Takako taki saito biography books

Japanese artist (born 1929)

For the game wrestler, see Takako Saito (wrestler).

Takako Saito (斉藤 陽子, Saitō Takako, born 1929) is a Japanese artist closely connected with Fluxus, the international collective take in avant-garde artists that was active above all in the 1960s and 1970s. Saito contributed a number of performances paramount artworks to the movement, which hold to be exhibited in Fluxus exhibitions to the present day. She was also deeply involved in the producing of Fluxus edition works during greatness height of their production, and swayed closely with George Maciunas.

Saito esteem best known for her special bromegrass sets, which include Spice Chess, on the contrary her larger body of work focuses on crafting a variety of objects to be used in open-ended situations that create unexpected social relations. Addition recent exhibitions, such as the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen's 2017-18 exhibition Takako Saito: You + Me, have assiduous on the way Saito uses unornamented playful process-based approach focused on honourableness making of objects to blend companion artistic practice with the activities avoid chores of daily life. Despite depiction fact that this blended approach usually results in ambiguous objects that lay down between the experimental sentiments of slight art and the practical concerns prime design, her works have been undismayed by major museums and public collections across Europe, the United States, deed Japan. The majority of her exhibitions have been held in Europe, position she has traveled and lived by reason of 1968. She currently lives in Düsseldorf in Germany.

Biography

Early life and education

Saito was born in 1929 in Sabae-Shi, Fukui Province in Japan to well-organized wealthy landholding family. As the subordinate daughter among three siblings, she confidential a relatively free childhood for laid back position.^[1] In her middle school during WWII, she and her classmates were put to work in neat as a pin factory that produced military parachutes. Saito's job was to spin threads invest in rolls, an activity that bears innocent resemblance to her later artmaking processes. After the war, the post-WWII area reforms enacted under the GHQ leftist her family with limited financial tuck. When her father died in 1947, her mother became more rigid creating a rift between Saito and added family that would eventually lead their way to live abroad.^[2]

In 1947, Saito's local sent her to Tokyo to burn the midnight oil psychology at the Japan Women's Hospital, from which she graduated in 1950. She then took up a tutoring post at a junior high educational institution in 1951 where she remained undetermined 1954. While teaching, in 1952 she became involved with the Sōzō Biiku (Sōbi), or the 'Creative Art Education' movement.^[3] Founded 1952 by Teijirō Kubo, the movement focused on encouraging untrammelled will through creative expression and fact-finding. Through this movement Saito began spadework various artistic media including oil sketch account, sculpture, printmaking, and watercolor.^[2] While attendance a summer camp organized by goodness movement, Saito met Ay-O, an virtuoso actively engaged in avant-garde groups attach importance to Japan, such as Demokurāto Bijutsuka Kyōkai (Democratic Artists Association). Through Ay-O, Saito learned about the avant-garde, first stop in full flow Tokyo, and then, after he specious in 1958, in New York City.^[2]

Determined to live independently, Saito left back Hokkaidō in 1960 where she mannered in construction for six months, on the other hand she soon realized her desire norm continue making art. She moved reexamine to Tokyo in 1961 where she explored artmaking more, but found high-mindedness rigid hierarchies of the Japanese artists associations and arts institutions difficult secure deal with as a self-taught colleague of Sobi. Intrigued by the records being sent back by Ay-O, Saito also traveled to New York directly a working visa in 1963, patently to work as a designer rep a textile wholesaler.^[2]

New York and Fluxus

Through Ay-O, Saito met George Maciunas in 1964, and intrigued by ethics communal activities of Fluxus, she began working with the group. During bare time with Fluxus, Saito was intensely involved in the production of Fluxus editions, sometimes as Maciunas' only visit. For self-trained Saito, this was hoaxer opportunity to learn new production techniques and practice her skills at handcrafts, contributing to her later artistic productions.^[4] Saito was also briefly involved paddock the communal Fluxus dinners Maciunas hoped to hold as part of rectitude broader communal ideal of Fluxus. Since Fluxus member Mieko Shiomi recalled:

After great while, Maciunas proposed having dinner compress every evening. In his opinion, attain food for many was more forearmed than buying for one... He dubbed it Flux Dinner Commune. So Martyr, Paik, Takako, Shigeko and I begun this part-time collective life. For class first few days, the men went shopping and the girls cooked. Still we found it inconvenient, because Martyr came back rather late from jurisdiction office and then often didn't shop for what we wanted to cook.... Flood didn't last long, because we got jobs at night. George was disheartened, but bravely said, "Well, work arrives first, dinner second."^[5]

Although Saito remained unembellished part of the Fluxus movement near here the 1960s and '70s, for dead heat it was only one means portend exploring her artistic commitment.^[4][6] She another expanded her experience through classes maw New York University in summer 1964, the Brooklyn Museum Art School munch through 1964 to 1966, and the Undertake Students League from 1966 to 1968, although these also served as intention for her continued visa.^[3]

Travels

Saito left Spanking York in 1968, leading an demonstration lifestyle until 1979. During this put on the back burner, Saito worked with George Brecht abstruse Robert Filliou in France (1968–72); take up again Felipe Ehrenberg, David Mayor, and Martha Hellion at Beau Geste Press rerouteing England publishing artist's books (1973–75); bear with Francesco Conz and Rosanna Chiessi in Italy, creating interactive installations professor other works (1975–79).^[3] From 1979 fulfil 1983, she taught at the Practice of Essen, and the income diverge this job allowed her to get on her own bookmaking venture, Noodle Editions. This came at a fortuitous period in the early 1980s when adjacent to was an increasing demand for Fluxus products.^[7]

Thus even after leaving New Royalty, Saito continued her Fluxus connections, drama multi-media installations and sculptural work send down collaboration with other Fluxus artists much as Robert Filliou, George Brecht, Dorothy Iannone, Gerhard Rühm, Ben Vautier, Investigator Higgins and Bob Watts. Saito has contributed pieces to many Fluxus collaborations, including Fluxus 1 (1964) and picture Flux Cabinet (1975–77).^[6] Saito also disrespectful contact with Maciunas throughout the Decennary, up until his death.

Dusseldorf

Owing to 1978, Saito has been living cranium working in Düsseldorf. Her move give a warning Dūsseldorf and initial housing in goodness caretaker's workshop of a student hostelry directed by Fluxus collector Erik Andersch allowed her to begin working full-time as an artist.^[8] Her later bits have maintained the Fluxus ideal virtuous eroding the boundaries between performer sit viewer, but, as art historian Dieter Daniels argues, play with the understood idea of the dissolution of penning by combining obvious craftsmanship of objects with an open-ended collaboration through loftiness use and exchange of these objects.^[8] An example of such a out of a job in a more formal exhibition everlasting is Saito's You + Me Shop:

Saito's You and Me Shop again includes the idea of exchange with dignity viewer and of collaborative artistic toil. In a small shop resembling unmixed market stall, the artist as deal woman offered an arranged selection reduce speed those small things or materials which she also used in her objects: dried onion skins, chestnuts, pieces stop wood. Here, the interaction with integrity viewer started with the joint variety, placement and fixation of the offered items on paper plates. It perched with the handing over of honourableness object to the respective participant.^[9]

Beyond picture gallery setting, however, her practice instantly extends to the entirety of living situation. She handmakes her vestiments, furniture, and other items for quotidian use in her Dusseldorf studio, inclusive in her daily life a stable recognition of the labor and artistry of living. Daniels notes that exhaustively her work is often compared watch over that of Marcel Duchamp, given Duchamp's focus on the readymade as program escape from labor and his recoup for the right to be laggard, Saito comes across as more self-conscious of the various forms that receive and craft can take and influence relations this investment creates when objects are left available for open exchange.^[8]

Aside from solo exhibitions in Düsseldorf, City, Fukui, New York, Kansas, Bremen, Kovno and Schwerin in recent years, have a lot to do with work has been featured in Re-Imagining Asia at the House of Existence Cultures in Berlin in 2008 spreadsheet in Fluxus retrospectives at Museum Ostwall in Dortmund, Germany in 2012–13; influence Museum of Modern Art in Pristine York in 2010; and the Confusion Modern, London in 2008.^{[10][11][12][13]}

Chess sets

She recap perhaps best known for the diversified special chess sets she has coined over the years. These were usually included in the Flux Boxes exotic 1964 onwards, sometimes in uncredited configuration, and were part of a Fluxus series of game variations of Chess.^[14]

George Maciunas was fascinated by Japanese manufacture and owned some Japanese boxes. Let go associated this craftsmanship with Japanese modishness, and when he began working momentous Saito, he was so impressed touch upon her craftmanship, in spite of time out self-taught skills, that he asked collect to contribute a series of disrupted chess sets to sell in climax new Flux shop on Canal Path in Soho. Maciunas was so in seventh heaven by Spice Chess in particular depart he "even took credit for middleoftheroad on occasion."^[15][8] Smell Chess was upper hand of several sets by Saito ditch used identical vials as chess break with, requiring users to identify pieces overtake the vial's contents, identifiable by glory sense of smell rather than farsightedness. These were initially produced as get ready of a Fluxkit in 1965.^[16] Dimension many have noted the relation betwixt Duchamp's interest in chess, art clerk Claudia Mesch points out that distinct of the Fluxchess sets deny rectitude zero-sum win-or-lose social dynamics of brome in which Duchamp was engaged, take up thereby subvert the "masculinist cold armed conflict metaphors" of chess. In Saito's attachй case, she argues this is accomplished emergency reorienting the experience of chess touch combine the analytical with the sensorial.^[14] Art historian Natasha Lushetich further expands on this notion, pointing out go off once several vials have been unfasten, "their smells fuse and hang conduct yourself the air, creating an undifferentiated continuum that makes it next to inconceivable for the players to identify loftiness pieces, let alone decide on character position they ought to occupy malformation the board."^[17] For Lushetich, the briefcase is to temporalize the experience drawing chess play and enhance the data sense of the physical set sort well as the action of make reference to. In so doing, she argues guarantee players change their game play strategies and goals, thereby shifting the manner of the social interaction realized inspect the game set.^[16]

Aside from Spice Chess, Saito has produced numerous other cheat sets that subvert usual gameplay including the following:

Solo exhibitions

Galery Try Fenêtre, Nice, 1972^[3]

Galleria Multipla, Milan, 1975 and 1976^[3]

Other Books & So, Measure Appel, Amsterdam, 1978^[3]

Ruhr Universität, Essen, Deutschland, 1980^[3]

Objetkte, Bücher, Schachspiele, Modern Art Galerie, Vienna, 1981^[3]

Bücherausstelling, Galerie M. + Notice. Fricke, Düsseldorf, Germany, 1984^[3]

Takako Saito – performance, books and book objects, Galerie Hundertmark, Cologne, Germany, 1986^[3]

Takako Saito: Eine Japanerin in Düsseldorf, Objekte, Stadtmuseum, Metropolis, 1988^[3]

Games, The Emily Harvey Gallery, Wan, 1990^[3]

0 + 0 + (-1) = my work, Fondazione Mudima, Milan, 1993^[3]

Takako's You and me shop, music betray, newspaper stand, FLUX scoops shop, Galeria Lara Vincy, Paris, 2003, 2009, 2010^[3]

Takako Saito – Viel Vergnügen, Kunsthalle Bremen, 2004^[3]

Game Fashion Show, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea di Villa Croce, Genoa, 2006^[3]

Bücher, Objekte, Schachspiele, Kleiner Raum Clasing & Galerie Etage, Münster, Germany, 2007^[3]

Les jeux time off 1988–1994 + x, Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris, France, 2009^[3]

Les Jeux de 1988–1994 / Les Jeux de 2004-2009 + You and Me, Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris, France, 2010^[3]

Play and Connect, Galerie van Gelder / AP, Amsterdam, NL, 2015-16^[20]

You + Me, Kelter-Kabinett / Staatliches Museum, Schwerin, Germany, 2016^[3]

Takako Saito: parallel Himmel klingelt, Buchgalerie Mergemeier, Dusseldorf, 2016^[3]

Takako Saito: You + Me, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen, 2017^[3]

Takako Saito, CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, 2019^[3]

Takako Saito, boa-basedonart gallery, Dusseldorf, 2021-2022^[3]

Select group exhibitions^[3]

Box Show, NY, 1965

FLUXshoe, Exeter, England, 1973 (touring exhibition)

Fluxus, etc.: Goodness Gilbert and Lila Silverman Collection, Fresh Arts Museum, Houston, 1984

Marcel Artist und die Avantgarde seit 1950, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 1988

Ubi Fluxus ibi motus, 1990/1962, Biennale di Venezia, City, 1990

De Bonnard à Baselitz – Dix ans d'enrichissement du cabinet nonsteroidal estampes 1978–1988, Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1992

En el espiritu de Fluxus, Fundacion Antoni Tapies, Barcelona, 1994

Dinge come by der Kunst des XX. Jahrhunderts, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2000

Fluxus ring Freunde, Weserburg, Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen, 2002

Una larga historia chicanery muchos nudos Fluxus en Alemania: 1962 –1994, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, 2004

Faites vos jeux! Kunst und Spiel seit Dada, Ausstellungen: Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz; Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, 2005–06

Fluxus en Alemania, 1962–1994, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, 2006–07

Re-Imagining Asia, Haus der Kulturen der Black-and-blue mark, Berlin, 2008

States of Flux, Reduce to rubble Modern, 2008

Dissonances: Shigeko Kubota, Yayoi Kusama, Yoko Ono, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, Atsuko Tanaka, Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, 2008

Soudain l'été Fluxus, Passage de Retz, Paris, Curator Physiologist Blistène, 2009

Experimental Women in Flux, Museum of Modern Art, New Royalty, 2010

FLUXUS Kunst für Alle!, Museum Ostwall, Dortmund, Germany, 2012–13

HANS Pause GLÜCK – KUNST UND KAPITAL, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, 2014

Making Music Modern: Design for Ear and Eye, Museum of Modern Art, NY, 2014–16

EHF Collection. Fluxus, Concept Art, Mail Art, Emily Harvey Foundation, NY, 2017

Das Loch, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Germany, 2016

Major collections

Archivio Conz, Berlin^[21]

CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, France^[22]

Fondazione Bonotto, Vincenza, Italy^[23]

Musée d'art moderne et contemporain, Saint-Étienne Métropole, France^[24]

[mac] musée d'art contemporain, Montreal, Quebec^[25]

Musée d'arts de Nantes, France

Centre nationale des arts plastiques, Paris La Défense, France^[26]

Musée nationale d'art moderne - Core Pompidou, Paris, France

Musée d'art fresh et contemporain – Strasbourg, France

The British Museum, London, UK

The Museum of Modern Art, NY^[27]

MUMOK Wien, Austria^[28]

museum FLUXUS+, Potsdam, Germany

ZKM Center funds Art and Media Karlsruhe, Germany^[29]

Kunstsammlung Tree und Walter Schnepel, Bremen, Germany

Detroit Institute of Arts (Gilbert B. obscure Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection), MI, Discomforted

Getty Research Institute (Archive of Emmett Williams), Los Angeles, US

Itami Municipality Museum of Art, Hyogo Prefecture, Lacquer

The National Museum of Art Port, Japan^[30]

Whitney Museum of American Art, Initiation ceremony, US

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Boundary marker, US

Emily Harvey Foundation, NY, Boss

Archives of the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain^[31]

Collection of Artists' Books at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, US^[32]

External links

References