cover image Japanese Art After 1945

Japanese Art After 1945

Alexandra Munroe. ABRAMS, $65 (416pp) ISBN 978-0-8109-3512-9

Postwar Japanese avant-garde art, as shown in this exciting and eye-opening survey, has sought to transcend the categories of European and American modernism by tapping autonomous, nativist and spiritual sources to articulate a ``logic of the East'' within a global context. Japan's Gutai group, founded in the aftermath of WWII, pondered the meaning of creation and destruction, of nature and nothingness. The Yomiuri Independent movement (1957-63) conceived of art as a nonelite activity, part found object, part event. The Fluxus circle, based in New York and Japan, fuses experimental music, performance, mixed media, Zen and minimalism. Avant-garde calligraphers create free-form works that resemble neo-Expressionist painting, while artists of the Mono-ha group use natural materials to arrange impermanent sites. Complementing the 445 illustrations (half in color) of paintings, sculpture, performance, video and installation art are accessible essays by art historian Munroe, literary critic Karatani Kojin, video artist Nam June Paik and others. This kinetic album catalogues a touring exhibit. (Dec.)