Gutai and Informel: Post -war art in Japan and France, 1945--1965

This dissertation analyzes a transnational artistic exchange between Japan and France in the 1950s. It focuses on two groups, the Gutai and the Informel, who developed a complex interchange of interpretation, dialogue and collaboration. Both the Gutai, a group of interdisciplinary experimental artists in Japan led by Yoshihara Jiro (1905--1972), and the Informel, an abstract painting movement in France promulgated by Michel Tapie (190--1987) emerged in the period after the Second World War and sought new modes of expression adequate to a post-Holocaust, post-nuclear age. Ethically committed to internationalism and cross-cultural dialogue, these two groups came into contact 1957. This dissertation is a historical analysis of the collaboration between the two groups and their exchange of artworks, ideas, and aesthetic theories. It employs translation as a model of cultural interaction and considers their relationship in light of the power dynamics that developed in the modern period between Japan and France.;Employing a cross-cultural framework of analysis, this dissertation looks at four artists: Informel artist Jean Fautrier (1898--1964), Gutai artists Shiraga Kazuo (b. 1924) and Tanaka Atsuko (b. 1932) and, in order to examine the legacy of this interaction, Nouveau Realiste Yves Klein (1928--1962). It considers the strategies of representation Fautrier and Shiraga developed in response to the Second World War as well as the efforts of Tanaka and Klein to go beyond their vocabulary of Action Painting and diaristic expression through experiments in performance, installation, and the use of alternative materials.;Crossing sub-disciplinary boundaries, this project challenges the notion that the analysis of art should be constrained by national boundaries, particularly at a time when changes in communication technology are making borders more permeable and cultures more intertwined, altering the shape of culture.