Famed for painting with his feet, Kazuo Shiraga has been a representative figure of the Gutai group, a radical, post-war artistic group in Japan. Through The Gutai Manifesto in the 1950s, founder Jiro Yoshihara called out to artists: “Create the unprecedented!” Originally a pioneer of the Zero society (Zerokai), Kazuo Shiraga joined the Gutai group in 1955 along with Saburo Murakami, Akira Kanayama, and others. During the first Gutai School exhibition of the same year, Shiraga debuted a performance art titled Challenging Mud. This unique performance not only dazzled the audience, but also foretold its historical avant-garde symbolic significance.

Born in Amagasaki in 1924, Kazuo Shiraga graduated from the Kyoto City University of Arts. In 1973, he began practicing Buddhism with the name Sodo Shiraga after entering the Enryakuji-Temple at Hieizan Mountain, increasing spiritual enlightenment with the austere spiritual practice of Tapas. Subsequently, his art reached another summit in the 1980s. Enriched by traditional ink and wash techniques, his paintings are brimming with elements of Eastern calligraphy, full of inner strength within the beauty of flowing rhythm. With Buddhism as its core philosophy, his own self as the driving force, his creative process was solemn and fervent as a ritual. When he suspended himself by holding onto ropes, and glided his feet on the surface of thick colorants, he attempted to balance the object and the self between his will and the process of letting go. The results guided the viewers to a world with rich spirituality, abandoning obsessions of the inane world.

Taera was completed in 1988, echoing the wild red colors of Kazuo Shiraga’s early works. The entire painting is covered in light and dark shades of crimson, with a dynamic convergence like bubbling lava, and intense colors that seem to sparkle. Taera is a Buddhism term meaning magical joy. The painting also reminds artist’s Chogendai sanbanso in 1957, when he put on a performance with red-colored masks and costumes. It was a modern dance performance that originated from ancient Japanese ritual ceremonies. The paint on Taera was built up layer upon layer, refined as a centralized spinning fire wheel with flowing blazing brushworks. The eyes of the viewers seem to be purified by the flame when they stare at the blazing fire pit, bringing about a type of vigorous rebirth of joy at achieving exquisite victory. In contrast to the sharp reality of physical perception, traces left by an unintentional creative process better reflects the deep inner desire of the artist to transcend the material dimension by disengaging the self.