An Appetite for Flames in the Japanese Art World during the 1980s

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A rash of fire-centered artistic practices—whether featuring live flames and smoke or charred wood and ash—were among the most sensational phenomena sponsored by institutions of contemporary art in Japan in the 1980s. This “fire art” flourished in an affluent period for Japan that was frequently termed the economic bubble due to skyrocketing real-estate prices which proved unsustainable when the bubble burst in the early 1990s. This economy also spurred sharp increases in energy consumption and the production of greenhouse gases leading to global warming. The Tokyo-centered art world was interlaced with transnational currents, and artists visiting from overseas helped satiate its appetite for artistic flames. The five Japanese and non-Japanese artists studied in this article had very different reasons for igniting fires, and the expressive sensibilities of their burnings ranged from the grim specter of an incinerated sarcophagus to the dazzling mountaintop explosion of gunpowder. Nonetheless, collectively their works may be assessed as a unique genre of fire art that was both critical and symptomatic of the promethean Japanese contributions to the Great Acceleration.