, Daniel Buren, Dan Graham in Tokyo.

Sam Francis, David Hockney and Keith Haring in Tokyo.

1982 1983 Joseph Beuys, Laurie Anderson and Nam June Paik in Tokyo.

Anish Kapoor in Tokyo.

Chuck Close and Jean-Michel Basquiat in Tokyo.

1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

Rest of World Venice Biennale marked by protest by many younger artists, in particular against the prize system and the national pavilion model.

The ICA London presents Fluorescent Chrysanthemum, showcasing Japanese contemporary art together with design.

When Attitudes Become Form: Works – Concepts – Processes – Situations – Information curated by Harald Szeeman opens at Kunsthalle Bern.

Op losse schroeven: situaties en cryptostructuren [Square pegs in round holes: situations and cryptostructures] opens in Amsterdam.

Anti-illusion: procedures /materials opens at the Whitney Museum, New York.

The exhibitions highlight the maturity of Minimalism, Arte Povera, Land Art and Conceptual Art in response to nature. This led to the distinct use of the gallery spaces through intervention and site-specific works.

Yusuke Nakahara goes on a research trip across Europe and America in preparation for Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter. Sees each of these exhibitions and their influence becomes clear in the Biennale.

Ninth Paris Biennale, Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Yusuke Nakahara commissions the Japanese Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Schwarz at Kunsthall Düsseldorf (with Beuys, Haraguchi, Serra, Kaprow, Uecker).

Construction in Process (LeWitt, Craig-Martin) in Łódź.

Contemporary Art Companion

The emergence of Shigeo Anzaï as a ‘contemporary art companion’

Yasufumi Nakamori Associate Curator, Photography The Musuem of Fine Arts, Houston

Timeline 16

…Once upon a time, 30 years ago in Tokyo, a very quick, young and alert person, jumping, helping, running, cracking jokes, drinking, laughing, following everyone everywhere, photographing all the meetings, all the works […] left the most extraordinary visual diary of the first Tokyo Biennale done by Mr. Nakahara and Mr. Minemura, the very first Japanese explorers of international contemporary art from that time. […]

The young photographer’s name was Shigeo Anzaï.

— Daniel Buren ¹ Shigeo Anzaï witnessed a pivotal moment in the rise of contemporary art in Japan. In May 1970, the Mainichi newspaper company mounted the 10th Tokyo Biennale, titled Between Man and Matter, at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. This Biennale introduced emerging Euro-American conceptual, post-minimal and time-based art to a wider audience in Japan. ² The exhibition travelled across Japan and showcased the work of thirteen Japanese artists and twenty-seven others, informing audiences of the latest currents in artistic practice, such as dematerialisation and performance. At the exhibition, where many of the exhibited works were created for the occasion on-site, the medium of photography served as a central methodology for artists to make visual ‘the concepts of situation, position, place, arrangement, process, time, etc.’ ³ This was especially the case with works of art: …‘emphasising’ or ‘experiencing’ the relationships between man and matter […] in contrast to the fundamental factors of works of art as a closed system – form, weight, the completeness of a totality. ⁴ At the exhibition, for example, the sculptor Hitoshi Nomura created an installation of twenty-four photographs to trace the sublimation of dry ice cubes. This echoed Dutch artist Jan Dibbets’ installation of thirty-four photographs that observed the passing of time as seen through the shifting light cast in his Amsterdam studio. Their works brought off-site experiments with the camera to the museum space as an installation of multiple photographs.

17

For both artists, photography served as a medium to conceptually investigate the element of time and to present their temporal observations in a serialised manner. ⁵ With the camera, Anzaï documented these and other artists’ sitespecific experimentations. In other words, he accompanied them in the development of their conceptual art practices.

Anzaï was requested by the exhibition’s commissioner Yusuke Nakahara to assist several exhibiting artists, including Richard Serra and Daniel Buren, in their production of site-specific works. Anzaï began photographing their production processes: both the artists at work and their completed works. ⁶ In this way, Anzaï created his first substantial body of photographs, which were close to the documentary style. His photographs captured candid moments of artists in action, whether performing [Fig. 1], installing [Fig. 2], or simply resting in their on-site environments. As a result, in a supplemental volume to the catalogue of the Tokyo Biennale exhibition (which includes the exhibition’s checklist and installation photographs), Anzaï contributed photographs of the German artist Klaus Rinke. These photographs were organised as two sets of three-picture photographic series: one documented Rinke’s performance of throwing water from a bucket down the steps of the museum entrance, and the other documented a performance by Rinke and Monika Baumgartl where Rinke descends those same steps while Baumgartl ascends diagonally towards him. Anzaï photographed the scenes while ascending the steps. As these photographs indicate, Anzaï often photographed while in motion, or when physically very close to his subject. As a result, Anzaï’s photographs – unlike the pristine ‘installation’ photographs found in the volume by more experienced photographers such as Eisaburo Hara, and Kiyoji Otsuji – convey the temporal, intuitive, and dynamic nature of the artists’ presence and performance, revealing a time-based and process-driven part of the exhibition.

In January of the same year, Anzaï, a self-taught painter who a year earlier had received an award for his two large black and white abstract paintings at the ninth Contemporary Art Exhibition of Japan, also held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.’ There, he discovered photography, which previously was relatively unfamiliar to him. Lee Ufan, a sculptor, painter and theorist of the then-emerging Mono-ha movement, remembers his conversation with Anzaï at Lee Ufan’s solo show at Tamura Gallery in Ginza where Anzaï photographed his work [Fig. 3]. Lee Ufan recalls that Anzaï expressed his ambivalence towards the familiar medium of painting. Lee Ufan suggested to Anzaï, who had recently bought a new camera, that photography could become an important medium for the purpose of documenting increasingly popular time-based art, such as performance and site-specific installation practices.

18

Fig. 1 Richard Serra Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum May 1970 182 × 274 mm

19

Fig. 2 Christo Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum May 1970 195× 287 mm

20

Arguably, this conversation led Anzaï to start a new and lasting career as a ‘photographer who makes photographs about art’, as the art critic Yusuke Nakahara later described him. Nakahara observed that Anzaï focused on photographic impulses at the forefront of contemporary art, away from traditional painting and sculpture. ⁷ Anzaï’s primary goal in his photography has been to document artists at work in the environments most natural to them – often in a studio, in a museum, in a gallery or in a public place such as the street, if the artist was working with performance. In many cases, the artist is photographed together with the work they created. In this sense, his photography can be defined as a document.

As the tendency towards the dematerialisation of art and ‘non-art’ progressed in Japan’s art world in the late 1960s and early 1970s, photography became a singularly important medium not only for completing a processdriven artwork (for example, the sculptor and conceptual artist Hitoshi Nomura’s cardboard structure, which collapsed over a four-day period, was completed in eight serial photographs titled Tardiology, 1968–9), but also for documenting time-based performances (for example Minoru Hirata’s earlier photographs of ‘art in action’ by Hi-Red Center, Yoko Ono, and Zero Jigen).

What distinguishes Anzaï from earlier photographers in the 1960s – notably Minoru Hirata, Kiyoji Otsuji, Hanaga Mitsutoshi, and Ko Nakajima – is his conscious positioning of himself as a ‘documentalist’ (Anzaï’s own term), or as a gatekeeper in the emerging field of contemporary art, rather than as a collaborator. With the breadth and depth of his coverage, and sharp journalistic eye, he documented the rise of contemporary art in Japan, which also marked his own emergence as a photographer. Immersing himself in his photographic subjects, he aimed to present his photography not as art, but as a document.

As a result, he has carved out an important role as a ‘contemporary art companion’ since the 1970s, when Japanese artists were becoming increasingly aware of international artistic currents by traveling overseas to make, see or show art in international exhibitions and those that took place in Japan.

Anzaï’s photographs were dramatically different from those of some of his more established contemporaries, such as the experimental photographers Daido Moriyama and Takuma Nakahira, who, in their 1968–9 Provoke mode, were making are, bure, boke [rough, blurred, out of focus] photographs of cityscapes and everyday subjects. Nakahira’s photographs played an important role in the Between Man and Matter exhibition. For example, his photograph of a slightly tilted desolate landfill near Tokyo Bay, with cranes in the background, crowned the cover of the exhibition catalogue, chosen by the exhibition commissioner Nakahara.

21

Another photographer senior to Anzaï, who also photographed many works in the 10th Tokyo Biennale, was Kiyoji Otsuji. A Surrealist, photographer and art educator, Otsuji made a different type of snapshot, characterised as konpora shashin (‘konpora’ is a Japanese abridgement of the English ‘contemporary’), a term he had coined in response to the 1966 exhibition organised at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, titled Contemporary Photographers: Toward a Social Landscape. Konpora photographs often shared the stylistic characteristics of a horizontal format, deadpan and controlled photographic expressions and a human subject in the middle or far ground of a photograph.

Such pictures often portrayed scenes from the everyday. As the historian of photography Yoshiaki Kai points out, Otsuji deliberately avoided shooting dramatic scenes or spectacles created in the exhibition and instead focused on unexpected scenes found in the galleries. ⁸ However, both Otsuji and Anzaï’s photographs focus on the process of production and illustrate the space in which artists and others engage with objects, as they do in their everyday lives.

Anzaï’s photographs at the same Biennale were freely conceived. They also evince Anzaï’s physical proximity to his subjects, revealing his involvement with the artists, whether as a production assistant, a documentarian, an observer or a mere friend. Without any pressure to create publishable images, Anzaï freely photographed on and around the exhibition site.

The 10th Tokyo Biennale became not only Anzaï’s first major photographic opportunity, but also a chance to meet artists with whom he would subsequently develop a long-lasting friendship, including Daniel Buren, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Merz, Christo and Barry Flanagan. During his first trip to Europe in autumn 1974, he visited many of them and met many other emerging artists of the time, as well as accompanying the sculptor Nobuo Sekine to an exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, titled Japan på Louisiana, where many of his artist friends from Japan were exhibiting.

The most important role played by Anzaï’s photographs has been the dissemination of the art and activities of the artists he photographed, particularly in magazines and journals. These publications ranged from camera, art, sculpture and fashion magazines, to magazines distributed among teachers of flower arrangement and their students. Because a vast number of his photographs from this formative time have been widely circulated, they help establish a visual memory among many readers in these respective fields and, arguably more importantly, they assist artists, scholars and curators in their efforts to study and form the field of Japanese contemporary art.

22

Fig 3 Lee Ufan Tamura Gallery, Tokyo 21 January 1970 210 × 315 mm

23

Dr Yasufumi Nakamori Houston, 2015

1

2

3 4

5

24

Daniel Buren, ‘An Eye for Art’ in Recording on Contemporary Art by Shigeo Anzaï 1970–1999, exh. cat. (Osaka: the National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2000), 32.

Yasufumi Nakamori, ‘Experiments With the Camera: Art and Photography in 1970s Japan’ in For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979, exh. cat. (Houston: the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2015), 19.

Ibid.

Yusuke Nakahara, Introduction, Ningen to busshitsu: Dai 10-kai Nihon kokusai bijutsuten / Between Man and Matter: Tokyo Biennale ’70, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Mainichi Newspaper and Japan International Art Promotion Association, 1970), unpaginated.

Nakamori, Experiments with the Camera: Art and Photography in 1970s Japan, 19.

6

7

8

9

Plates

Recently Lee Ufan, reflecting after thirty five years, has pointed out that Anzaï’s photographs neither impose Anzaï’s own view nor reflect the original artist’s intentions, but because of the photograph itself, the photographed work has transcended the artist and provided a new space for further interpretation.

Lee Ufan argues that while Anzaï’s photographs contain anonymity, they have within them the power to awaken externalities or elements outside of the work. He observes that Anzaï’s photographs are about the relationship between a human, a place and a moment in time. ⁹ These characteristics of his photographs – transparent, open, and relational – chimed well with the artworks he photographed.

From 1970 on, Anzaï has created a vast archive of images, tracing the rise of contemporary art in Japan. As the reference points for art in Japan became more diversified and art practices became increasingly dematerialised, cross-pollinated, process-driven and time-based, Anzaï’s camera lens traced these shifting practices in white cube spaces and beyond. These visual documents are now indispensable to anyone who wishes to study the most critical moments in the formation of contemporary art.

Atsuhiko Shima, ‘Shigeo Anzaï’ in Recording on Contemporary Art by Shigeo Anzaï 1970–1999, 16.

Yusuke Nakahara, ‘Ato ni tsuiteno shashin’ (Photography on Art), Nihon Camera 384 (June 1976): 126–7.

Kai Yoshiaki, ‘Konpora as a Discourse of the Everyday’, in For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography, 1968–1979, 43.

Lee Ufan, ’70 nendai matawa gaibusei no shiza’ [a viewpoint of 1970s or externalities], in Shigeo Anzaï. Anzaï Shigeo to Tamabi gakusei ni yoru 1970 nendai iko no gendai bijutsu ni tsuiteno taiwa [Conversation between Shigeo Anzaï and Students in Tama Art University on Contemporary Art in and after the 1970s] (2009, Tama Art University, Tokyo).

25

A conversation with Shigeo Anzaï Index seeks to contextualise the life and work of Shigeo Anzaï through both exhibition histories and Anzaï’s own personal account. Through conversation with the artist, the following plates are structured around the information provided by Anzaï. This methodology enables the plates to be understood not within a chronology, but instead from Anzaï’s own point of view.

A conversation between Shigeo Anzaï, Edward Ball and Keiko Koshihara via email from 12 November – 6 December 2015.

→ Daniel Buren and Shigeo Anzaï Nagoya April 1989 199 × 300 mm

26

27

Hans Haacke Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum May 1970 ↗ → 243 × 237 mm 235 × 226 mm

28

29

A conversation with Shigeo Anzaï

What did you try to capture in your installation shots of the 10th Tokyo Biennale, 1970?

The 10th Tokyo Biennale was sponsored by The Mainichi Newspapers, but they did not commission me to take the photographs. My role was to source material and to look for the right location, among many other duties. In effect I was an assistant for several artists in the exhibition, including Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra and Daniel Buren.

← Sol LeWitt Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum May 1970 314 × 208 mm

30

31

A conversation with Shigeo Anzaï Did you find there was an important relationship between Nakahara’s Between Man and Matter and Szeemann’s When Attitudes Become Form ?

I had many artist friends who wanted to move on from the prevailing Pop Art movement in the 1960s. They wanted to originate a new expression with their own hands and they put in the effort and energy to realise this.

When Attitudes Become Form was really encouraging and inspirational to us at that time: artwork, concept, process, surroundings and information were the key words.

→ Jiro Takamatsu Pinnar Gallery, Tokyo 7 April 1971 130 × 88 mm

32

33

Jiro Takamatsu Artist’s studio, Tokyo May 1970 243 × 237 mm

34

Jiro Takamatsu Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum May 1970 224 × 225 mm

35

Jannis Kounellis Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, May 1970 ↓ → 176 × 262 mm 231 × 226 mm

36

37

Lee Ufan The 10th Contemporary Exhibition of Japan 1971 Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum May 1971 230 × 277 mm

Koji Enokura The 10th Contemporary Exhibition of Japan 1971 Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum May 1971 138 × 183 mm

38

39

Jiro Takamatsu Italian Cultural Institute of Tokyo 23 Novenber 1976 222 Ă— 268 mm

40

41

Group 361° Tama River, Tokyo 2 September 1973 187 × 280 mm

42

43

Gordon Matta-Clark 9th Paris Biennale Museé d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris October 1975 302 × 203 mm

44

45

A conversation with Shigeo Anzaï

When did you start to take photographs of the artists in Between Man and Matter ? Were you known to all the artists as someone who took everyone’s portraits, or did it happen naturally?

Taking photographs was my natural response to my surroundings, and I was fortunate enough to own a camera. In other words, a personal connection to each artist intuitively led to the moment to press the shutter button.

← Daniel Buren Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum May 1970 274 × 183 mm

46

47

A conversation with Shigeo Anzaï In 1974 you went to London, what was significant about your trip at that time? It must have been difficult to get a passport.

When the exhibition titled Japan på Louisiana opened in 1974 at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark, I travelled to Copenhagen with Nobuo Sekine. I had been thinking of all the artists who had participated in the 10th Tokyo Biennale and I wanted to see what they were doing. I contacted Barry Flanagan who was my only contact in London, and decided to go across to Dover by myself.

→ Barry Flanagan London 28 September 1974 215 × 321 mm

48

49

Richard Long London 4 December 1991 197 Ă— 297 mm

50

51

Bridget Riley Artist’s Studio London 20 September 1974 197 × 297 mm

52

53

A conversation with Shigeo Anzaï

How did you find London in 1974? How did you come to know the artists you photographed? Did you know them already?

I relied on Barry to find out about the younger generation of artists.

Through his contacts, I found a place called The Garage and met Michael Craig-Martin, Bruce McLean, Tony Stokes and Gilbert & George. I was moved by the inimitable British art scene and its highly refined sense of irony, which was something completely new to me. I believe most of them were from Saint Martin’s School of Art (currently Central Saint Martins).

← Barry Flanagan and Gilbert & George London September 1974 283 × 189 mm

54

55

A conversation with Shigeo Anzaï You were in both New York and in Tokyo in 1978 – what was the significance of that? Did you receive your fellowship in New York in 1979? Was it during this fellowship that you began to photograph artists’ performances at The Kitchen?

In 1978, there was an international video festival in Tokyo in which artists such as Rebecca Horn, Bill Viola and Nam June Paik were participating. That was my first encounter with Bill and I later visited New York to apply for a grant. On my return, Bill received a fellowship to live in Japan, so overall we were in fairly close contact for three years.

Inevitably he was supportive when I was in New York.

The grant was designed to be part of the exchange programme which was provided by John Davison III Rockefeller. My role was to report on what was happening in Japan but also to witness what was happening in contemporary art in America in 1978–9. In New York, with thanks to Bill and Barbara London’s introduction, I got to know important spots, galleries and artists. Among them, Ingrid Sischey, the editor of the Artforum, really expanded my view. For example, Mary MacArthur, the director of The Kitchen acknowledged my work and gave me a great opportunity to take photographs of the event New Music New York, 1979. At the film performance festival in Tokyo in 1984, I reunited with Meredith Monk and Laurie Anderson for the first time since The Kitchen. Nam June Paik and Joseph Beuys were similarly friends of friends, who would later become friends.

→ Min Tanaka New York 24 November 1978 216 × 324 mm

56

57

Daniel Buren and Jan Dibbets New York 5 October 1978 216 × 326 mm

58

Laurie Anderson MoMA, New York 17 October 1978 200 × 300 mm

59

↑ Bill Viola Project MoMA, New York 18 April 1979 203 × 309 mm → Bill Viola Artist’s Studio, New York 9 May 1979 182 × 284 mm

60

Bruce McLean Performance at The Kitchen New York 14 November 1978 202 × 300 mm

62

63

Yoshihisa Otani and Bruce McLean Kanransha, Tokyo 14 October 1984 235 × 233 mm

64

65

Min Tanaka Dance performance Tokyo 13 May 1984 297 Ă— 197 mm

66

67

Isamu Wakabayashi Venice Biennale June 1986 205 Ă— 309 mm

68

69

Damien Hirst Venice Biennale 11 June 1993 291 Ă— 193 mm

70

71

Nam June Paik Yokohama 9 October 1986 307 Ă— 205 mm

72

73

Yayoi Kusama Hara Museum, Tokyo 1992 × mm

Yayoi Kusama Ohkurayama, Yokohama October 1986 199 × 301 mm

74

75

Yasumasa Morimura Tokyo 1994 Ă— mm

76

77

A conversation with Shigeo Anzaï

How posed were your portraits of artists? Did you try to capture the artists in a candid way or did you arrange to photograph them at certain places and at certain times?

Within the category of portraiture, most of my photographs are snapped in performance or rehearsals, or celebrate the opening of exhibitions. So there are some rare examples, but I never ask the artist to pose for me. In other words, I place great importance on the site and sense of distance, which brings in the relationship with artists. This may be an invisible element, but the moment when I press the shutter is alive in my mind. The perceptible feeling of satisfaction becomes my photograph – my covetous affection for and obsession with art, perhaps my curiosity, and this will to somehow embrace the time and place…

I continue to point the camera.

← Daniel Buren Mito 26 July 1996 198 × 291 mm

78

79

A pivotal era in Japanese art

Anzaï in context:: Expo ’70 The 10th Tokyo Biennale, 1970 Mono-ha

Edward Ball Keiko Koshihara Maki Nishida

80

Expo ’70 In the late 1960s, Japan underwent an intense period of rapid economic development and social uprising. The defining events of the era included the student protests of 1968, the protests against Expo ’70 in Osaka and the anpo protests against the second extension of the US-Japan Security Treaty, which provided logistical support to the Vietnam War. These events provoked artists to examine what art should and could be.

Reflecting the protests against the Venice Biennale in 1968, artists in Japan initially railed against Expo ’70’s national pavilion model and its authoritarian pressure, questioning the theme of ‘Progress and Harmony for Mankind’.

The critic Noi Sawaragi discerned two key fallacies behind Expo ’70’s agenda: firstly, that recovery from war would cancel out the imagery of defeat; secondly, that modernity is a universal success for all. The festival attracted almost 65 million visitors and proved successful with artists, many of whom increasingly worked in new media such as video and sound. It represented a milestone in the integration of the experimental arts through inviting renowned artists such as Toru Takemitsu, composer and founding member of Jikken Kobo, to produce the music pavilion; the US pavilion showcased Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg; the Pepsi Pavilion presented e.a.t.

(Experiments in Art and Technology) with Fujiko Nakaya; and the Festival Pavilion staged the Gutai Group’s performance on a special set.

By contrast, Anzaï joked that Expo ’70 stole all the famous artists from Nakahara’s Between Man and Matter. While both exhibitions engaged with the theme of environment, they were distinct in their approach. Facing increasing pollution from the construction boom and rapid economic development, Expo ’70 took the environment as a metaphor for man’s conquest over nature.

Conversely, with the presence of Mono-ha, Between Man and Matter emphasised co-existence with and respect for nature as a given condition.

The ideas of ‘equilateral’ and ‘between’ were explored across the nation not only in reference to nature, but also to the political and social condition of Japan, which encouraged people to reflect on the self or state in relation to others. Expo ’70 may have resulted in upheaval at the time, but the protest movements also urged the critics to support artists, and encouraged artists to stand up for their own beliefs.

81

The 10th Tokyo Biennale, 1970 Shigeo Anzaï is recognised for his documentation of the 10th Tokyo Biennale, which was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in 1970. ¹ The exhibition’s curator, Yusuke Nakahara (1931–2011), was an influential art critic of the time and remained a champion of installation and conceptual artistic practices throughout his career. Nakahara believed that criticism served creation, and this exhibition made manifest his ideas on the relationship between the human and the natural world. Titled Between Man and Matter, it included work by artists from Europe, Japan, and the United States, much of which was realised in situ with materials such as iron, stone, concrete, and glass, all installed with little or no intervention.

The 10th Tokyo Biennale was described by the secretariat of the exhibition as: …a unique type of international art exhibition organized in a system altogether different from any of its nine predecessors or from similar kinds of biennales in Venice or São Paulo. ² This statement hints at the scale of ambition of the project, both in terms of its ideas and its organisation. Nakahara invited forty artists in total to participate, of which around two thirds were international.

Nakahara’s interest in the mutuality of man and matter grew during a research trip around Europe and America in 1969. During this journey, Nakahara would have seen now seminal exhibitions such as Harald Szeemann’s exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form at Kunsthalle Bern, and Op Losse Schroeven [Round Pegs in Square Holes] at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

He went on to cite these exhibitions, along with Anti-Illusion: Procedures/ Materials at the Whitney Museum, New York as important examples, and indeed there is considerable crossover between participating artists in all four. Despite their diverse approaches and thematic concerns, each exhibition broadly proposed an understanding of an exhibition as a process of exchange between different voices rather than the top-down articulation of values, for which politically engaged artists – particularly on the left – critiqued Expo ’70.

82

A further counter to the nationalistic certainty of Expo ’70, Nakahara’s exhibition was deliberately propositional, and not intended as a survey of the latest international trends in contemporary art. In the catalogue essay, Nakahara wrote of the artists he selected that: ...my interest is not so much in the fact of their distance from being sculptors as in the meaning of that distance. Largely their work hardly displays that self-contained form that one associates with painting or sculpture. Rather they appear as though they are cut-off sections of phases of the actual world. ³ Between Man and Matter was critically poorly received at the time but has since grown greatly in stature and intellectual appreciation. The exhibition introduced then under-recognised new movements such as Arte Povera, Conceptual Art and what would become known as Mono-ha. What united the forty approaches he selected, Nakahara suggested, was an artistic focus on the relationship between man and matter, or man and the natural world. Nakahara sought to posit an understanding of sculpture not as a finished work, but as an ongoing process, and the artwork as a mere point of articulation in the constantly shifting, contingent relationships between matter and man, space and time. The work of art would be the sum of these links. Experiencing the work of art and entering into relationships with material pointed to the ‘real world’, of which everything, people included, were but fragments of a totality.

1 The exhibition travelled to the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, June 6–28, and the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art, Nagoya, July 15–26.

2 Tokyo Biennale ’70: Between Man and Matter, exh. cat. (Tokyo: Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1970), unpaginated.

3. Ibid.

83

Mono-ha In October 1968 at Kobe Suma Rikyu Park, Nobuo Sekine presented Phase – Mother Earth in the First Exhibition of Contemporary Japanese Sculpture.

This is now widely considered to be the origin of Mono-ha. The work, monumental in scale, gained legendary status in the shaping of Post-war Japanese art history. However, recent survey shows such as the Reconsidering Mono-ha exhibition at The National Museum of Art, Osaka, 2005, attempt to re-examine this narrative. The earlier practice of Jiro Takamatsu and its subsequent influence to Sekine and other Mono-ha artists is central to these reconsiderations. Yet the general consensus remains that Sekine’s presentation in October 1968 and Lee Ufan’s later theorisation of the work solidified Mono-ha as a term.

Mono-ha arose at a time of significant new art movements forming in Europe and America. October 1968 also saw the emergence of Land Art in America, which is often associated with Mono-ha and Arte Povera in a broader term. New York’s Dwan Gallery held a group exhibition Earthworks to give a shape and theoretical background to the activities of Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer and Carl Andre, among others. In Europe, the term Arte Povera was introduced and theorised by Germano Celant in 1967.

Although Mono-ha shares similar interests with Land Art and Arte Povera, such as the use of raw and natural materials, at a conceptual level they diverge significantly. While Land Art and Arte Povera both broadly advanced a critique of society and the art world by moving away from the white cube and commodification, Mono-ha as a practice can operate in a small corner of a tiny gallery in the centre of consumerism, and is always aware of its position within an environment. Rather than challenge social issues through art practice, Mono-ha’s abiding interest is to cut out and crystallise the relationship between material, space and everyday life, and to question the role of the spectator in that sphere. This is precisely where Anzaï and his documentation of Mono-ha artists’ processes and practices reside.

A Mono-ha artwork typically eschews a clear focal point, and at a first glance might seem composed and tranquil. However, Mono-ha’s active questioning of the viewer’s role foregrounds its participatory nature. What Mono-ha artists offer is not a conclusion or conceptually finalised work, but instead a sculptural gesture highlighting process.

84

Lee Ufan, Nobuo Sekine, Kishio Suga, Susumu Koshimizu, Katsuro Yoshida Mono-ha and Post Mono-ha The Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo June 25, 1987 140 × 140 mm

85

Susumu Koshimizu Aspects of New Japanese Art The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo August 1970 210 × 307 mm

86

87

Nobuo Sekine Shiki City Plaza, Saitama May 1972 ← 210 × 318 mm

88

↙ 208 × 310 mm

↓ 210 × 317 mm

89

Kishio Suga Trends in Contemporary Art National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto 6 July 1970 ↑ 208 × 314 mm

90

→ 314 × 208 mm

91

Kishio Suga Tamura Gallery, Tokyo 13 January 1972 249 × 203 mm

92

Kishio Suga Roppongi, Tokyo 16 November 1972 197 × 134 mm

93

Shigeo Anzaï : Index I

Shigeo Anzaï : Index II

List of works

List of works

25 November 2015 – 23 January 2016 White Rainbow, London

Artist

Exhibition / Location

Year

Page

Christo

Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter

1970

Daniel Buren

Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter

Artist

Exhibition / Location

Year

Page

20

Laurie Anderson

MoMA, New York

1978

59

1970

47

Daniel Buren and Jan Dibbets and Shigeo Anzaï

Mito New York Nagoya

1996 1978 1989

79 58 26

Barry Flanagan and Gilbert & George

London London

1974 1974

48 54

Group 361°

Tama River, Tokyo

1973

43

Hans Haacke

Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter

1970

28

Damien Hirst

Venice Biennale

1993

71

Nam June Paik

Yokohama

1986

72

Yayoi Kusama

Hara Museum, Tokyo Ohkurayama, Yokohama

1992 1986

75 74

Richard Long

London

1991

51

Gordon Matta-Clark

9th Paris Biennale

1975

44

Bruce McLean and Yoshihisa Otani

Performance at The Kitchen, New York Kanransha, Tokyo

1978 1984

62 64

Yasumasa Morimura

Tokyo

1994

76

Rei Naito

Potential Aspect of Life, Shimoda, Tokyo

1994

96

Bridget Riley

Artist’s Studio, London

1974

52

Jiro Takamatsu

Artist’s studio, Tokyo

1970

34

Min Tanaka

Dance performance, Tokyo New York

1984 1978

67 56

Lee Ufan, Nobuo Sekine, Kishio Suga, Susumu Koshimizu, Katsuro Yoshida

Seibu Museum of Art, Tokyo

1987

85

Bill Viola

Artist’s Studio, New York Project, MoMA, New York

1979 1979

60 60

Isamu Wakabayashi

Venice Biennale

1986

68

Koji Enokura

The 10th Contemporary Exhibition of Japan 1971

1971

38

Hans Haacke

Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter

1970

29

Susumu Koshimizu

The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

1970

86

Jannis Kounellis

Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter

1970 1970

36 37

Sol LeWitt

Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter

1970

31

Richard Serra

Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter

1970

19

Nobuo Sekine

Shiki City Plaza, Saitama Shiki City Plaza, Saitama Shiki City Plaza, Saitama

1972 1972 1972

88 89 89

Kishio Suga

Gallery 16, Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto Tamura Gallery, Tokyo Roppongi, Tokyo

1974 1970 1970 1972 1972

1 90 91 92 93

Pinnar Gallery, Tokyo Tokyo Biennale ’70 – Between Man and Matter Italian Cultural Institute of Tokyo

1971 1970 1976

32 35 40

Tamura Gallery, Tokyo The 10th Contemporary Exhibition of Japan 1971

1970 1971

23 39

Jiro Takamatsu

Lee Ufan

94

17 May – 9 July 2016 White Rainbow, London

95