was a Japanese artist. Having studied with Jirō Yoshihara, the future Gutai leader, from 1947, Shimamoto was a key founding member of Gutai along with Yoshihara and fifteen others in August, 1954. He was close to the leader Yoshihara and actively engaged in the early activities and group administrations. He worked with a wide variety of techniques, such as poking holes in layered newspaper, throwing bottles of paint at canvases, experimenting with film and stage performances, and composing sound art. He was particularly noted for his innovative performance art. Indeed, when Yoshihara turned to focus more on painting, upon his meeting with the French art critic Michel Tapié, Shimamoto continued to urge the leader to pursue this direction, wanting to work with Allan Kaprow, for example.
After Gutai, he became known for his mail art activities with the group AU and the continuation of his painting performances which he staged around the world. He died of acute heart failure in Nishinomiya City, Hyōgo prefecture.
Early years
Shimamoto was a student of Yoshihara’s beginning when he was nineteen, in 1947.
Hole Series and early work
Shimamoto has cited the calligraphy work of Nantembō as an early influence, noting that “The thing that surprised me most when I went to see this master was that he used a very large paintbrush and with this he created much larger works than he contemporaries.” Of his early works from 1950 he has described “a single arrow sign on a piece of paper, a picture of only one circle drawn on the canvas, and a hole made on the center of the canvas, etc.” The latter of these refers to his “Hole” series, in which he perforated the picture plane of the painting. These works were developed out of the economic conditions following the Second World War and his inability to afford canvas. By glueing together layers of newspaper, he created a new kind of support which he called “paper-vas.” He found that when painting the support would tear where the glue had not dried completely. Motivated by the challenge, Shimamoto promised him a painting that hadn't been painted before. He then locked himself in his room and produced more using the same method to which Yoshihara, according to Shimamoto, “gave them a glance and just told me that he had seen this stuff before.”
Activities with Gutai Art Association
In 1954, Shimamoto participated in the “Second Genbi Exhibition,” showcasing the artist of the Gendai Bijutsu Kondankai (Contemporary Art Discussion Group) started by Hiroshi Muramatsu and strongly influenced by Yoshihara. Shimamoto's house became the first headquarters for the group, and is where the first Gutai journal was published. He furthermore advocates the recognition that “a color without matiére cannot exist” and that therefore the artist should paint in a manner that “takes advantage of the texture of the paint and gives it a lively feeling.” through the creative incorporation of audience participation. In opposition to the art “elite,” Shimamoto wrote, “it would never due for those elitist to consider a masterpiece a painting made by dancing the mambo on a canvas.”
In July 1955 Shimamoto created his work Please Walk on Here as a part of the “Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to Challenge the Midsummer Sun” in Ashiya City. The work consisted of two narrow sets of wooden boards arranged in a straight path. One set was stable to walk on while the other was unstable, akin to a broken rope bridge. As art historian Joan Kee notes, Shimamoto's activities in the early years of Gutai are indicative of the group's “a singular kind of expression” that is neither easily categorizable as Action Painting nor ‘Happening.’
This experimentation with unconventional materials and methods as a means to painterly originality continued in Shimamoto's early Gutai work. In the Gutai Open Air Exhibition of July 1956, Shimamoto built a cannon using acetylene combustion out of which he shot paint on a sheet of red vinyl to produce Cannon Work. This “Bottle Crash” method of painting, as he called it, would become a signature method of performing his painting. While he initially was frustrated that media outlets would cover his unconventional process but take less interest in the final painting that resulted, he “started to think differently, both by proposing ideas to change the setting, and by taking on a certain behavior for those occasions.” Shimamoto also experimented with film and electronic music at this event. The exhibition ran from October 1 to 10, 1962. Shimamoto expressed his belief that Gutai would have been more original and experimental had Taipé not influenced the group's direction so heavily. Shimamoto's departure stemmed from disagreements over finances within the group over Gutai’s participation in Expo ‘70, the first World’s Fair in Asia and a landmark event for Japanese contemporary art.
After Gutai
Shimamoto became the director of the AU (Artist Union and, later, Art Unidentified) in 1967. As he notes, “artists who had studied in prestigious universities and had learned the fundamental techniques, tended to stray away from the group, while other less educated artists and those with physical or mental handicaps became members.”
In response to his experimentation with the Japanese postal system, people began to send him bizarre items by sticking stamps on them and sending them through the mail.
Throughout his career, Shimamoto was also engaged in the art of children. Of the annual children’s painting exhibition in Ashiya (founded 1949) Shimamoto writes, “Immediately after the war, we members of Gutai created several works using new methods. It is no exaggeration to say that we owe all this to the children and this exhibition.” We may see the influence of children's creativity on his own practice in what he sees as an absence of intervening thought. Describing a video of Picasso artistically arranging terracotta pipes found lying in the street, he notes how “he enjoyed himself with the naturalness of a child, without hesitation.” This he links to the importance of useless things in a society mediated by overly rational and teleological conventions of thought, The importance of this direct engagement with material in art can be applied to the kinds of methods that Shimamoto sought in his practice.
Shimamoto's post-Gutai career was also marked by his passion for world peace activism, inspired in part by a visit in 1986 from Bern Porter. In 1954 he won the Association Award at the Modern Art Association in Japan, an association he would join as a member in 1957.