Author Description

Ironically, Kazuo Shiraga’s feet were nearly his feet of clay. The breakout star of the Gutai Art Association, Shiraga became colloquially known as the “foot painter”; the Japanese postwar movement’s founder, Jiro Yoshihara, even dismissed Shiraga as a “nobody, if he didn’t paint with his feet.” After his 1955 performance “Challenging Mud,” in which the artist wrestled a mixture of cement, gravel, clay, plaster, pebbles and twigs into a “formless form,” Shiraga devised an entirely new painting technique. From 1959 onward, he suspended himself from his studio ceiling and manipulated the paint exclusively with his ten toes to create a range of textures from the slinky and supple to the protruding and violent. Almost 60 years later, Shiraga, whose dynamic contributions blend painting and performance, is still a misunderstood radical who is only now receiving the sort of American institutional and gallery attention that properly contextualizes the depth and reach of his practice.