Gutai Performance Art

The Guati Art Association was formed in 1954. The founding member, the one who financed it, was a Japanese man by the name of Yoshihara Jiro. Others in the group included:, Shimamoto Shozo, Kanayma Akira, Murakami Saburo, and Shiraga Kazuo. Translated into English Guati means 'embodiment' or 'concrete'. The group of young artists surfaced after World War II and their “activities of the Gutai group in the mid-1950s constitute one of the most important moments of post-war Japanese culture'. They blazed the path for later forms of performance art such as happenings, performance and conceptual art. Challenge to the Mud performed by Shiraga Kazue is the most known and celebrated act of the Guati group. Performed in 1955 it consisted of the artist rolling around half naked in a pile of mud. The group did other mediums of art, revolutionizing them also as they went. Murakami created a series of paintings in which he soaked a ball in ink and then threw it at the paper. Throws Of Color was made by Shimamoto, in which he threw glass jars filled with color pigments on his canvas. This type of new art was obviously directly effected by World War II and the after effects.
"Gutai art does not alter matter; it gives matter life... In Gutai art, the human spirit and matter, opposed as they are, shake hands... My respect goes out to the works of Pollock and Mathieu. Their works are the cries uttered by matter: by oil paint and enamel themselves." (Yoshihara, Gutai manifesto, 1956)

Sources Used:
http://www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=130
http://www.ashiya-web.or.jp/museum/10us/103education/nyumon_us/manifest_us.htm
www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2003/10/20/31466.html