Takesada Matsutani

Matsutani was born in Osaka in 1937. His interest for the visual arts developed early on, as illustrated by a relatively sophisticated watercolor landscape painting he completed in 1950, when he was only thirteen.[2] While the artist maintains that he had a "regular upbringing after the Second World War", he contracted tuberculosis in 1951, a debilitating illness he battled on and off for eight years.[3]^: 21

In 1954, his condition stabilized and he was admitted to Osaka Municipal High School of Industrial Arts (Ōsaka Shiritsu Kogei Gakkō) in 1954, where he studied nihonga, traditional Japanese painting.[4] Two years later, he fell seriously ill and was forced to drop out of school and remain in the confines of the hospital and his home. He sketched that which was in his immediate surroundings, notably his plants and his pets, which included a dog, a cat and a bird.[5]^: 29

Unable to officially complete his studies, Matsutani took drawing classes organized by the Nishinomiya City Art Association, where he studied under artists like the abstract calligraphers Waichi Tsutaka and Suda Kokuta.[6]^: 21 In 1957, he submitted a landscape painting, The Rock's Surface, to the nihonga section of the 8th Nishinomiya City Exhibition. The entry was accepted and attracted the attention of artist juror Shosaku Arao, who invited him to visit his atelier.[3]^: 21 They soon developed a student-teacher relationship.

Arao, whose cubist style was becoming progressively more abstract, encouraged Matsutani to experiment with abstraction. Matsutani recalls that Arao "seemed to be attempting to find an honest way to express his interior 'image'."[3]^: 21 At this time, Matsutani was also an avid reader and interested in new currents in contemporary art around the world. He subscribed to the Japanese art magazine Bijutsu Techo, and read translated collections of essays. He notes that he was particularly impressed by Kandinsky's Point and Line to Plane.[3]^: 21

In the late 1950s, Matsutani produced a series of paintings that, although remaining figurative, employed a more expressionist style and incorporated abstract elements. One such painting is 1959's Life-B, in which a simplified, elongated figure appears to be running forward, arms above his head in a celebratory pose. An abstract shape painted behind the figure appears like a pair of outstretched wings. Matsutani's experimentation was not only pictural but material: for this painting, he mixed sand into his nihonga pigments.[3]^: 21 The artist has said that the source for such works was the anguish he felt during his years of solitude and illness: "I outwardly expressed my inner conflict and attempted to brush aside this heavy burden. In such ways, I shifted from realism to abstraction via my own interior 'image'."^: 21[3]  

Matsutani was aware of the Gutai Art Association (具体美術協会, Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai, or, short, Gutai) as early as 1956, but explains that he "really felt at odds with this group that was all the rage in Kansai".[6]^: 17 Admitting that he was initially "disenchanted" by Gutai, whose diverse avant-garde actions were considered by many at the time as bizarre or frivolous, he became first interested in the group thanks to his discussions with Gutai member Sadamasa Motonaga, whom he first met through his Nishinomiya community art classes.[6]^: 21 Matsutani soon would abandon figurative painting altogether and adopt an Art Informel style, citing Jean Fautrier as one important influence.[7] He developed the materiality of his paintings by using a variety of media, including oils and acrylics, sand and cement, and creating rich, textured surfaces.

Although Matsutani's work was included in Gutai exhibitions from 1959 onwards, this did not grant the young artist entry into the group.[6]^: 22 Jirō Yoshihara, a local artist and Gutai's sole leader, had steadfastly proclaimed since the group's formation that Gutai artists were to "create what [had] never been done before".[8] Thus, Yoshihara expressed little interest in Matsutani's art informel-influenced canvases, telling the artist that "this kind of thing already exists".[6]^: 22

Confronted by the challenge of creating something original enough to impress Yoshihara, Matsutani reflected on the type of artwork he wished to make: "I wanted to do something organic, something three-dimensional. Something that would have volume and hang like icicles or stalactites."[6]^: 22 Matsutani also cites as inspiration the experience of seeing cell samples under a microscope, thanks to a friend in medical school.[6]^: 22

In 1961, the artist began experimenting with polyvinyl acetate glue, commonly known as wood glue or Elmer's glue in the United States, a new product available in post-war Japan. The artist dripped glue onto the surface of the canvas, which he then proceeded to turn over and let dry. He recounts that, as it was a windy day, the glue dried in unexpected patterns: "some parts ended up looking like blisters and others took on a transparent nipple-shaped form [...] My sensibilities towards organic forms that existed deep within my consciousness had been awakened."[3]^: 23 The artist, mixing vinyl glue with paint, would also blow into the forms created by the glue, inflating them, creating bulges on the canvas that sometimes popped open.[9]^: 11  

Matsutani showed his new works to members of Gutai, who encouraged him to present them to Yoshihara. Yoshihara was indeed pleased, and Matsutani was officially granted membership to Gutai in 1963.[3]^: 23 Matsutani had his first solo exhibition in October of that same year at the Gutai Pinacotheca, a converted warehouse in Nakanoshima, Osaka, that served as an exhibition space.

Matsutani's works with glue call to mind the human body with suggestions of both violence and sexual reproduction. His first works with glue employed rounded, bruise-like forms in blues, purples and greens. The three-dimensionality of the new material, with its folds and ripples rising from the surface, evokes flesh and pustules. For his first solo exhibition, Matsutani presented a series of paintings with a contrasting color palette of whites and reds that mimic skin and blood. French art historian Germaine Viatte commented that "there reigned [in the exhibition] a random violence in the hatching of these incised forms, painted on the inside with a raw red."[10]^: 61

The openings, swellings and flesh tones of Matsutani's works lend themselves just as easily to erotic interpretation, of which Matsutani is aware: "At the time, a lot of people were repelled. Even now, women often say so. They say it looks like buttocks, or genitals, or the belly of a pregnant woman."[6]^: 25 Sexual references abound in many of Matsutani's paintings from this period, such as Work '65, in which sperm cell-like forms appear to swim towards a white opening in the shape of a vulva. Other paintings, like Work 66 Life, with its egg-like form and yolky center, bring to mind an embryo at its earliest stages. Art historian Jean-Michel Bouhours has also commented upon the "powerful analogies" between semen and vinyl glue.[11]^: 23

Gutai specialist Ming Tiampo has characterized the singularity of Matsutani's production during the 1960s as "[contesting] the legacy of abstract expressionism and Art Informel, but also [resisting] what he retrospectively characterized as the 'dry' quality of American hard-edged painting and minimalism."[12]

Although Matsutani relocated to Paris in 1966, he continued to participate in Gutai exhibitions by sending prints made in France to his fellow artists.[13]^: 193 His participation ceased in 1972 with the disbanding of the group after Yoshihara's death.

While Germaine Viatte recounts that Matsutani had never thought to leave Japan, he found himself awarded in 1966 a scholarship to study for six months in Paris after having entered a contest organized by the Mainichi Shinbun and the Institut Frano-Japonais of Kyoto.[10]^: 62 Matsutani arrived in Paris without any desire to enroll at either the Sorbonne or the École des Beaux-Arts, and only signed up for obligatory French language courses.[3]^: 23 Instead, after visiting the Parisian museums, he asked himself: "where does this culture and this approach to life come from? Where is its past?" and took off traveling for a month, visiting Egypt, Greece and Italy.[10]^: 62

Matsutani ceased working with glue upon his arrival in Paris, but soon hoped to begin artmaking again.[6]^: 32 He gravitated towards Atelier 17, the studio of the printmaker Stanley William Hayter, whose prints he had seen as a high-schooler in Japan and had deeply moved him.[10]^: 62 Hayter welcomed the young artist, who had little experience with printmaking. Nonetheless, he proceeded to create numerous copperplate prints, building upon his fascination for organic forms. The Propagation print series of 1967 reveals itself as a graphic extension of Matsutani's paintings with glue, presenting a black-and-white universe of cells in transformation.

Once Matsutani's six-month scholarship ended, he elected to stay in France and continue working at Hayter's studio, making a living for a while as a dishwasher at a Japanese restaurant, but soon becoming Hayter's assistant.[6]^: 32 He stayed at Atelier 17 for four more years, working punctually for other artists, such as Kumi Sugai, a celebrated Japanese printmaker based in Paris.[10]^: 63 In 1970, the artist left Atelier 17 and began working at the silkscreen studio of printmakers Lorna Taylor and Kate Van Houten, who he would later marry.[13]^: 192

Matsutani focused on printmaking for a large part of the 1970s as he continued to experiment with new styles. At the beginning of the decade, the artist lived briefly in New York with his wife, a period during which he was exposed to hard-edge painting that was prevalent in Chelsea galleries of the time.[14]^: 131 Upon his return to Paris, he produced several hard-edge paintings that, despite the change in style, maintained the artist's interest in organic forms. Art historian Izumi Nakajima described how Matsutani's flat shapes "swell like rice cakes and expand into other color sections and off the rectangular shape of the frame. Although the works preserve their flatness with their form, the image betrays the flat universe to suggest concepts of gravity, movement and volume."[14]^: 132

Nakajima highlights Matsutani's affinity for American painter Ellsworth Kelly, who had at one time lived in Paris, and whose work departed conceptually from minimalism as Kelly "sought to achieve abstract, conceptual and spiritual forms".[14]^: 132 Nakajima remarks that "the hard-edge paintings of Kelly and Matsutani have been understood as paintings that provide room for psychological connections."[14]^: 132

In 1976, Matsutani returned to the simplest of materials, paper and graphite pencil, with the desire to renew his artistic practice while still embracing, in the words of the artist, "the spirit of Gutai", which had consistently pushed the artist to challenge himself.[10]^: 63 The artist recalls:

Rather than sketching as I had done before, I wanted to see what sort of 'surface' would emerge out of an accumulation of repeated pencil line strokes. Sure enough, a surface with a tone of black unlike oil painting or sumi ink made an appearance. As each line was drawn by hand, the angle of the light against it would show or hide the traces of the pencil marks and the shades of graphite [...] I promised myself I would keep on drawing until the surface turns black.[3]^: 25

What began as small-scale graphite drawings soon became monumental. In 1977, Matsutani created the works Stream-1 and Stream-2 using a ten-meter long roll of paper, meticulously drawing the long bands, layer upon layer, gradually blackening the paper. The artist's final gesture is to pour white spirit or turpentine onto the band's end, liquifying the graphite and creating an expressive cascade of black that drips down the walls to the ground.[15]^: 140 As art historian Valérie Douniaux has noted, "the Streams are like existence itself, sometimes peaceful, sometimes tempestuous."[15]^: 140 Importantly, this moment of finalization is done in situ, adding a performative element to the pieces.

Since the early 1980s, the Stream works have taken on a variety of forms, and have grown more site-specific. They have been installed in both traditional exhibition sites like galleries and museums, as well as religious spaces, like temples, chapels and churches.[15]^: 144 Matsutani has introduced elements such as stones, crossbeams, sacks of water, cloth, and sumi ink. While the artist's performances vary, the artist's presence makes aware the flow of black graphite, confirming that the piece is "in a process of becoming and perpetual transformation".[11]^: 23

The Stream works, with their poignant use of black and intense, meditative procedure, have proved rich for interpretation. Many see the series as a reconnection to the artist's Japanese origins, which the artist expressed a newfound interest for during the 1970s. There is the evident link between black and sumi ink, used for calligraphy. The artist also expressed the significance of seeing 16th century painter Tōhaku Hasegawa's Pine Trees Screen during a visit to Japan, an ink-on-paper work depicting Japanese pine trees in the mist, which "inspired [Matsutani] with a clear vision of what he himself hoped to achieve".[15]^: 139 Commenting on Matsutani's repetitive practice in creating the long bands of black graphite, and noting that Buddhism "had been a central element in Matsutani's education since his childhood," art historian Christine Macel states that "Matsutani is close to Zen [Buddhism's] precepts, even though he does not practice it."[5]^: 37

And yet, Izumi Nakajima argues that "it would be somewhat simplistic to consider Stream [...] to be a return to tradition".[14]^: 133 There is also a strong metaphysical element to such works. Germaine Viatte notes that in the late 1970s, the artist reached middle age and, logically, "time invited itself into Matsutani's art".[10]^: 64 Toshio Yamanashi importantly adds: "The depth of darkness represents not only the thickness of accumulated pencil lines, but also the sedimentation of time, and the marks the artist makes to confirm he is alive. Inherent in the deep density of black is the living pulse of the artist, who has dedicated himself to the black material."[9]^: 195

In parallel to his large-scale Stream installations, Matsutani has never ceased to create paintings with glue, continuously exploring the endless variations that this singular material provides. He began applying graphite to the forms in glue in the late 1970s, creating shadow-like variations upon the canvas that he related to the ideas about beauty and light shared by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki in his essay In Praise of Shadows.[13]^: 195 While for many years Matsutani's palette remained principally black and white, since 2013 the artist has begun employing exuberant shades of yellow, green and blue.