Akira Kanayama (金山明 Kanayama Akira; 1924–2006) was a Japanese avant-garde artist and an early member of The Gutai Art Association. An active contributor to Gutai's exhibitions and performance events, Kanayama was one of the pivotal figures of the group. His artworks were characterised by witty experiments with unconventional materials such as toy cars and signal lights for level crossing. He left Gutai in 1965 with Atsuko Tanaka, whom he married later in the same year.
Biography
Kanayama was born in 1924 in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture. He withdrew from Tama Art University in 1947 and attended the Osaka Municipal Institute of Art (an art school affiliated with Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts) instead, where he continued to study until 1954. During this period, he participated in exhibitions held by Shin Seisakuha Kyōkai (新制作協会 New Production Association). In 1952, in order to pursue more radical artistic experiments, he founded Zero Society (Zero-kai) with other young members of the Shin Seisaku Association, including Kazuo Shiraga and Saburō Murakami. Kanayama also invited Atsuko Tanaka, who was then also a student at the Osaka Municipal Art Institute. Zero Society mounted its first group exhibition in 1954.
In 1955, Kanayama and three other members of Zero Society (Shiraga, Murakami, and Tanaka) joined Gutai upon Jirō Yoshihara's invitation. During his time as a Gutai member, Kanayama significantly expanded his oeuvre by exploring diverse media and means of artistic expression. He exhibited large-scale installations at Gutai's outdoor exhibitions and playfully used remote-control toys cars to create paintings that resemble Abstract Expressionist works. He also showed two works at Gutai's performance events, 'Gutai on Stage', in 1957 and 1958.
Kanayama left Gutai in 1965 and married Tanaka. Due to Tanaka's health condition, the couple decided to move to the Myōhōji temple in Osaka for a restful environment. Kanayama took care of administrative issues for Tanaka, while her artistic career soared. The couple moved to Nara in 1972. In later decades, Kanayama continued to make art and exhibited his works in various exhibitions. He received his first solo exhibition in 1992 at Gallery Kuranuki in Osaka. Kanayama died of lung cancer in September 2006. A retrospective exhibition of his artworks opened at Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in 2007.
Zero Society
In 1952, Kanayama formed Zero Society with fourteen other artists, including Kazuo Shiraga and Saburo Murakami. The name of the collective, 'Zero', given by Murakami, encapsulates its members' pursuit of simple, non-artificial, and 'primary' expressions of art. Shiraga also explained that the group's name connoted neutrality and the sense of having a 'new start'.
Kanayama shared other Zero Society members' interest in simplification. During this period, he created extremely minimal paintings, which often showed only several small dark rectangles painted at the edges of completely empty canvases. While the geometric abstraction resembled Piet Mondrian's works, Kanayama's paintings pushed further the exploration of the relationship between positive and negative spaces. He highlighted the tension and interplay between the narrow dark shapes and the expansive blankness.
Kanayama's minimalistic paintings also drew inspirations from Japanese calligraphy and Zen aesthetics. The striking emptiness of the paintings not only directed viewers' attention to the spatial interplay of the white canvases and the dark shapes but also recalled Zen concepts such as 'nothingness' (mu). The asymmetric compositions and random positions of the rectangles also echoed the visual tradition of Zen-inspired ink paintings.
Gutai
Around June 1955, Kanayama, Tanaka, Shiraga, and Murakami joined Gutai when the Gutai member Shōzō Shimamoto invited them on Yoshihara's behalf.