Post-Traumatic Art 2: Gutai at the Guggenheim

-- By Tom Phillips

Post-World War Two Japanese art was on display recently at the Museum of Modern Art, and the show “Tokyo Avant-Garde 1955-1970” was harrowing to contemplate.   Nearly every piece was shadowed by the mushroom clouds that ended the war, and images of atrocities, monstrosities, decapitation, torture, destruction, helplessness and sudden death were everywhere.   Reviewing it I wrote “Japan is sick to this day from the effects of the bomb, and Japanese art reflects it.” 

 

But that’s not all that post-war Japanese art reflects.  Hundreds of miles from Tokyo, in a small village near Osaka, another school of art was springing up, a polar opposite to the themes of victimization and despair.   The Gutai movement was another response to ruin – a search for goodness, wholeness and even joy in the rubble.  The artists of this avant-garde collective found it in the “new life of matter” – or “the scream of matter” in the words of Gutai founder Yoshihara Jiro -- and also in the creative freedom of the artist, and in the freedom of people’s experience of art.    

Electric Dress (1956) by Atsuko Tanaka

By happy coincidence, the Tokyo Avant-Garde show at MOMA is followed up by a full-scale exhibit of Gutai works at the Guggenheim Museum.   “Gutai: Splendid Playground” fills Frank Lloyd Wright's uniquely playful space with playful, rebellious works of raw energy.   There isn’t a self-pitying note in the entire show.  Even 40 years after the Gutai movement dissolved in 1972, their work is daring and refreshing.   
 

Gutai means “concreteness,”   the thing itself rather than representation.   Jiro’s 1956 Gutai manifesto condemns the art of the past as nothing but hoaxes  – paint, cloth, clay and stone tricked out to look like something they are not.   Gutai art, he wrote, would not change the material but bring it to life.  “If one leaves the material as it is, presenting it just as material, then it starts to tell us something and speaks with a mighty voice.”   

How "Lincoln" -- and Obama -- Lost the Oscar

-- By Tom Phillips

OK, why was Michelle Obama handing out the Oscar for Best Picture from the White House?    It’s a question that gnawed at my subconscious mind for hours after the broadcast ended Sunday night, until the answer -- or at least a likely scenario – flashed on me the next day.  

The first lady’s appearance was unusual, and a total surprise.   But this kind of cameo – involving the White House, a TV network, and a closely guarded envelope --had to be planned weeks or months in advance.  The plans were hatched back when there was no question about who would win Best Picture – when everyone thought “Lincoln” was going to sweep the Oscars.   

The Humanoid Condition

"I, Worker"   Seinendan Theater Company

By Tom Phillips

Ever since the fictional Doctor Frankenstein created his monster, people have been worrying about what may happen to them at the hands of their own human-like creations.   Usually those worries have been about robots seizing power with their superior strength and intelligence.  But now, in the work of Japanese playwright +Oriza Hirata, we see humans simply ceding power to artificial beings that are not just stronger and more intelligent, but more emotionally sensitive and stable than their human masters.   That’s the theme of two unsettling short plays, written and directed by Oriza, performed by a cast of humans, robots and an android at Japan Society February 7-9.

My Vote Against "Lincoln"

-- by Tom Phillips

As a member of the Writers Guild of America, I get to cast a vote for the year’s best screenplays.  The WGA Awards – announced in mid-February -- are considered predictors of who will take the Oscars for best screenplay and best picture, so the Hollywood studios compete aggressively for writers’ votes.  This year the most campaigning by far has been for “Lincoln,” directed by Steven Spielberg with a screenplay by Tony Kushner.  Writers have been inundated with DVDs, invitations to screenings, and promotional material for the movie.  But as Spielberg’s Honest Abe might put it, I ain’t voting for “Lincoln.”  Why?  Turn the page. 

Anarchy and Ash: Contemporary Dance from Asia

HAIGUFURU -- Ash is Falling

-- By Tom Phillips

After a one-year hiatus, Japan Society’s Contemporary Dance Showcase has returned, with a new look and a new theme.   When I first saw this showcase in 2005, dancers and choreographers were wrestling with issues like sexism, conformity, and office politics in Japan’s sclerotic traditional culture.  That seems like small potatoes now.  In the 2013 edition, we see artists surrounded by overwhelming forces, both natural and technological.  The 21st century has heaved into full view, and life as we know it is under siege.  What is to be done?  

Post-Traumatic Art

Tokyo Protest 1968  photo by Tomatsu Shomei

-- By Tom Phillips

Of all the horrors of the 20^th century, the most traumatic must be the atomic bombing of Japan.  The Holocaust in Europe was more destructive in terms of lives, and more evil in its intentions.   But the atomic bombs were more psychologically searing and disfiguring.  The Nazi extermination campaign took place over years, and some of its victims were able to mount a human response in the face of death, responses that endured as the Nazi dream died.   But Hiroshima took place in an instant, and that instant has never died.  The white flash that vaporized the center of the city came with no warning, no precedent, no context for those on the ground.  And it was followed, not by redemption or revenge, but by unconditional surrender, occupation, and a slavish identification with the American conquerors.  Harry Truman famously said he never lost any sleep over Hiroshima, and Americans to this day tend to see it as a necessary evil that put an end to a terrible war.  But Japan is sick to this day from the effects of the bomb, and Japanese art reflects it.  Americans who care to contemplate those effects can see them in a harrowing show of post-war Japanese art now at the Museum of Modern Art. 

Obama's Empty Pulpit

-- by Tom Phillips

One of my retirement hobbies is drafting speeches for President Obama.  I lie awake composing responses to national crises, and then imagine myself begging and pleading with him to speak up, to rouse the nation, to say and do what needs to be done. 

Surely there are those in Washington who feel the same way, and may even have access to the President, and the skill to compose an effective response to something like Hurricane Sandy, or the slaughter of kindergarten children in Connecticut.  But the President is clearly hesitant to lead his forces into battle, even when he knows he’s right and the nation is behind him.  He did manage to mention climate change in his election night victory speech, and has now solemnly promised to use his power to try to prevent more massacres.  But on both fronts, he has left it to others to talk specifics.  The President has a Bully Pulpit, but it stands empty, week after traumatic week.  At best he is a ghostly presence,  raising hope and offering consolation, but without leading or pointing the way ahead.  

 

Full disclosure:  I voted for Obama, twice, though I supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries.  But my original reservation about him stands:  that he doesn’t have enough experience, that he doesn’t know enough about politics or life to be the “transformational leader” that his admirers expected him to be.   

It took him four years to learn the most basic principle of bargaining, that you don’t negotiate against yourself.  Finally he has stiffened his back against Republicans who want to preserve tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.  But he seems so mesmerized by the job of not budging on the “fiscal cliff” that he has so far failed to step up to huge, sudden opportunities to lead, on gun control and climate change.   

The president reportedly hopes to go down in history as one of America’s greatest Presidents, and he has even called in presidential historians to advise him on how greatness is achieved.  I don’t know what the scholars have told him, but I hope it would include something about seizing the moment.  Rather than wasting his time ruminating about how to be great, a President needs to take advantage of events, and the emotions they set off, to force a change in the underlying political dynamics, to make politically unpalatable actions seem unavoidable.  The worst possible thing Obama could do is to follow his anti-dramatic instincts, and the advice of nay-saying conservatives, and “let emotions cool off” before acting.   Psychological research shows that emotion is necessary for making decisions, and this is as true of nations as it is of individuals.    

Obama has a couple of opportunities left: a second inaugural, and a State of The Union address in January.   Hurricane Sandy and the slaughter in Newtown will still be open wounds, and Congress could yet be shamed into action, if the president could move the nation to demand it.   If I were writing the speech, he would call for action across the board:  let’s go over the cliff, raise taxes and immediately plough the added revenue back into the economy.  We could create jobs laying the groundwork for a new infrastructure, built to both reduce and withstand global warming.  We could buy back guns from the public, and beat them into plowshares.  Add universal health care and immigration reform, and you have a vision of a new American century.   We’d give it a name, in the tradition of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier.   

But I'm not writing the speech, and I’m not going to frustrate myself with imaginary pleadings.  It’s up to the president to seize this moment, and make of it what he can.   

 

Copyright 2012 by Tom Phillips