C O 2 * [art + sustainability]: The Universal Appeal of the Mono-ha

Nobuo Sekine

Mono-ha is the name given to a group of Japanese artists (1968-1973) who ventured to bring out the artistic expression of things and their functions, bare and undisguised, giving those things a starring role (1). The group was short lived, lasting roughly from 1968 to 1973; still, it is often referred as an important art historical turning point at least in Japan (2).

The word Mono-ha is frequently translated as ‘school of things’, and it refers to an attitude of aesthetic detachment and renewal of matter in response to the immanent loss of the object as a "sun" - the national symbol of Japan (3) - in Japanese postwar art practice (4)

Mono-ha's art work was stridently anti-modernist-primarily sculptures and installations that incorporated basic materials such as rocks, sand, wood, cotton, glass and metal, often in simple arrangements with minimal artistic intervention. More experimental than visual, Mono-ha works tended to demand patience and reflection. Many were also ephemeral. For both artistic and practical reasons, the often site-specific pieces were usually destroyed. There were no buyers, and the artists couldn't or wouldn't preserve them. (2)

The aim of Mono-ha artists was simply to bring ‘things’ together, as far as possible in an unaltered state, allowing the materials to speak for themselves. Hence, the artists no longer ‘created’ but ‘rearranged’ ‘things’ into artworks, drawing attention to the interdependent relationships between these ‘things’ and the surrounding environment. Thus, the work was meant to challenge pre-existing perceptions of such materials and relate to them on a new level (5).

Although Mono-ha artists were working with unaltered objects, they were not interested on art historical recuperation of these objects. They were rather aiming at an emotional tie between work and our surrounding environment. This means that, Mono-ha art work is part of a process of perceiving the existence of an everlasting 'flow' of the present instant that exposes qualities that are beyond what is simply seen. (1)

But, there are scholars who disagree with the suitability of this name and definition to the Mono-ha art work. They say that Mono-ha was not just about the "things" themselves, but also about their interaction with viewers (or vice-versa). Mono-ha artists also aimed for making viewers aware of their position in relation to the art work. Another subject of debate is the labeling of Mono-ha as an "group" of artists. Art historians say that rather than a group, Mono-ha was more like "something of a conglomeration of interlinking relationships between the various artists involved. Ideologies were not necessarily shared by all members of Mono-ha, so it was not a coordinated ‘movement’ as such." (5)

Some artists known to converge to Mono-ha were: Koji Enokura (1942-1995), Noriyuki Haraguchi (1946- ), Susumu Koshimizu (1944- ), Katsuhiko Narita (1944-1991), Nobuo Sekine (1942- ), Kishio Suga (1944- ), Jiro Takamatsu (1936-1998), Noboru Takayama (1944- ), Lee Ufan (1936- ), and Katsuro Yoshida (1943-1999). (4)

While the convergence of these various artist’s ideas and practice was a relatively brief one, and despite the debate over how to define Mono-ha, what is clear is that it had enough force to act as a catalyst for a major change in Japanese contemporary artistic expression. Up until 1968, changes in Postwar Japanese art were heavily following international tendencies, and was moved away from local artistic developments into the mainstream of world art (5). Mono-ha art practices, for instance, were linked to Postminimalist art apparent on an international level during the 1960s and 1970s. What distinguishes Mono-ha work is the refined technique of repetition as a studied production of difference developed over time in each artist's practice. (4)

But by mid-'70s, many young artists rejected Mono-ha turning towards hand-made, color and subjectivity. While such a shift may sound routine, it was in fact a major turning point in for Japanese contemporary art, since the rejection of Mono-ha ideas marked the first time that young Japanese artists were specifically addressing a Japanese art movement rather than responding to a Western style filtered through its Japanese practitioners. (5)

Concerning the search for sustainable art practices, the relevance of Mono-ha art work rests somehow in the reason it was rejected by the Japanese in the first place: Mono-ha is astoundingly Universal, and even now a day, it touches subjects of universal interest such as contemporary environmental issues.

The universal relevance of Mono-ha is in its aim to provoke viewers to think about the relationship between the art work and its surrounding environment. If sustainable development results from the understanding of human place within the ecosystems, which entails the realization of the impact of humans on the environment, any art work that mirrors back the relationship between viewers and other things, as the Mono-ha has intended, signs to the awareness of self-centered minds to the existence of other realms, and hopefully, to the need for evolving without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.