Work 作品

KANAYAMA Akira 金山　明

This painting, with its layers of dripped paint, appears to be expressionistic in Pollock's style, but actually, the lines of paint were not created by the artist's hand; they are traces left by paint dripping from an electric toy car, and thus stand at the exact opposite of "expression." In 1952, Kanayama founded the group Zero, with Kazuo Shiraga, Atsuko Tanaka, Saburo Murakami, and other artists, who would later become the core members of the nascent Gutai movement as himself. Through the mutual critiquing actively done in this friendly group, he produced innovative paintings which were "even more stoic versions of Mondrian's pure abstraction" as early as in 1954. And it is on the record that in 1955, shortly after he became a member of the Gutai, he presented a new blank canvas to his mentor Jiro Yoshihara as his work, and had it rejected. He finally arrived at the innovative use of the electric toy car following Yoshihara's artistic principle of "creating something totally novel." The self-moving car symbolizes his attempt to detach himself from the act of painting.

Collection of: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Title: Work
Artist Name: KANAYAMA Akira
Year: 1958
Category: Painting&Print
Material / Technique: Synthetic polymer paint on vinyl
Acquisition date: 1981
Accession number: 1975-00-0148-000
MOT Collection Search: https://mot-collection-search.jp/shiryo/150/