Namiko Kunimoto Gutai's Ascent Gutai: Splendid Playground. Exhibition organized by Ming Tiampo and Alexandra Munroe. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, February lj—May 8, 2013. Ming Tiampo and Alexandra Munroe, eds. Gutai: Splendid Playground. With contributions by Tiampo, Munroe, Pedro Erber, Lyn Hsieh, Nakajima Izumi, Katö Mizuho, Judith Rodenbeck, Hlrai Shöichi, ReikoTomii, and Midori Yoshimoto. New York: Guggenheim, 2013. 316 pp., 270 ills. j6j The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museinn in New York recently held the first North American retrospective of the Gutai Art Association (Gutai Bijutsu Kyokai). Galled Gutai: Splendid Playground, the exhibition illus- trated how this intensely productive postwar group emphasized sensory, childlike explora- tion to find new directions for art during the eighteen years it was active (19S4—1972). Walking into the museum's central rotunda on the show's opening weekend, one immediately perceived that the exhibi- tion's title befitted (and perhaps helped cre- ate) the lighthearted atmosphere conjured by the artworks displayed in Frank Lloyd Wright's idiosyncratic space. Ghildren and adults enthusiastically used the crayons pro- vided and their own implements to draw on a large board in the main foyer. The white board, re-covered numerous times during the exhibition and labeled "Please Draw Freely," was a re-creation of an eponyxnous work by the group's leader, Yoshihara Jiro (1905—1972), from the 19^6 Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition held in a park in Ashiya, Japan. Other gallery-goers gathered to view a new version of Tanaka Atsuko's (1932—2ooj) spectacular Electric Dress ( 1956), or gazed up to the ceiling, where Motonaga Sadamasa's (1922—2011 ) design of transparent polyethyl- ene skins filled with colored water was sus- pended. The show's organizers made use of the space in creative and experimental ways in a manner not unliie the Gutai artists themselves. Motonaga's piece, titled Work (Water), was the second homage in the show to the I9j6 Ashiya park exhibition. Its brightly col- ored catenaries of water effectively recast the Guggenheim's architecture as a three- dimensional painting. The vibrancy of basic color—transparent yet vivid red, green, yellow, and other colors—^was augmented by the light pouring through the skylight, similar to the refiective properties of the work when first shown in Ashiya Park. At that time. Work (Water) was suspended from trees closer to the groimd, so the tactile juxtaposi- tion of the industrial tubes and the trees was brought to the fore. But in 2013, Motonaga's new design was hterally andfigurativelyele- vated, even spiritualized. Viewers cast their gaze to the heavens, as though in awe of Gutai's rise from obscurity to recent claims that it was the most infiuential postwar Japanese art movement. Work (Water) is an especially touching vision, given that the artist passed away at eighty-nine in 2011, shortly after completing the design for the Guggenheim show. Splendid Playground was cocurated by Ming Tiampo, Associate Professor of Art History at Garleton University, and Alexandra Munroe, the Samsung Senior Gurator of Asian Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Tiampo's scholarly commitment to Gutai, which has spanned more than a decade, has reached new heights in this excellent exhibi- tion. Her knowledge of Gutai archival mate- rial, her personal familiarity with the group's members, and her wise choice to incorpo- rate the voices of leading Japanese Gutai scholars enriched the show immensely. Munroe first introduced many North Americans to Gutai in her foundational 1994 exhibition (at the Yokohama Museum of Art, the Guggenheim New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) and accompanying catalogue, Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (New York: Abrams, 1994).The catalogue's chapter on Gutai opened with an analysis of its first outdoor exliibitions and focused particularly on the early performance pieces. The Guggenheim show, however, included many works from the late 1960s. The exhibition organizers attempted to recu- perate the often-dismissed art from Late Gutai, or the newly termed "Phase II ( 1962— 1972)," into the chronologically ordered exhibition. Yet the organization ofthe show stlU privileged early Gutai. Works from the 19JOS filled the base ofthe rotunda, and the upper reaches closed with (a rather small) photograph of the balloons from Gutai's International Sky Festival ( i960). A film of Gutai's much-maligned role in Expo '70 was sequestered ia a side gallery. It was perhaps inevitable then, that the majority of visitors crowded arotmd the lower ramps where the most popular works from the 19ÎOS were showcased. Whether Phase II works wUl ever generate the same level of interest remains to be seen. While Phase n artists Kanno Seiko and Nasaka Senkichiro compellingly engage texture and sound, few have found Gutai's Installation view of Gutai: Splendid Playground, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2013 (photograph by David Heald, © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation), showing detail of Motonaga Sadamasa, Work (Water), 1956, polyethylene, water, dye, and rope, dimen- sions variable 114 SUMMER 2013