Matsuri no Hi 1981

Curator: The explosive energy in Kazuo Shiraga’s 1981 painting, "Matsuri no Hi", which translates to “Festival Day”, immediately grabs my attention. Acrylic paint bursts across the canvas. What are your first impressions? Editor: Chaos. Raw energy. And there's something unsettling about it, despite the title. It reminds me of a primal scream rendered in paint. The bold colors hint at joy, but the gray background and splattered texture feels aggressive. Curator: That aggression is intrinsic to the Gutai movement, which Shiraga was a central figure of. Gutai aimed to liberate art from traditional methods and embrace direct action and materials. He would often use his feet to paint. "Matsuri no Hi" is no exception. Consider how that physical process intersects with cultural disruption. Editor: You can certainly feel that embodied energy. But tell me more about the symbolic intent. That swirling vortex of colors – is it supposed to literally depict a festival, or is something else being communicated? I see hints of the grotesque amidst all the color, like distorted faces or figures emerging from the paint. Curator: It's more an evocation of the energy and spirit of a festival. Abstract expressionism combined with the Gutai focus on materials elevates gesture to its highest level. Think about post-war Japan, grappling with tradition and modernity. This work confronts the chaos inherent in radical societal change. Editor: So the symbols here are more about abstracting the collective memory of celebratory cultural disruption…The swaths of color remind me of ritualistic objects I’ve seen in other contexts of Japanese cultural traditions, but here all those signs of recognizable symbolic content have turned volatile and raw. Curator: Exactly. Shiraga dismantles the picturesque and embraces a rawer truth about the social realities of “festivals,” in a way using abstract means to hint at actual emotions behind them. Editor: It leaves me with questions rather than answers, and that's compelling. "Matsuri no Hi" is not simply about celebration, but perhaps about the tensions simmering beneath the surface. Curator: It gives you an entryway into re-thinking about collective experiences and to confront our social anxieties about change through color, and the very act of creation itself as a sort of transformative action.