Shusaku Arakawa
(b Nagoya, 6 July 1936). Japanese painter, performance artist and film maker active in the USA. He studied medicine and mathematics at Tokyo University (1954-8) and art at the Musashino College of Art in Tokyo, holding his first one-man exhibition at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo in 1958 and contributing to the Yomiuri Independent exhibitions from 1958 to 1961. In 1960 he took part in the 'anti-art' activities of the NEO-DADAISM ORGANIZERS in Tokyo and produced his first Happenings and a series of sculptures entitled Boxes, which consisted of amorphous lumps of cotton wads hardened in cement; many of these were put in coffin-like boxes, though one entitled Foetus was laid on a blanket. In pointing to the sickness of contemporary society, these works caused a great scandal in Tokyo.
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