E xecuted in 1973, Dattan - Shunie no gyo is a fiery example of the Japanese Gutai master Kazuo Shiraga’s seminal dynamic action-based paintings, its swirling scarlet flames threatening to leap from the canvas and engulf the viewer. Dattan - Shunie no gyo was created during his early post-Gutai years of the 1970s, a pivotal period in the artist’s career when he received extensive training as a Buddhist monk, completing his training in 1974. This experience engendered a significant evolution in his psyche as well as a heightened consciousness within his gestural art, with his post-Gutai paintings such as the present work emitting a sense of transcendental enlightenment. Significantly, Dattan - Shunie no gyo is the earliest recorded Dattan titled work, depicting a motif that the artist continued to return to until 1988. Further, test.mes nt to the significance of the work and the vitality of its imagery, Dattan - Shunie no gyo was not only included in the Gutai exhibition at Hong Kong’s de Sarthe Gallery in 2015, it was also used to illustrate the cover of its accompanying catalogue.

Influenced by his Buddhist teachings, Dattan - Shunie no gyo references religious, metaphorical and literal catharsis. Dattan carries great religious significance in the Japanese tradition as it is the name of a special Buddhist ritual in which the monks run through the temple corridor with a big torchlight in hand. The cascade of embers that shower the audience below are considered to be auspicious, cleansing participants for a fresh start to the new lunar year. This ritual, called Shuni-e, takes place at the Todaiji Temple in Nara and was performed for the peace of the country and the prosperity of the people. Vividly translating this spiritual phenomenon through oil on canvas, Dattan - Shunie no gyo powerfully visualises the swirling of these large torches of burning fire, and the crackling embers that fizzle from the flames. Emanating from the tempestuous flames of the present lot is an exuberant, regenerative and triumphant flourish—one proclaiming that the demons of war, trauma and defeat have been exorcised.

 A leading member of one of Japan’s most significant post-war art collects ives, The Gutai Art Association, Kazuo Shiraga’s work typifies the group’s central aim to reject traditional artistic conventions in favour of an expressive, gestural abstraction that broached innovative forms of display and facture. Founded by the pioneering artist Jirō Yoshihara in 1954, the group’s core members included Shimamoto Shōzō, Kanayama Akira, Tanaka Atsuko, Murakami Saburō, Motonaga Sadamasa and Shiraga. Influenced by the climate of post-war Japan, the group sought to stimulate a society saturated in tradition with radical modern stimuli by following Yoshihara’s dictum: “Never imitate others! Make something that has never existed!” (Jirō Yoshihara quoted in: Exh Cat., New York, McCaffrey Replica Handbags , Kazuo Shiraga, 2009, p. 15). In particular, their revolutionary exploratory processes involved devising new presentation formats that stretched the limits of the conventional exhibition space. Anticipating later developments in performance and conceptual art, they ingeniously began to incorporate aspects of performance and interactive environments into their work.

Endeavoring to create something entirely new, in 1954 Shiraga turned away from the conventional practice of painting with a brush, instead, fastening himself to a rope and using his feet to spread thick visceral layers of paint across his canvas surfaces in vital, gestural movements. Such uninhibited actions allowed the artist to immerse himself within his canvas as opposed to merely pouring or painting from above; by merging body with matter in a cathartic synthesis, Shiraga set himself apart from the gesturality of Western Abstract Expressionism and thrashed out an impassioned path of primal expression. Like no other artist before him, Shiraga’s performative abstractions were vehemently inspirited with movement—“not just the movement of his body […] but also the assertion of matter itself” (Ming Tiampo, ‘Not just beauty, but something horrible’, in Exh. Cat., New York, Lévy Gorvy, Body and Matter: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino, 2015, pp. 21-22). While Shiraga's drastic act of discarding the paintbrush in favour of the human body aligned him with celebrated Western artists such as Yves Klein, who utilised naked women as ‘human paintbrushes’ in his Anthropometries of 1961, Shiraga’s art utilized his irreducible corporeality to battle with and awaken the raw vitality of matter itself.

Such a paradigm epitomised the mission of the post-war Gutai artists who, literally uniting ‘instrument’ (gu) with ‘body’ (tai), rose fearlessly from the rubble of post-Hiroshima Japan to advocate a reinvigorating philosophy of ‘concreteness’ in their war-torn country. Shiraga once said that his art “needs not just beauty, but something horrible” (Kazuo Shiraga, interview with Ming Tiampo, Ashiya, Japan, 1998); by engaging with, and transcending, violence, Shiraga was able to “wrestl[e] with the demons that haunted him and his generation, at the same t.mes opening the possibility of hope for the years ahead” (Exh. Cat., New York, Lévy Gorvy, Body and Matter: The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino, 2015, p. 23). In his post-Gutai years, Shiraga not only received training in Buddhism but also re-engaged with traditional ink and brush calligraphy to complement his technique and breadth of style. Such a re-embracing of his Eastern roots lends Shiraga’s feet-strokes the essence and soul of masterful ink brushwork, gracing his by-then universally acclaimed canvases with transcendent traces of his Eastern origins. This is evident in his post-Gutai works such as Dattan - Shunie no gyo in which a certain elegant lyricism arises from the loose natural strokes, recalling the classical Japanese tradition of calligraphy despite the apparent violence of the enthralling visceral struggle between the contrasting colours of yellow and red.

日 本具體派大師白髮一雄憑動作繪畫聞名於世，他在1973年創作的《Dattan - Shunie no gyo》就是一個激情澎湃的例子。畫中鮮紅色的旋轉火焰，似是蠢蠢欲動地要從畫布上飛撲出來，將觀賞者吞噬。1970年代，白髮一雄在他的後具體派初期時段創作了《Dattan - Shunie no gyo》，這亦是他職業生涯中的重要時期。當時他正在接受佛教僧人訓練，並於1974年完成修行。這段經歷顯著地改變了他的思維，令他更專注於動態藝術和後具體派繪畫，作品進入超脫覺悟的階段。值得注意的是，《Dattan - Shunie no gyo》是白髮一雄最早以 Dattan 為題的作品，直至1988年為止，他的作品一直反覆圍繞著這個主題。另外，《Dattan - Shunie no gyo》不僅在 2015 年香港德薩畫廊的「具體派」展覽展出，更登上展覽目錄封面，可見本作的重要性。

在佛教教義的影響下，《Dattan - Shunie no gyo》蘊含宗教、隱喻和精神淨化的元素。由於 Dattan 是佛教中一種特別儀式的名稱，僧侶們會手持大型火炬走過寺廟走廊，因此在日本傳統中具有重要的宗教意義。將大量灰燼灑落到寺廟下的觀眾，目的是淨化眾生，以迎接農曆新年的來臨。這個稱為 Shuni-e 的儀式在奈良的東大寺舉行，目的是祝願國家安定、人民幸福。《Dattan - Shunie no Gyo》不僅生動地演繹了這個精神意象，亦將這些大型火炬上的火焰漩渦以及火焰遺落的灰燼鮮明地描繪出來。烈火映照出熱情、重生和勝利的光芒，向眾人宣布戰爭、創傷和失敗的夢魘已被驅除。

具體派藝術協會是日本戰後其中一個最重要的藝術團體，主要成員白髮一雄的作品更象徵著團體的核心精神，亦即摒棄傳統的藝術模式，推崇極具表現力的姿態抽象風格，創作手法往往破格出新。這個團體成立於1954年，始創人是前衛藝術家吉原治良，骨幹成員包括嶋本昭三、金山明、田中敦子、村上三郎、元永定正和白髮一雄。受到日本戰後環境所影響，這個團體曾經嘗試按照吉原的宣言，透過激進的手法來刺激當時充斥著守舊思想的社會，這個宣言是：「永不模仿他人！創造一些從未存在過的東西！」（引述吉原治良，摘自《白髮一雄》展覽圖錄，McCaffrey Replica Handbags 畫廊，紐約，2009年，頁15） 值得注意的是，他們在革命性的探索過程中，亦突破了傳統展覽空間的局限，開創前所未見的展覽方式。他們巧妙地將表演和環境的互動元素融入到創作裡，預示了日後表演和概念藝術的興起。

1954 年，白髮一雄為了創作全新的作品，放棄了使用油刷繪畫的傳統做法，轉而將自己繫於一根繩子上，並且按照內心的想法，利用雙腳在畫布表面以不同的姿態動作塗上厚厚的顏料。這種打破常規的行為，讓白髮一雄不只單純地在畫布上傾倒顏料或繪畫，更讓自己沉醉在畫布的世界中。白髮一雄認為自己的手法有別於西方抽象表現主義的動勢繪畫，他透過身體和材料將內心的思想，以激烈的方式宣洩出來。與過往任何其他藝術家不同，白髮一雄的抽象藝術表演的靈感大部分來自身體活動—「除了他的身體活動外[……]，亦包括材料本身的使用」（Ming Tiampo 撰，< Not just beauty, but something horrible>,摘自Lévy Gorvy,《Body and Matter:The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino》展覽圖錄，紐約，2015 年，頁21-22）。雖然白髮一雄以人體取代畫筆的激進行為，讓外界將他與伊夫・克萊因（Yves Klein）等著名西方藝術家相提並論（伊夫・克萊因在 1961 年的《Anthropometries》中，利用裸體女性作為「人體畫筆」），但白髮一雄在藝術創作中，卻利用他整個身體與材料本身角力，並且喚醒材料原始的生命力。

這種創作方式展現了戰後具體派藝術家的使命，他們將「工具」（gu）與「身體」（tai）融合在一起，從日本廣島原爆後的廢墟中毫不怯懦地站起來，在飽受戰火摧殘的國土上宣揚一種重新振作的「具體」哲學。白髮一雄曾經說過，他的藝術「不僅需要美感，還需具備一些令人震驚的元素」（摘自白髮一雄與Ming Tiampo的訪問，日本蘆屋市，1998 年）；透過接觸並超越激進行為，白髮一雄能夠「與縈繞他和他這一代人的惡魔鬥爭，同時為未來日子開啟了希望之門」（摘自Lévy Gorvy,《Body and Matter:The Art of Kazuo Shiraga and Satoru Hoshino》展覽圖錄，紐約，2015 年，頁23）。在他的後具體派時期中，白髮一雄除了學習佛學知識外，亦重新接觸傳統水墨書法，以彌補自己的技巧並擴闊創作風格。白髮一雄重新擁抱東方藝術後，他用雙腳畫出的筆觸透露著水墨書法的精髓和靈魂，展現出超然脫俗的東方氣息。雖然黃色和紅色的對比展現出激烈的內心掙扎，但那不受束縛的自然筆觸，又令人聯想到日本傳統書法，令這幅作品具備一種既優美又熱情奔放的情懷。