Newspaper woman (Shinbunonna, 新聞女), Miyuk Nishizawa
On March 9, 2013 @Guggenheim Museum- A great night of something

happened…
In early February 2013, Newspaper woman, her comrades and some AU members (ArtUnidentified*) arrived in the USA. Kiki Nienaber (Director of Fuse Art Infrastructure) and
Gregory Coates (Co-director of Lollipop Operations) hosted the Japanese artists inAllentown. They lived under the same roof for a month, each day bringing to life artistic
events titled "Lollipop Gutai Influences." These included performances, exhibitions andworkshops in Allentown and New York.
Shozo Shimamoto, Co-founder of the Gutai arts movement in postwar Japan and Miyuki
Nishizawa’s dear mentor, was clinging to his last moments of life when Miyuki received
a personal invitation to perform at The Guggenheim Museum. Shimamoto passed away
January, 25, 2013. Miyuki and the Newspaper Girls immediately abandoned their paid
return tickets to Japan and vowed to meet the challenge to infuse the Guggenheim
Museum with Shimamoto's expressive spirit, to deliver happiness to all visitors
participating in the events and to transmit that happiness not through just one night
performance but as an infinite newspaper dream!
*Guggenheim museum held the exhibition "Gutai : Splendid Playground" February 15 - May 8, 2013

The powerful performance lasts until midnight. The backstage is in chaos, filled withnewspapers and working staff while visitors arrive at the entrance. The event opens withan exceptional newspaper dress whose hem reaches to more than 30 meters long. A
sign instructs visitors: "Please walk under here". This work is in homage Shozo
Shimatmoto, one of whose participative and interactive works is called "Please walk onhere" (1955).
Participants are supposed to walk under the long hem of the artist's huge skirt. They
can touch the dress to turn it up, making a newspaper arc for visitors passing under.
This long hem is intricately cut like lace fabric, making a sophisticated shadow on thefloor (look at the picture!) In walking under the artist's skirt, the exciting ambianceenvelops us.

After the opening performance "Please walk under here", a parade starts with assorted
newspaper costumes and characters. Panels of Yoshiko Yamamoto's photography on
the museums long slope involve the visitors on the floor while people donning largerthan-life newspaper jackets and Miyuki and the Newspaper Girls parade together innewspaper dresses. According to Miyuki, the concept of the giant jacket is "to enjoy
wearing it and looking at people wearing it…even if the most intelligent university
professor wears it, they will look so stupid! That’s the advantage of this work!”
Following the parade, a giant newspaper Teddy Bear appears slumped on the floor! A
monster covered with newspaper shredded as thin as angel-hair pasta hair dances
eccentrically around the giant teddy bear.

Old-fashioned Japanese popular songs

Enkas, 演歌 or Miyuki's original music (BGM), drift through your ears while you risk
being stuck with bizarre, colorful labels indicating a discount price on your clothes.
These are the same labels used to indicate discounts in Japanese grocery stores.
Everything here makes us laugh and feel happy!
In the final act of this Gutai experience, you'll find Miyuki on the Guggenheim’s spiralramp, wearing a beautiful cloth which is one of Shozo Shimamoto's real works. Shelooks like an elegant and beautiful fairy.

Gutai mind and the birth of the Newspaper Woman
Shozo Shimamoto (1928-2013.1) is one of founding members of the Gutai ArtAssociation. Shimamoto coined the term "Gutai" – “embodiment” in Japanese. He is
known for performance paintings such as cannon shooting painting, crane performance
painting etc. He also founded the art association "AU" (Art Unidentified) which aims togive amateurs an artistic experience. In his later years, he contributed to these activities
to educate and help people through the arts. The term "Shimamoto meme" refers to thetransmission of Shimamoto's artistic mind and attitude towards the arts. This attitude isshared by many, including Miyuki, who was moved and touched deeply by his art andlife. She is a follower of the Gutai conviction that Art is an activity for the liberation andopening of minds. Through her art, Miyuki overcame difficulties in her life. Art helped
her to destroy the heavy chain that had long fastened her heart and then smash it intofragments.

In her youth, she suffered from strained parental relationships and social pressuresformed by banal stereotypes. Pains she felt are not far from those we have whenwearing un-suitable clothes, or by a corset confining our body from the chest to the hip.
"Nyotaku"*, one of the most significant works of Shozo Shimamoto is worth analyzing.
This important work received much unfair criticism and was misinterpreted by those wholack the capacity to understand its purpose. It was treated as a downright scandal in
Japanese society. A play on the word “Gyotaku,” or “fish print/impression,” “Nyotaku”
literally means “Female print.”

Nyotaku is an ink rubbing of a female body on paper.

Miyuki stripped naked to model for the Nyotaku works, at one point completely nude.
Ben Shimons, a renowned American photographer, was deeply interested in Nyotaku,
saying that in Nyotaku women are natural and free, representing their lives as theywere. Miyuki became one of Ben Simons’ best loved models. He appreciated her inner
energy and brilliant beauty. A young Miyuki gradually came to understand positiveenergy as the most important thing to survive in this world. The nourishing of herstrong, exposed soul through her Nyotaku experience and Ben Simon's photographic
work helped her to find her way towards “Newspaper Woman.”
Miyuki is always smiling. In each of my personal encounters with her, and in her pictures
online, she radiates happiness. I believe smiling people have a naturally positive
influence on the world and enable the spread of joy by sheer presence. Smiling people
are essentially much stronger than those who carry a depressed and sad look wherever
they go. Miyuki’s positive energy, something most worthy of being transmitted from one
individual to another, is precious and irreplaceable.

Newspaper woman and newspapers
Newspaper woman uses newspapers as the main material for her artworks. Every day,vast quantities of newspapers are published to inform their readers of news, only to be
thrown away soon after. Newspapers are printed day by day in vain… Before working
as an artist, Miyuki Nishizawa, studied fashion at university and worked for a company
as designer for 12 years. She was unmoved by the high-paced fashion industry and thecontemporary consummation society. She felt sick watching those around her carry out
a lifestyle where material objects are purchased in great quantity and frequency only tobe ignored or tossed aside. Indeed, the high-speed apparel industry’s scheme is very
similar to that of newspapers as a materialized mass media. She decided to drop out of
the barren cycle of consummation in order to start carrying out artistic activities by using
newspapers as compensation for things she had abandoned thus far.
Shozo Shimamoto, her master, also used newspaper as a material for painting in thebeginning of his career. The work is commonly known as "Holes"(1954, ShozoShimamoto, Work Paint on newspaper, Ashiya City Museum of Art & History ). Its
concept was born from the same moment of the avant-garde artist, Shozo Shimatmoto.
Shimamoto, whose parents had not allowed him to major in arts at the University,
decided to apprentice himself to Jiro Yoshihara(the leader of Gutai Art Association
founded in 1954). Shimamoto painted everyday without capturing Yoshihara's approval.
In those days, just 5 or more years after the end of World War Ⅱ, the young man who
lacked financial means to buy canvas, superimposed newspapers on the wood frame,
coated it with boiled flour (imported from the U.S.A through the GHQ*) and finished withwhite paint. One day when he was pressed to finish a painting, a hole was ripped on thecanvas because its surface hadn't yet dried. - " Am I the first artist who invented apainting with a hole ?" - As he expected, Yoshihara ardently praised the "broken"
painting and he afterwards gained a positive reputation abroad. When Shimamoto's
early works obtained a durable existence with a permanent place in several museums,
then newspaper canvas’ were fossilized at the cost of its liberty. In contrast,newspapers in Miyuki's works are free and represented very differently: mobile, cut intofragments, shredded, teared, modeled, touched, worn, and thrown away immediately
after her performances. Her newspapers live through a brief, joyful existence for thesake of Newspaper Woman's performance participants.
*GHQ (General Headquarters): After the World War, the Allied Powers held by Douglas
MacArthur ruled Japanese government during the Occupation of Japan. SupremeCommander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) is the official title however GHQ was the term
generally used in Japan.
The "Eco-Art" (Art for the ecology) is not the only reason Miyuki uses newspapers. If
you look more carefully into the real signification of the use of newspapers in her
artworks, you can clearly understand the important character of newspapers as a "massmedia". Contrary to the beauty and joy in her artworks, the contents of newspapers
always represent information about horrible accidents, scaring wars, durable tribal
conflicts or political discords and bad business. When we let our eyes to follow thesearticles about depressing events, we cannot avoid getting the impression that the world
is filled with tragic stories, and actually, it may be a kind of truth.
I'd like to introduce one of the most reputable works titled "Peace Road", presented in a
famous Japanese art magazine, Bijutsu-Techo on June 2004. In this work, she faced
the tragedy of 9.11 of the U.S.A by collecting paper articles about the issue. She blottedout the part concerning 9.11 with five colors: blue representing our planet, and white,black, red, yellow representing people’s skin colors. She created a 1.2 km longnewspaper “Peace Road” passing through a shopping arcade in Kobe. An earnest hope
for world peace and for contributing to people’s happiness is shared concepts inMiyuki's work. This project is replicated worldwide, including several places in Japanand at Saint Mark’s square in Venice, setting paper streets round the globe!

On February 11 2013, Monumental crane performance in Allentown
The crane performance is symbolic of the dynamism and energy of Newspaper Woman.
While Shimamoto's crane performances were carried out to make a giant painting by
throwing colorful, ink-filled glass bottles from the sky, it is Newspaper Woman herself
who becomes a living sculpture in her crane performance.
meters long newspaper dress.

She wears a giant, 20

The giant paper skirt can enclose the spectators

observing her from the ground as they look up into her skirt! Miyuki has a serious
pathological fear of heights.

However, her fears are undetectable as she appears

chilled out and happy in the sky, sometimes releasing an elegant blizzard of falling
newspaper fragments, like cherry blossom petals. The first task in Allentown thisFebruary was the crane performance. The preparation lasted all-night. There was heavy
snowfall. Needless to say, rain or snow is most inconvenient for the paper works which
break easily when wet. Journalists, local media interviewers and even the mayor ofAllentown city came to see the spectacle. Miyuki felt heavy pressure knowing she wasto carry out this performance in the place of the late Shozo Shimamoto, that is to say,she wouldn’t be excused of any small mistakes.

This celebrated performance ended in great success, surrounded by applauding
spectators and their smiles.
"Then, I was caught by some odd sensation. Before, I had been down on the groundclapping my hands with other spectators, to cheer him on. However, this time I was inMr.Shimamoto’s place, looking down at the people on the ground." said MIyuki.
The triumph of the crane performance in Allentown has a crucial significance formembers of Shozo Shimamoto atelier, Newspaper Woman's group and Miyuki
Nishizawa herself.
Her dear master “has retired from his activities in the real world," leaving amazing andtesting opportunities for her and her comrades. This sensitive and fragile Nyotaku model
has now become an independent artist who, suspended alone in the sky by a big crane,
is applauded by people on the ground. Sometimes she appears in public elegantly orsometimes suddenly, like a guerrilla, making her beautiful music and dance experiences
to spread joy to all people present. Everything she makes exists for "liberating people'sminds" and for delivering happiness to each person she meets.
She said,"I have succeeded in freeing my mind thanks to the arts, as well as Mr.Shimamoto andmany friends around me as well. Then, I want to help people who currently havedifficulties living joyfully by liberating their minds from their suffering, even if for just amoment. I hope this happiness will be spread to young people of the next generation."	  	  	  Miki	  OKUBO	  Born	  in	  1984,	  in	  Sapporo,	  Japan	  Docteur,	  Art	  Critic,	  Essayist,	  lecturer	  at	  the	  Université	  Paris	  8.