Yasuyuki Ishibashi and Kyushu-Ha
Jutaro Yamauchi
It has been 42 years since the formation of the Kyushu-Ha in 1957, and 37 years since the"Great Meeting of Heroes" in 1962, which is regarded as the end of the movement.
In Kyushu, where avant-garde art has been absent for a long time, Kyushu-Ha was the firstavant-garde art movement. There are people who think that only a handful of artists areKyushu-Ha. On the other hand, there are those who overestimate the value of an artist simply
because he or she belonged to the Kyushu-Ha, regardless of the artist's activities or works.
All of these are probably wrong. Since the dismantling of Kyushu-Ha, it cannot be said that
there has been sufficient follow-up research on the lives and works of individual members.
Of course, there are members who gave up their artistic activities after Kyushu-Ha. Even
today, there are those who still maintain the spirit of the Kyushu-Ha and continue to create
art regardless of public opinion. However, all of them are either in their old age or approaching
it. The sun creates light and shadows, and public opinion also creates light and shadows. Itis self-evident that just as we cannot say that an artist is excellent because he is famous, wecannot say that he is not excellent because he is unknown. Yasuyuki Ishibashi seems to me
to be the latter.I know very little about Yasuyuki's pre-Kyushu-Ha work, but during his timeat Kyushu-Ha, Yasuyuki led Kyushu-Ha, along with several other members, in experimental
works that could be called his Dada-like adventures. There is no other artist who has beenas experimental as Yasuyuki during and after his time at Kyushu-Ha. Moreover, his wide
range of experimental works are not mere ideas, but are backed by solid techniques and astrong sense of self.
I was in Paris from May 1962 to May 1963. During that period, there were many
retrospectives of Dadaism and Surrealism, and it was also the heyday of Nouveau Réalisme,
the French Neo-Dada movement, but for some reason, Yasuyuki's work kept coming back tome. I don't know how it happened that I was the only member of Kyushu-Ha to have worked
with Yasuyuki at most of the group exhibitions since the dissolution of Kyushu-Ha until thelast Japan-Korea Contemporary Art Exhibition in 1994. All of his works exhibited at theseexhibitions can be described as experimental works. You can see this by looking at his work
history. Whenever I meet Yasuyuki, he always talks about his next experimental work.
It reminded me of something that the late Shun Kumashiro told me when I was at KyushuHa. I remember the late Shun Kumashiro telling me during my time at Kyushu-Ha,"Yasuyuki's work stood out even in a place like Kyushu-Ha that was so full of adventure andexperimentation. He was very worried that Yasuyuki might spend the rest of his life
experimenting and experimenting. I didn't argue with him, perhaps because I thought it wasa good idea at the time. For Takayuki, Mannerism might as well be death. Over the past fewyears, even though he has been in a difficult situation both materially and emotionally, hisenthusiasm for experimenting with his work has never ceased. I would like to send myheartfelt encouragement to this "spirit of excessive experimentation.