I would like to express deep thanks to Leo Castelli Gallery for organizing this exhibition of Japanese contemporary art entitled Rough and Refined.

The term Rough relates to the works from the 1960s presented in the first part of the show, and Refined relates to the work from the 1990s to the present in the second part of the show.  In a broader way, these two ideas of ‘rough’ and ‘refined’ is a duality that has always existed in Japanese art.

From the battle against the revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty in 1960 to the harakiri suicide of the novelist Yukio Mishima in 1970, there were wide ranging changes in Japan. This period was defined by an economic boom in which the Japanese GNP jumped to the second highest in the world. Despite the many advancements, the majority of the contemporary artists, such as Mishima, were not happy with the cultural status quo and their art reflected this position.

In the visual arts during the late 1950s, l’art informel and Abstract Expressionism swept Japan, which began when Michel Tapié, Sam Francis and Georges Mathieu visited in 1957, consequently beginning the so-called ‘informel whirlwind’. The most distinguished group of artists during the early 60s was Gutai, founded by Jiro Yoshihara in 1954. Tapie went to see the work of Gutai during this visit, and valued it highly. As a result, they became part of the very fashionable informel movement.  The avant-garde artists of the time were faced with a rigid society unable to handle their new ideas on one side and a very ‘trendy’ and accepted art on the other.

In this context a new art movement arose. The Yomiuri Newspaper began to sponsor a series of independent exhibitions where artists could create and show works in any way they wished.  The critic Yoshiaki Tono applied the terms ‘anti-painting’ and ‘anti-sculpture’ to the works being exhibited as they had a tendency toward ‘junk art’, using ready-made goods and waste materials which ultimately suggested a type of ‘anti-art’. 

The term Anti Art is not a very precise description but it is an accurate one in the sense that it was a definitive break with all previous concepts of art. This type of art emerged in direct opposition to l’art informel, embodied by Gutai. Japanese society, as a whole, was not ready for, the Anti Art movement; consequentially many of the artists chose to move to New York or Paris to continue working. The works exhibited in the fist part of Rough and Refined truly represent ‘anti-art’ and Neo-Dadaism as it was defined by Tono.

It is difficult to categorize the art of the 1980s and 90s at the present time as the work of many of these artists is still evolving. In any case, if works like Ear II by Tomio Miki, Shadow of a Hanger by JiroTakamatsu or Portrait D’Artiste dans la Crise by Tetsumi Kudo from the first exhibition, can be seen as ‘rough’, the works in the second show are clearly more ‘refined’. In contrast to the 1960s which were defined by Japan emerging as an international economic power and a period of great change within the country, the decade from 1980 to 1990 saw the economic bubble burst and are a sort of ‘lost ten years’.

In the beginning of the 1980s many successful female artists emerged such as Yoshizawa and Sugano, and were called ‘super girls’. They consistently exhibited at both galleries and museums showing mostly installation art. With the sudden economic crisis of 1991, the galleries and museums lost the means to fund these spaces. During the ‘lost ten years’, many multi-talented artists began to work in the comic, game, computer and television industries where they achieved great success and created a new market place for Otaku, however, there is a feeling this that this type of art will not last. In the second half of the exhibition we are showing works that will stand the test of time and are representations of the antithesis of ‘entertainment art’.

- Hideo Nanba