Mono-ha
| Phase-Mother Earth | |
|---|---|
| Artist | Nobuo Sekine |
| Year | 1968, 2008 and 2012 |
| Type | earth art |
| Dimensions | 2.7 m × 2.2 m (110 in × 87 in); 2.2 m diameter (87 in) |
| Location | Kobe, Suma Rikyu Park |
Mono-ha (もの派) is the name given to a group of 20th-century Japanese artists. The Mono-ha artists explored the encounter between natural and industrial materials, such as stone, steel plates, glass, light bulbs, cotton, sponge, paper, wood, wire, rope, leather, oil, and water, arranging them in mostly unaltered, ephemeral states. The works focus as much on the interdependency of these various elements and the surrounding space as on the materials themselves.
“Mono-ha” is usually translated in a literal manner, as “School of Things.” The Mono-ha artists regularly assert that “Mono-ha” was a term disparagingly coined by critics (specifically Teruo Fujieda and Toshiaki Minemura in Bijutsu Techo magazine in 1973) well after they had begun to exhibit their work, and they did not begin as an organized collective.
Toshiaki Minemura explains in his 1986 essay “What Was Mono-ha?,” that in terms of their academic background and intellectual exchange, the Mono-ha artists are divided into three groups:
Mono-ha emerged in response to a number of social, cultural and political precedents set in the 1960s. With the exception of Lee Ufan, who was a decade older, most of the Mono-ha artists were just beginning their careers when the violent student protests of 1968–69 occurred.
At the same time, there was much protest against the second extension of the US-Japan Security Treaty (known in abbreviated Japanese as Anpo) in 1970, binding Japan into providing logistical support for the US war in Vietnam. Coupled with demands for the reversion of Okinawa by 1972 and the removal of nuclear weapons based there, the climate of protest during this period was symptomatic of a growing distrust of the United States’ intentions towards Asia and its dominant position in the bilateral relationship with Japan. The activism of the “Anpo generation” gave rise to a highly intellectual counterculture that was both critical of US “imperialism” and acutely self-aware of its Japanese identity.
The Mono-ha artists typically deny involvement with student activist movements at the time, though it is thought that the tense political climate influenced their work, allowing them to grapple with and make sense of their unease and disillusionment with postwar modernity in their different ways.
In 2012, Blum & Poe gallery introduced the Mono-ha art into the US with the survey exhibition “Requiem for the Sun: The Art of Mono-ha,” curated by Mika Yoshitake. The gallery has also held solo exhibitions of Lee Ufan, Kishio Suga, Susumu Koshimizu, Koji Enokura, and Nobuo Sekine.
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