The SAC was also an international platform, providing a venue in which the Japanese art world witnessed happenings and Fluxus events (notably in performances by Toshi Ichiyanagi and Yoko Ono), or radical musical and artistic approaches (through the invitation of John Cage, David Tudor, Robert Rauschenberg).
[2][7][8] The ambition to highlight international art was central to the SAC creators' approach, which proved to be a complex undertaking, as Japanese avant-garde artists both idolized and destabilized the dominant cultural discourse created by figures such as Cage and Rauschenberg.
[9][10] The history of this artistic commission was emblematic of the SAC's international ambitions and outlook: following the success of 1956's Sekai konnichi no bijutsu ("Art of Today's World ") exhibition held at Takashimaya Department Store and curated by critics Shin'ichi Segi and Michel Tapié, which set in motion what is known as the Anforumeru senpū ("Informel whirlwind'), Michel Tapié and Georges Mathieu came to Japan, at the invitation of Jirō Yoshihara and Sōfū Teshigahara.
Major performances by international visitors included the Off-Broadway play The Coach with the Six Insides by Jean Erdman,[16] and the first showcase in Japan by the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
[5] Although he was the director of SAC, Hiroshi Teshigahara advocated a collaborative and horizontal approach: "I had always been involved with activities that mixed up and brought together various art forms.
"[22] Like the Yomiuri Indépendant Exhibition (1949-1964), the goal (self-described) was to offer artists a "safe haven from the storm of capitalism that controlled the art market.
"[29] However, artists such as Genpei Akasegawa have noted that even before Yoko Ono's recital, for several years the activities of the Neo-Dada Organizers had already resonated with the "happening."
"[31] As much as the SAC introduced new concepts to the Japanese avant-garde, the center was equally a meeting point for like-minded ideas that had been developing both in Japan and elsewhere.
In the former piece, he cooked, read a book, and moved around onstage as he would do in his everyday life, but with the sound of his actions amplified and delivered to the audience through a number of speakers.
After forty minutes of this action, he descended into the auditorium to receive a kiss from Yoko Ono (who was married to Ichiyanagi at the time), which indicated the end of the performance.
[5] These nuances are notably expressed by Yasunao Tone, who put forward the fact that these performances did not constitute a shock but were accepted rather easily.
[33] The music critic Hewell Tircuit wrote an article for The Japan Times highlighting the fact that several Japanese artists were already experimenting with processes similar to those that Cage had exhibited.
The group used a variety of "instruments" including everyday objects (vacuum cleaner, dishes, washboard...), in a methodology of improvisation described as automatism.
They gave their concert in front of a full house (with a capacity of 400 people) and their performance was covered by the major newspapers Mainichi and Asahi Shimbun.
[9] Robert Rauschenberg participated in a US-Japan dance exchange workshop, arranged by Kuniharu Akiyama, that took place at the SAC on November 20, 1964.
However, instead of answering the questions of his Japanese interviewers, however, Rauschenberg spent the lecture time silently creating a Combine, entitled Gold Standard.
He, with Alex Hay as his main assistant and help from Deborah Hay and Steve Paxton, painted and placed objects (barrier from a construction site, image of a clock, Coca-Cola bottles, tie painted gold, a worn-out pair of black leather shoes...) on a gold Japanese folding screen (byōbu), offered by Sōfū Teshigahara.
The performance lasted more than four hours until the piece was finished, and most of the audience - including John Cage and Merce Cunningham - had already left, which was the trigger for the departure of Steve Paxton, Barbara Lloyd, Deborah Hay and Robert Rauschenberg from the company.
This tense interaction between Rauschenberg and Shinohara, in addition to the presence on stage of works explicitly evoking the works of the star artist, recently awarded at the 1964 Venice Biennale (Coca-Cola Plan) and broadly in the United States (Figure), is indicative of the imbalance of cultural and financial power between American and Japanese artists at the time.