Takako Saito

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Takako Saito ( Japanese 斉 藤 陽 子 , Saitō Takako ; * 1929 in Sabae , Fukui Prefecture , Japan ) is a Japanese fluxus artist . She became internationally known for her stalls in the art context, for Fluxus music and musical objects. Saito contributed a large number of concepts and works of art to Fluxus. Many are shown to this day in Fluxus exhibitions and in the MOMA, Museum of Modern Art in New York. She became famous through object boxes with the title "Silent Music" and series of chess games such as "Spice Chess", "Fluxchess", "Liquor Chess", some of which were in George Maciuna's Fluxshop in his Canal Street Loft, in New York and later on Fluxus Mail-Order Warehouse were sold.

Life

Saito studied child psychology at the Japanese Women's University from 1947 to 1950 and taught at the junior high school in Sabae-shi from 1951 to 1954. She took part in the Sōzō biiku undō (Sōbi), the movement for "Creative Art Education" ("Creative Art Education movement"). Founded in 1952 by Teijirō Kubo, the movement focused on developing creativity through free will.

The artist lived in New York since 1963, where she met George Maciunas and participated in the Fluxus movement founded in 1962 with multiples. She studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School from 1965 to 1968, then attended the Art Students League , New York. Between 1968 and 1979 she traveled to France, where she a. a. worked with George Brecht and Robert Filliou , and to Germany and Italy. In England, Saito worked for the Beau Geste Press and published art books. From 1979 to 1983 she taught at the University of Essen . Saito's friends were or are Fluxus artists like Ay-O , George Brecht and Joe Jones .

Takako Saito has lived and worked mainly in Düsseldorf since 1978.

plant

Saito took part in numerous Fluxus activities and went public with his own performances from 1971. It uses everyday things and materials, natural substances such as mussels, onion and orange peels, stones, wood, paper, plastics or foam. Materials that are usually thrown away expand the possibilities of thinking about material, form and everyday life, and about what is necessary and what is sufficient. With objects that have a playful character (chess games, playing objects) and ever new individual game variants beyond fixed rules, Saito speaks directly to the viewer and reader, includes him as an actor and makes him an artist himself. The artist also pursues this idea in installations and books. For example, white paper cubes are offered to the public to play with as “Do It Yourself” (Do It Yourself, 1989/90; Takako's Do It Yourself Bookshop, 1992; exhibition: Do It Yourself In Fluxus, 2003).

The “You and Me Shop” Saitos also contains the idea of ​​exchanging ideas with the viewer and doing artistic work together: In a shop, the artist offers an arranged number of those small objects or materials that she also uses in her objects - dried onion skins , Chestnuts, pieces of wood, cutouts from paper. The interaction with the viewer begins with the joint selection, filing and fixing of the offered objects. A jointly signed artistic work is therefore both the relic of a temporary artistic action, the finished product in the sense of an exchange of goods (from the declaration of intent to hand over the goods), but also the result of interactive and collective creative work. Through the integration into a sales booth, in which the visitors, unlike in the gallery business, can choose immediately and have to pay the artist, the formal presentation and the financial transaction of the usual art context is broken up and transformed. The work must be actively supervised during the exhibition in order to be complete.

“Actually Here Is My Atelier”, a drawing from 1996, shows her head profile. Instead of the brain, a speech bubble is shown, which names the work title mentioned. The artistic work is located in the head of the artist, i.e. of an ideal nature. This is where the artistic act is based, which always takes place in exchange with the actively involved audience. As Beuys and other artists advocated, the artistic work created with the audience is linked to the idea of ​​the abolition of alienated conditions in society. Saito asks how humans can free themselves from these states. With its focus on simple things, the interaction in simple actions, gestures and the small changes in the world of things, it offers to tread an individual path of experience: do it yourself.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions:

  • 1972 La fenêtre gallery, Nice
  • 1980 “Fluxus Tour”, Musée St. George, Liège
  • 1982 "1962 Wiesbaden FLUXUS 1982" in the Museum Wiesbaden
  • 1982 Maier-Hahn Gallery, Düsseldorf
  • 1986 Galerie Hundertmark , Cologne
  • 1994 "Paper art 5" in the Leopold Hoesch Museum , Düren
  • 1991 Dimanch Hall, Fukui, Japan
  • 2000 You and Me shop, Düsseldorf art fair
  • 2002 Kaunas picture Gallery, Kaunas

Exhibition participation:

  • 1965 “Box Show”, New York
  • 1970 “Happening & Fluxus”, Kölnischer Kunstverein
  • 1980 "Fluxus Tour", Musée St. George, Liège a. a.
  • 1982 "1962 Wiesbaden FLUXUS 1982", Museum Wiesbaden
  • 1992 "Fluxus Virus", Galerie Schüppenhauer, Cologne
  • 1994 "Paper art 5.", Leopold Hoesch Museum , Düren

Awards

Publications

  • Takako Saito: Book chess no. 1. Mergemeier Book Gallery, 1984. 96 miniature books in English (each 40 × 40 mm). Issued in a wooden box. 48 volumes printed white on black paper; 48 volumes printed on black white paper.

literature

  • Takako Saito: A Japanese woman in Düsseldorf. Objects. March 10 - April 10, 1988, Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf (formerly Palais Spee). Text: Wieland Koenig, Dagmar Hector. Stadtmuseum, Düsseldorf 1988, ISBN 3-926895-01-2 .
  • Midori Yoshimoto: Into performance. Japanese women artists in New York. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 2005, ISBN 0-8135-3520-4 . Therein Chapter 4: Playful Spirit: The Interactive Art of Takako Saito. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Achille Bonito Oliva (curator): Dissonances. Shigeko Kubota , Yayoi Kusama , Yoko Ono , Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi , Atsuko Tanaka . Mudima, Milano 2008. (Exhibition by the Fondazione Mudima at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, October 2008).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Midori Yoshimoto: Into performance. Japanese women artists in New York. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 2005, ISBN 0-8135-3520-4 , p. 118 ( limited preview in Google Book Search). Retrieved June 20, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b Takako Saito. Museum Platform NRW, accessed on June 19, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Saito, Takako
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 斉 藤 陽 子 (Japanese); Saitō, Takako
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese fluxus artist
DATE OF BIRTH 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH Sabae , Fukui Prefecture , Japan