Jackson Pollock House Under Each Other’s Spell: The Gutai Group and New York, exhibition at the Pollock-Krasner House, opened July 30. This exhibition examines the fruitful relationship that developed between the avant-garde Gutai Art Group, which was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1954 and New York artists in the 1950s and 1960s. It draws in particular on material in the Pollock-Krasner House collection, and a group of paintings in the collection of Paul Jenkins, who was an artist in residence at the Gutai Pinacotheca in Osaka in 1964. The paintings were given to Jenkins in exchange for his own works as an act of friendship. As he recalled the time he and the Gutai artists spent together, Jenkins said that they were under each other’s spell. In the groups manifesto, its founder Jiró Yoshihara defined Gutai as truth to the material of which art is made, and lifting that material to spiritual heights. He singled out Jackson Pollock and the French painter Georges Mathieu as artists who grapple with the material in a way which is completely appropriate to it, and encouraged group members to emulate this approach. Their efforts were publicized in a journal, Gutai, of which 14 issues appeared from 1955-65. The Gutai group was well aware of its distance from the art worlds centers, and used the postal system extensively to build their international network. These efforts resulted in their publication of some of Ray Johnsons earliest moticos, and the inclusion of Gutai in Allan …