Feb 19, 2020
Kiyoji Otsuji, Three Photographs from the Series, Saburo Murakami Performing “Passing Through”, (1956)
Kiyoji Otsuji’s 1956 photographs provide us with some idea of the violence and drama contained in Murakami’s performance “Passing Through” in which the artist smashed his way through 21 layers of paper screens before collapsing to the floor with a concussion. Violence and play, it seems, allowed Murakami and “Gutai” (the artist collective that he was involved with at the time) to explore terrain such as happenings and conceptual practices that would not manifest in the West until later movements such as Fluxus.
