Postwar Japanese Avant-garde: Beauty in the Grotesque Pubblico

Kim, Ji Eun (2013)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/f1881m42v?locale=it
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Abstract

Contrary to the optimism and sense of liberation that marked the immediate postwar years, Japan
rebuilt itself in the image of its nationalist past in the decades following World War II. The
dissonance between the government's conservative policies and the ideals of the new democratic
Constitution became a major cause of the chaos and eruptions of violence in the 1960s.
Moreover, this discourse that took place between conflicting political and social ideologies
inspired the abject aesthetics of Japanese postwar avant-garde art. The avant-garde movement
struggled to answer many of the questions ailing the populace, which ranged from the superiority
of the collective over the individual, the male over the female, and the West over the East. This
paper will focus specifically on the female intermedia artists and male butoh artists, who
represent two different art forms of postwar avant-garde, and observe the ways these artists
concurred and diverged in the approaches to these questions. Ultimately, they both refused to
reinforce prevailing power dynamics in the fabrics of human society, thereby reinforcing
equality. Behind the grotesque, dark and seemingly absurd aesthetics of postwar avant-garde,
the art form arguably encapsulates the same sense of optimism and hope for true democracy that
marked the very beginnings of the postwar era.

Table of Contents


Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Intermedia 5

Chapter 2: Butoh 20

Chapter 3: Analysis 40

Conclusion 49

Notes 50

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