Shiraga Kazuo

signed in Japanese; signed, titled and dated 1974 in Japanese on the reverse, framed

Private Collection
Mallet, Japan, 24 October 2008, lot 59
Private Asian Collection
Acquired by the present owner from the above

This work is generally in good condition. Please note that there is minor wear in handling marks around the edges and hairline folding cracks on the edges. Having examined the work under ultraviolet light, there appears to be no evidence of restoration.
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Illuminating Post-War Memories
Shiraga Kazuo

The urge of revolutionising conventional aesthetics, concepts, and practice was a universal trend across the globe in the post-war era. Artists fought valiantly to battle against the establishment and challenged the limits of conventional artistic ideals. On their quest to reach the zenith of originality and to reflect the spirit of their time, artists inevitably turned to culture, history or personal memories. From Jackson Pollock's devotion to Jazz, to Francis Bacon's reinterpretation of the Pope, cultural references and the reincarnations of tradition are evident and crucial in all of the major turning points in the history of art. “Today’s intelligence must be neither escapist nor content with limited freedom, unlike the consciousness of the early twentieth century, which longed to escape the pitch-dark world and reach one filled with light” ¹ declared Shiraga Kazuo, one of the most influential avant grade artists of his generation. His determination to act freely in the creation of art is a fire that was burning more fervently in the decades after he received his Buddhist priesthood (Tokudo) in 1971. Whilst 1954 marks the genesis of Shiraga’s foot painting career, the early seventies contained the more fruitful moments of his stylistic evolvements, technical maturation, and, perhaps most importantly, emotional enlightenment.

Religion empowered Shiraga to advance the rage, frustration and fear embedded within him during war-time Japan; all such totalitarian grotesque horrors were transformed into liberation, into enlightenment and into a state of mind where a larger concept of freedom could be realised. “With his back embraced with impetuous flames…Fudo wants to extinguish the flames of hate and of human anger”² was the manner in which Shiraga Kazuo described the Buddhist deity, to whom the artist chanted and entrusted himself before diving into a new work. Enshrined in the artist’s studio, Fudo and Buddhism became inseparable and crucial elements for understanding the lightness, purity and free spirit of Shiraga’s post-Gutai creation.

Different from Zen, which emphasises calmness, meditation and a journey down an inner soul searching path, the study of esoteric Buddhism is about seeking an external and divine power for help and enlightenment. Besides learning about the rituals, manners, and Buddhist precepts, austerity is a major part of the pathway to the esoteric priesthood, one that Shiraga himself walked through. The hardship of Mount Hiei in Kyoto, where Shiraga was trained as a Buddhist priest, involves sleep deprivation, long hours of repeated kneeling, and marathons of runs, hikes and walks. Endurance training includes also the ritual of “Burning Fire,” a training where the candidates face a raging fire in a closed room during the summer, allowing one to put one’s limit to an ultimate test.

The current lot on offer, Fire of Dattan (Lot 707) from 1974, was created a few years after Shiraga received his Buddhist priesthood, and was created during a refreshed and energised period in which the  artist frequently referenced Buddhism and his inspiration from his training. The current painting materialises the atmosphere inside Enryakuji temple where four golden lotus lamps hold the eternal flame of the temple. Swirling against a bright yellow background, warm and powerful sparks of red shine from within the canvas, and ignite no matter where the audience is situated. Moreover, the title of the work, Fire of Dattan, refers to the Buddhist ritual where monks dance and wield a large torch of burning fire as an act of renewal. Such a motif aptly matches the artist’s refreshed psychology in the early seventies and would remain as one of the most important motifs in Shiraga’s artistic career.

As the artist’s favourite colour, red likewise signified a postwar anger in the sixties; its similarity to human blood is also a potent but poignant image. A decade later, the same colour is purified to bring out a deeply engrained sense of enlightenment and eternal flames. Armed with an enriched visual vocabulary, Fire of Dattan, carries the passion Shiraga had for freedom, the ferocity of a burning flame, as well as the weight of a postwar Japanese memory enlightened, reborn and illuminated.

1 Kazuo Shiraga, the Establishment of the Individual.”

2 Kazuo Shiraga, “Le dieu Fudo et ma peinture,” (“The God Fudo and my Painting”) trans. Agnes Takahashi, in Kazuo Shiraga, exh. Cat (Toulouse: Centre Regional d’art cContemporain Midi-Pyrenees and Musée d’Art Moderne, Refectoire des Jacobines, 1993), n.p.