Material Politics of Art and Environment in Postwar Japan
By Gabrielle Schaad.
Reexamining Japanese postwar art and architecture through the prism of two groups, foregrounding material politics and evolving notions of environment and systems
In Concrete and Code, two protagonists from postwar Japan era enter into the same frame: The Gutai Art Association, who developed a form of performative materialism in which bodies, organic and synthetic materials, and the environment interacted in real time, and the Metabolist movement, who envisioned an urban future shaped by system thinking. Read side by side, they open a different history of Modernism, attentive to material politics, feminist critique and technopolitical entanglement. This book reassesses the historical narratives that dominate our understanding of Japan’s avant-garde. Gathering a wealth of visual materials, including archival documents from the Osaka Expo 1970 and the Gutai Art Association, the book offers a rare, comprehensive view into the artistic and architectural experiments that shaped postwar discourse on technology and environment. Gabrielle Schaad is an art and architectural historian based in Zurich.
STATUS: Forthcoming | 10/20/2026
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Concrete and Code Material Politics of Art and Environment in Postwar Japan
Published by Lars Müller Publishers. By Gabrielle Schaad.
Reexamining Japanese postwar art and architecture through the prism of two groups, foregrounding material politics and evolving notions of environment and systems
In Concrete and Code, two protagonists from postwar Japan era enter into the same frame: The Gutai Art Association, who developed a form of performative materialism in which bodies, organic and synthetic materials, and the environment interacted in real time, and the Metabolist movement, who envisioned an urban future shaped by system thinking. Read side by side, they open a different history of Modernism, attentive to material politics, feminist critique and technopolitical entanglement.
This book reassesses the historical narratives that dominate our understanding of Japan’s avant-garde. Gathering a wealth of visual materials, including archival documents from the Osaka Expo 1970 and the Gutai Art Association, the book offers a rare, comprehensive view into the artistic and architectural experiments that shaped postwar discourse on technology and environment.
Gabrielle Schaad is an art and architectural historian based in Zurich.
