Kazuo Shiraga “Kazuo Shiraga : a retrospective”
I visited Kazuo Shiraga’s solo exhibition “Kazuo Shiraga : a retrospective.” The venue is Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery in Hatsudai, Tokyo.
In the adjacent museum shop, a valuable video documenting Kazuo Shiraga at work was being screened; watching it before entering the galleries gave me an extremely useful frame of reference.
Kazuo Shiraga is an internationally renowned artist — often called an action painter — famous for his “foot painting” technique, in which he suspends a rope from the ceiling, spreads a canvas on the floor, and paints with his feet.
In the footage, the 70-year-old Shiraga grips the rope hanging from above, rotates his body, and glides his feet across the canvas as though smearing the paint into it.
The exhibition brings together roughly 100 works loaned from museums and private collectors across Japan, shown alongside related archival material.
Works from the Yamamura Collection were also on view.
Shiraga’s practice is not limited to foot painting; the exhibition also includes works made with skis or squeegees.
Back to the studio footage.
The video captured how the artist worked in tandem with his wife Fujiko, herself an artist, the two proceeding almost as a single unit. Dressed in black and white respectively, they went about the process in a way that felt almost ceremonial — and in fact the film also showed the couple bowing at a household Shinto altar.
The act of gripping a suspended rope while smearing paint with the feet gives a religious impression, as if channeling a power from above and releasing it toward the earth.
Kazuo Shiraga’s work is dynamic, natural, and pulses with an outpouring of raw energy.
