In this volume, Thomas R. H. Havens provides a detailed description of the ins and outs of Japanese nonverbal avant-garde art groups during the first twenty-five years of the postwar period while also commenting on individual artists' creative activities. After briefly discussing the production of Japanese art under American occupation, the book evenly divides its attention between the 1950s and the 1960s, identifying the political crisis of the movements against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and the new consumer economy as the catalyst for a new artistic consciousness.
The first half of the volume highlights the art critic Takiguchi Shûzô, the painter Okamoto Tarô, and members affiliated with the Gutai Bijutsu Kyôkai (Concrete Art Association) as the leading figures in Japanese experimental art in the late 1950s. The heightened political awareness of the 1960s and rising consumer capitalism gave artists the impetus to problematize everyday life in the space of modern...