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Updated: August 19, 2009, 1:42 pm	Share    Print    Email

Springs - Billed as an exhibition that examines the fruitful relationship which developed between the avant-garde Gutai Art Association, founded in Osaka, Japan in 1954, and New York artists in the 1950s and 1960s, "Under Each Other's Spell" draws in particular on material in the Pollock-Krasner House collection, and a group of paintings in the collection of Paul Jenkins, who was an artist in residence at the Gutai Pinacotheca in Osaka in 1964. The paintings were given to Jenkins in exchange for his own works as an act of friendship.

Recalling the time he and the Gutai artists spent together, Jenkins said that they were "under each other's spell." He will discuss his association with the Gutai in a gallery talk at the Pollack-Krasner Museum on Sunday, Aug. 16 at 5 p.m.

In the group's manifesto, its founder Jiro Yoshihara defined Gutai as truth to the material of which art is made and the lifting of that material to spiritual heights. He singled out Jackson Pollock and the French painter Georges Mathieu as artists who "grapple with the material in a way which is completely appropriate to it," and encouraged group members to emulate this approach. Their efforts were publicized in a journal, Gutai, of which 14 issues appeared from between the years 1955 to 1965.

Paul Jenkins.

The Gutai group was well aware of its distance from the art world's epi-centers and relied on the postal system to build their international network. These efforts resulted in their publication of some of Ray Johnson's earliest moticos, and the inclusion of Gutai in Allan Kaprow's 1966 book "Assemblage, Environments and Happenings." Yoshihara collected art journals from around the world, and also sent copies of the Gutai journal to artists overseas, including Pollock. In 1956, when B.H. Friedman was helping Lee Krasner organize Pollock's affairs, he came across issues two and three of the Gutai journal in Pollock's library. Friedman wrote to the group, requesting a subscription and commenting, "I know these publications of yours must have been loved by Jackson, as they are concerned with the same kind of vision and reality with which he was."

In addition to paintings by several Gutai members, including Yoshihara, Atsuko Tanaka, Shō;zō; Shimamoto, Sadamasa Motonaga, Kazuo Shiraga and Akira Kanayama, the exhibition will include examples of the Gutai journal and other publications, works by New York artist who related strongly to Gutai, videos of Gutai exhibitions and performances in Japan, and photographs of American artists - including Jenkins, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and John Cage visiting the Gutai group in 1964. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog of essays on the interaction between Gutai and New York artists by guest curator Ming Tiampo, Ph.D., associate professor of art history at Carleton University in Ottawa, and on Jackson Pollock's relationship to the Gutai group by Tetsuya Oshima, Ph.D., curator of the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art in Japan.

The exhibition will be on view through Oct. 17, after which it will travel to the Harold B. Lemmerman Gallery of New Jersey City University. The Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center is open to the public on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays until Oct. 31. One-hour guided tours offered on the hour from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., by appointment only. Admission is $10 and free for members and children under 12, as well as SUNY/ CUNY students, faculty and staff. Call 631-324-4929 for details. The house is handicapped accessible.