Avantgarde - Blog Posts

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Be nice to people Walking on graves Making a game of old hard won ways Beating each other with bad kebab splatter Making a gutter out of grace Be nice to people Big money mits or looking for loss with a pointy stick Sent by their simpering Bent by the breeze Painting the earth with sick Be nice to people Poking in holes Fingering sores Picking their blisters Beggin' for applause Cajoling and closing their minds and their doors Abusive and fragile and bored Be nice to people Who kiss with a sneer Connive and contrive and divide Jeer absentmindedly Clearly and blindly Who need and they need without aim but precisely Who take And hate And fear Be nice to people But not down your nose Not cos your clever And better than all those Not in the name of some kind of snarky hierarchy but Plainly, and painfully true; Not with your cane With your hands I mean, it's Not like there's nothing We don't understand Not to be kind, nor cruel Be nice Be nice to people It passes the time? It's harder to do and if you can't that's fine And if you're not, you know, they probably won't mind But it's more like being alive And if nothing else It's more dignified Be nice to people I don't know why Be nice to people I don't know why Not on behalf of the man in the sky Not to feel good about yourself when you die Be nice to people If you had it described as unjust All the same It wouldn't betray Any trust And if anyone tries to tell you that you must They don't speak On behalf Of all Of us

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Jiro Yoshihara, Please Draw Freely, 1956. Paint and marker on wood. Installation view during the Outdoor Gutai Art Exhibition in Ashiya Park, Ashiya, 27 July – 4 August, 1956. 

Yoshihara was a leading member of the Japanese avant-garde Gutai Group of visual artists, known for their physical and oft-confrontational artworks. A lesser discussed aspect of their legacy is their contributions to art education, which truly highlight the potency and potential of communal creativity. I wrote about the latter aspect on Artfully Learning in a post called "The Gutai Group: Play, Pedagogy and Possibility." Read it here: https://theartsandeducation.wordpress.com/2022/08/03/the-gutai-group-play-pedagogy-and-possibility/