With this recently acquired painting, the Walker adds to its collection a work representative of an important avant-garde art movement that is not very well known in the United States: the Gutai Art Association. Gutai, which means "embodiment," has similarities to the Action Painting of New York in the 1950s, but is uniquely influenced by its own time and place--postwar Japan. Established in the summer of 1954, the group formed around artist Jiro Yoshihara in Osaka and sought to create a new art "never known until now." Coming out of Japan's surrender in World War II, Gutai artists desired an art free of social criticism or political implication. Their first exhibition was in 1955 and featured a performance wherein Shiraga dove into a pile of mud and wrestled, kicked, and thrashed the clay mound to create an artwork sculpted by physical action. Unlike Allan Kaprow's Happenings in Europe and America--which weren't to emerge for another two years--Gutai artists intended their performances to result in the creation of sculptures and more prominently, paintings. Shozo Shimamoto threw bottles of paint onto paper spread on the floor. Saburo Murakami thrust his body through packing paper stretched over frames, and painted by throwing paint-covered balls at the canvas. In this untitled painting, Shiraga used his bare feet to apply the paint onto a piece of canvas on the floor. Grasping a hanging rope, he dipped and swung himself through the thick, wet oil paint. The finished painting depicts his random spins, swirls, and slips.

Kazuo Shiraga is a member of the avant-garde movement in Japan known as the Gutai Art Association. Established in the summer of 1954, the group sought to create a new art "never known until now." Gutai, which means "embodiment," has similarities to the Action Painting of New York in the 1950s, but is uniquely influenced by its own time and place--postwar Japan. Coming out of that country's surrender in World War II, Gutai practitioners desired an art free of social criticism or political implication. Their artistic process combined action and performance with painting. Unlike Happenings in Europe and America, Gutai events were meant to result in the creation of sculptures and paintings. During the first Gutai exhibition in 1955, Shiraga dove into a pile of mud and wrestled, kicked, and thrashed the clay mound to create an artwork sculpted by physical action. In this painting, Shiraga used his body as a tool--this time a large paint brush. Swinging from a hanging rope, he used his bare feet to apply paint onto a canvas on the floor. The finished work depicts his random spins, swirls, and slips.

I am not trying to make facsimiles of photographs. Neither am I interested in the icon of the head as a total image. I don't want the viewer to see the whole head at once and assume that that's the most important aspect of my painting. I am not making Pop personality posters like the ones they sell in the Village. That's why I choose to do portraits of my friends -- individuals that most people will not recognize. I don't want the viewer to recognize the head of Castro and think he has understood my work. Chuck Close, 1970

I am not trying to make facsimiles of photographs. Neither am I interested in the icon of the head as a total image. I don't want the viewer to see the whole head at once and assume that that's the most important aspect of my painting. I am not making Pop personality posters like the ones they sell in the Village. That's why I choose to do portraits of my friends--individuals that most people will not recognize. I don't want the viewer to recognize the head of Castro and think he has understood my work.--Chuck Close, 1970 Chuck Close's approach to the canvas was inspired by the non-hierarchical, all-over surface of American painting epitomized for him by the work of Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock. After taking a picture of his subject, Close makes photographic prints that he uses to transfer the images to canvas. Utilizing a technique devised by Renaissance masters and adapted by contemporary billboard painters, Close overlays a working print with a numbered and lettered grid, and then reproduces the image block by block. In this format the image becomes a mosaic of black, gray, and white visual information that the artist replicates by spraying a mixture of black acrylic paint and water onto the canvas with an airbrush. Specific features like the illusion of light reflecting off the hairs of his beard were achieved by scratching paint from the surface of the canvas with a razor blade. Big Self-Portrait was the first of Close's no-signature series of monumental head-and-shoulder portraits. Walker solo exhibition: Close Portraits, 1980

Any incentive to paint is as good as any other. There is no poor subject. Painting is always strongest when in spite of composition, color, etc., it appears as a fact, or an inevitability, as opposed to a souvenir or arrangement. Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made . . . A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil, and fabric. --Robert Rauschenberg, 1959 In the early 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg devised a radical new form, blending two- dimensional collage techniques with three-dimensional objects on painted surfaces. Definable neither as sculpture nor painting, these works were dubbed "combines" by the artist to describe their interdisciplinary formal roots. Rauschenberg's combination of found imagery and gestural brushwork places these works between two movements in painting: Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art. Trophy II (for Teeny and Marcel Duchamp) is one of a series of five combines, all called "trophies," which alluded to the unconventional creative spirit of artists whose work Rauschenberg greatly admired: in this case, Marcel Duchamp and his wife, Teeny. Using found objects, photographs, and paint, the artist considered himself "a collaborator with objects." In this way, he sought to avoid excessive autobiographical readings and instead refers to the dynamics of the urban landscape. Walker solo exhibition: Robert Rauschenberg: Painting, 1965

"The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away and the better and emptier you feel."--Andy Warhol, 1975 For Warhol and fellow Pop artists, reproducing images from popular culture was the visual means for expressing detachment from emotions, an attitude they regarded as characteristic of the 1960s. Like droning newscasts, repetition dissipates meaning and with it the capacity of images to move or disturb. Warhol created 16 Jackies in response to the November 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an event whose mass-media coverage reached an unparalleled number of people. The four images of Jacqueline Kennedy, each repeated four times, were enlargements of news photographs that appeared widely and continually in the media after the assassination. Taken from issues of Life magazine, the images depict, from top to bottom: Jackie stepping off the plane upon arrival at Love Field in Dallas; stunned at the swearing-in ceremony for Lyndon B. Johnson aboard Air Force One after the president's death; grieving at the Capitol; and smiling in the limousine before the assassination. 16 Jackies combines a number of themes important in Warhol's work, such as his fascination with American icons and celebrities, his interest in the mass media and the dissemination of imagery, and his preoccupation with death.

Although Warhol was already impressed with the glamour of Jackie Kennedy by 1962,1 he was unmoved by the news of John Kennedy's assassination the following year. He later recalled: I heard the news over the radio when I was alone painting in my studio. I don't think I missed a stroke. I wanted to know what was going on out there, but that was the extent of my reaction.... Henry Geldzahler wanted to know why I wasn't more upset, so I told him about the time I was walking in India and saw a bunch of people in a clearing having a ball because somebody they really liked had just died and how I realized then that everything was just how you decided to think about it. I'd been thrilled having Kennedy as president; he was handsome, young, smart--but it didn't bother me that much that he was dead. What bothered me was the way the television and radio were programming everybody to feel so sad. It seemed like no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't get away from the thing.... John Quinn, the playwright ... was moaning over and over, "But Jackie was the most glamorous First Lady we'll every get."2 For Warhol, the visual means for expressing detachment from emotions, an attitude he regarded as characteristic of the 1960s in general,3 was through the replication of images. Like the droning repetition of newscasts, the device dissipates meaning, and with it the capacity of images to move or disturb: "The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away and the better and emptier you feel."4 The sixteen faces of Jackie Kennedy in Warhol's painting were blown up from four news photos that appeared ubiquitously in the media after the assassination. From top to bottom, the images are of Jackie smiling at Love Field on arrival in Dallas; stunned at the swearing-in ceremony for L.B.J. on Air Force One after the president's death; grieving at the Capitol; and in the limousine before the shooting. The top three appeared in the 24 November and 6 December 1963 issues of Life magazine: the first by an unidentified photographer; the second and third by Cecil Stoughton and Fred Ward, respectively; the source for the bottom one has not been identified, although a U.P.I. photograph similar to it was reproduced in Newsweek. Eventually, in Warhol's view, these images became so familiar that neutral identification is all that the viewer experiences. Warhol make this point by repeating each of the four image of Jackie four times, in a simple well-designed non-sequential alternation of strips of "before and after" pictures. The high-contrast, low-information pictures, each as different from the others as one reproduction from another, are cropped to focus on Jackie's face, rhythmically directed one way along one row and then the other along the next. A deliberately careless look gives the painting a sense of chance and hurry, suggesting the quick duplication and dissemination of images.5 Additionally, expressivity is, in a sense, absent from the images themselves. Public expectation forces the face of the politician's wife into a perpetual, meaningless smile, while shock renders the widow as inexpressive and numb as one of Warhol's somnambulant superstars. The two faces, perceived by Warhol as equally unreal, have been further sapped of meaning by the mythologizing American culture and the techniques of reproduction, and are finally emptied of meaning by the artist's stylization. 1 See Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett, PoPism: The Warhol '60s (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), p. 36. 2 Ibid., p. 60. 3 Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975), p. 27. 4 Warhol, PoPism, p. 50. It is interesting to note that 16 Jackies ignited the passion of a vandal who inscribed the words "HOGWASH/USA" on the panel third from the top on the leftmost column and "BLACK" on the panel second from the top on the rightmost column in ballpoint pen in November 1967; the inscriptions were successfully removed by Daniel Goldreyer in New York by late January 1968. 5 Warhol describes the silkscreening process he used, which allowed him to turn the work of reproducing the design over to Gerard Malanga and other assistants: "You pick a photograph, blow it up, transfer it in glue onto silk, and then roll ink across it so the ink goes through the silk but not through the glue. That way you get the same image, slightly different each time. It was all so simple-quick and chancy;" Warhol, PoPism, p. 22.

"I'd been thrilled having Kennedy as president; he was handsome, young, smart--but it didn't bother me that much that he was dead. What bothered me was the way the television and radio were programming everybody to feel so sad."--Andy Warhol After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Andy Warhol began his series of "Jackie paintings" in response to the media blitz that followed the incident. 16 Jackies is a grid of four different images based on news photos of Jacqueline Kennedy from international press coverage of JFK's death. As in Brillo Boxes (1964/1969, also on view here), the artist elevates commercial iconography to the status of fine art. In so doing, Warhol allows his viewer to consider the overlap of things that American culture values: wealth and success, human emotion, and artistic expression.

"The thing I like about a photograph is that it represents a frozen, poem like moment in time."--Chuck Close Chuck Close's approach to painting was inspired by the non-hierarchical, all-over surface of American painting epitomized for him by the work of Jackson Pollock. In Big Self-Portrait, Close overlaid a photograph of himself with a numbered and lettered grid, then reproduced the intricate visual details block by block--a technique devised by Renaissance masters and later adapted by contemporary billboard painters. In this format the image became a mosaic of black, gray, and white visual information that the artist replicated by spraying a mixture of black acrylic paint and water onto the canvas with an airbrush. Specific features like the illusion of light reflecting off the hairs of his beard were realized by scratching paint from the surface of the canvas with a razor blade. Big Self-Portrait was the first of Close's now signature series of monumental head-and-shoulder portraits.

"I find [Marcel Duchamp's] life and work a constant inspiration. . . . His Bicycle Wheel has always struck me as one of the most beautiful pieces of sculpture I've ever seen."--Robert Rauschenberg In the early 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg devised a radical new form, blending two-dimensional collage techniques with three-dimensional objects on painted surfaces. Definable neither as sculpture nor painting, these works were dubbed "combines" by the artist to describe their interdisciplinary formal roots. Trophy II is one of a series of five combines, all called "trophies," which alluded to the unconventional creative spirit of artists whose work Rauschenberg greatly admired. Using found objects, photographs, and paint, the artist considered himself "a collaborator with objects." In this way, he sought to avoid excessive autobiographical readings and instead refers to the dynamics of the urban landscape.

"I am not trying to make facsimiles of photographs. Neither am I interested in the icon of the head as a total image. I don't want the viewer to see the whole head at once and assume that that's the most important aspect of my painting. I am not making Pop personality posters like the ones they sell in the Village. That's why I choose to do portraits of my friends--individuals that most people will not recognize. I don't want the viewer to recognize the head of Castro and think he has understood my work."--Chuck Close, 1970 Big Self-Portrait was the first of Close's series of monumental head-and-shoulder portraits. After taking a picture of his subject, Close makes photographic prints that he uses to transfer the images to canvas. Using a technique devised by Renaissance masters and adapted by contemporary billboard painters, Close overlays a working print with a numbered and lettered grid, and then reproduces the image block by block. In this format the image becomes a mosaic of black, gray, and white visual information that the artist replicates by spraying a mixture of black acrylic paint and water onto the canvas with an airbrush. Specific features like the illusion of light reflecting off the hairs of his beard were achieved by scratching paint from the surface of the canvas with a razor blade.

"Art interests me very much, but truth interests me infinitely more."--Alberto Giacometti Born into a family of artists, Alberto Giacometti began his study of drawing, painting, and sculpting at a young age. His father, a well-known painter, sent him to study in Geneva, Italy, and then Paris, where after several years he left the academy to explore nontraditional ideas and forms. He was drawn to the Surrealist experimentation with the human subconscious as expression of art. Influenced by these ideas, Giacometti began working from memory and imagination rather than copying from nature. By this time, sculpture had emerged as his main artistic passion, although he never stopped drawing and made a name for himself as a superior draftsman. Buste de Diego (Bust of Diego) is a portrait of the artist's brother, who remained Giacometti's main model, studio assistant, and close friend throughout his artistic career. This bust of Diego demonstrates Giacometti's interest in distorting the scale of the human figure--the narrow head sits on a spindly neck attached to the massive broad shoulders that weigh the sculpture down. This elongated figure standing alone in the space evokes an atmosphere of isolation or loneliness, a feeling common in Giacometti's sculptures, which have been interpreted as symbols of human spiritual alienation.

The Artwork of the Month's activity and label focus on a single work in the Walker's collection and provide entertaining art experiences for young people. You can see an activity with the ArtsConnectEd image viewer or download the PDF file to your computer. Use the Prev/Next buttons to move between images of the PDF and the actual file. About the Artwork I find [Marcel Duchamp's life and work a constant inspiration. . . . His Bicycle Wheel has always struck me as one of the most beautiful pieces of sculpture I've ever seen. —Robert Rauschenberg During the 1950s, Robert Rauschenberg socialized with the group of artists known as the Abstract Expressionists and even participated in exhibitions they organized. However, it was another group of artists whose experimental approaches to dance, music, and the visual arts had the greatest impact on his work. Marcel Duchamp was one of the most significant of these. Duchamp changed the course of 20th-century art when, in the early part of the century, he developed the notion of the "readymade," a sculpture made by only slightly manipulating a found object. In the early 1950s, inspired by Duchamp, Rauschenberg devised his own radical new form, blending two-dimensional collage techniques with three-dimensional found objects on painted surfaces. Definable neither as sculpture nor painting, these works were dubbed "combines" by the artist to describe their interdisciplinary formal roots. Using found objects, photographs, and paint, the artist considered himself "a collaborator with objects." In this way, he sought to avoid excessive autobiographical readings and instead refers to the dynamics of the urban landscape. Trophy II is one of a series of five combines, all called "trophies," which alluded to the unconventional creative spirit of artists whose work Rauschenberg greatly admired. The others honored in this way were dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham, sculptor Jean Tinguely, composer John Cage, and painter Jasper Johns.

Teaching posters focus on a single work in the Walker's collection and include a large image of the artwork, information about the artist, discussion questions, and related resources. You can view posters with the ArtsConnectEd image viewer or download the PDF files to your computer. Use the Prev/Next buttons to move between the images of a PDF and the actual file.

Kazuo Shiraga  Japanese, b. 1924 Untitled 1959 oil on canvas 70 7⁄8 x 110 in. Collection Walker Art Center, Minneapolis T. B. Walker Acquisition Fund, 1998 ABOUT THE ARTIST Kazuo Shiraga was born in Japan in 1924, and reached adulthood in the aftermath of World War II. Trained in traditional Japanese painting at the Kyoto City Specialist School of the Arts, he soon began to experiment with Western styles. In 1952, Shiraga joined other local artists in forming the Zero-kai group, which held the belief that every work of art begins from nothing. He later became a member of the Gutai Art Association. Established in the summer of 1954, it sought to create a new art “never known until now.” Gutai, which means “embodiment,” has similarities to the Action Painting practiced in New York in the 1950s, but is uniquely influenced by its own time and place. Coming out of Japan’s surrender in World War II, Gutai artists desired an art form free of social criticism or political implication, and believed in the interaction of the body with materials. Its first exhibition was in 1955 and featured a performance wherein Shiraga dove into a pile of mud and wrestled, kicked, and thrashed the clay mound into an artwork sculpted by physical action. ABOUT THE ART When Shiraga discarded his brush and palette knife and began working with his feet, it was a breakthrough for the Gutai, just as Jackson Pollack’s drip paintings were a revelation for the Abstract Expressionists in the West. In this untitled painting, Shiraga used his bare feet to apply paint onto a piece of canvas on the floor. Grasping a hanging rope, he dipped and swung himself through the thick, wet, oil paint. The finished work depicts his random spins, swirls, and slips. DISCUSSION 1. Shiraga’s painting method has been referred to as a form of “writing.” How do you relate tagging, graffiti, or even everyday penmanship to the sorts of gestures Shiraga made in this work?  2a. How does Shiraga’s method reflect a rejection of the old ways of painting? 2b. What was happening in Japan during the 1950s when this artwork was created? 2c. In what ways is the social climate of the times reflected in this work? 3. Shiraga used sweeping gestures to create a sense of movement. What does the quote by the artist tell you about his work? “Technique will change to free and wild action, and it ignites my passion. Passion turns into action, and it fills my flaming heart.” —Kazuo Shiraga

The Artwork of the Month's activity and label focus on a single work in the Walker's collection and provide entertaining art experiences for young people. You can see an activity with the ArtsConnectEd image viewer or download the PDF file to your computer. Use the Prev/Next buttons to move between images of the PDF and the actual file. About the Artwork Warhol made 16 Jackies in response to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. The woman depicted is Jacqueline Kennedy, the president’s wife. The top and bottom photographs were taken moments before her husband’s death, and the two pictures in the middle were taken shortly afterward. The president’s death and its affect on his family and the country was widely covered in the news broadcasts around the world. People were glued to their television sets for days, watching many of the same scenes again and again as they waited for further details about the tragedy.

Participants look closely at artworks to complete a scavenger hunt that involves finding specific works based on clues. This activity could be used in the Walker Art Center galleries, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, or in the classroom with a selection of images from Art Collector. The artworks included in the activity are suggestions only and instructors may choose different artworks to accompany the discussion questions. This activity  is from the Living in Our Time section of the Tour Guide Tool Kit.