GUTAI DICTIONARY
Back to IndexElectric Clothes (Atsuko Tanaka)
After exhibiting Bell's work at the first Gutai Art Exhibition, Atsuko Tanaka further developed her work with electricity and wiring. The work presented at the second Gutai Art Exhibition the following year in 1956 was a dress made of 200 light bulbs. This is the most important work in Gutai's works that consciously uses industrial products and everyday items, and can be considered Tanaka's masterpiece. In the 1980s, Sadamasa Motonaga, a member of Gutai, recalled in a lecture at the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art: "At the time, electric suits were very popular. At the same time, the structure of the garment, with its countless light bulbs and wires running all over the body, was a frightening work, full of dangers that could lead to electric shock at any moment. I thought the people who wore it were really brave and amazing people."
The image of electric wires and light bulbs would later be sublimated into the paintings to be created by herself.