THE MULTI-TALENTED NOGUCHI
by Joan K. Yanni
We have new information about MAG's elegant Calligraphics (60.2) by Isamu Noguchi. We now know that the characters in the piece have a meaning: they signify "Japan.”
The work consists of a brass rod with two separate cast iron forms bound to it with fiber rope and mounted on a wood base. It was formerly thought that the two forms were simply design elements inspired by the artist's study in China and his fascination with ancient Chinese symbolic script.
Last fall, however, two visitors from Japan who were visiting the Gallery told docent Thea Tweet that the symbols were not Chinese but Japanese, and signified "Japan." Exhibition assistant Chiyo Ueyama, who was born in Japan and speaks the language, agreed that the visitors were right. The top character (ni) means "the sun," and the lower one (hon) is "the origin," which can be interpreted as "the rising." The rising sun is the symbol of Japan. Noguchi's cast iron forms suggest abstract versions of those characters.
Japanese-American Isamu Noguchi's life was a mix of Eastern and Western influences. He was born in Los Angeles in 1904 to American writer Leonie Gilmour and Japanese poet Yone Noguchi. Isamu spent his early years in Japan before being sent to the United States to become a student at the Interlaken School in Indiana. Soon after his arrival in Indiana, Interlaken was closed, but the school’s founder, Dr. Edward Rumley, found him a place to live until he graduated from high school. Rumley also arranged an apprenticeship with Gutson Borglum, designer of the sculptures at Mt. Rush. Borglum was less than encouraging about Noguchi’s artistic talent, so Isamu enrolled in pre-med studies at Columbia University.
He began his classes at Columbia in 1922, and soon after, his mother moved to New York. She encouraged him to take an evening sculpture class at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School. The head of the school was impressed with Noguchi's talent, and after three months gave him his first exhibition. Noguchi left Columbia to devote himself to sculpture. In 1927 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for travel to Paris and the Far East.
His first work had been figurative, but an exhibition of the work of Brancusi changed his focus. In Paris he met Brancusi and worked as his assistant for a few months, then set up a studio in Montparnasse, where he began to create sculpture in stone and wood.
He returned to New York in 1929 and had his first one-man exhibit of his Paris abstractions at the Eugene Schoen Gallery. No works were sold, so he began to support himself by making portrait heads. By the early '30s be had enough money to travel back to the Far East where he studied Chinese brush drawing, Japanese pottery making, and the art of Zen gardens. His interests were unlimited. Noguchi became a friend of architect/engineer R. Buckminster Fuller, and, encouraged by Fuller, he began to design public areas combining art and architectural space.
His first fountain was built for the Ford Building at the 1939 World's Fair, and the same year he won the national commission to decorate the Associated Press building in Rockefeller City with a huge─10-ton─relief of stainless steel. Major recognition came in 1946 when be was invited to show in MOMA's exhibit of Fourteen Americans. His boundless and eclectic energy kept him in the forefront of the art and design world.
Despite New York colleagues who disapproved of any mixture of art and commercial projects, Noguchi wanted to assimilate art into everyday life. He designed furniture and lamps and completed numerous public commissions. Especially popular were his round paper lamps, which he called "illuminated sculpture."He designed numerous playground spaces for New York City, but Robert Moses, then City Parks Commissioner, vetoed all. In the '40s he began to produce set designs for modern dancer Martha Graham, then for Merce Cunningham and George Balanchine, an involvement with the theater that lasted into the’60s. He paved the way for the many inter-art collaborations that took place later in the century.
His first plaza was realized in 1961 for the First National City Bank in Fort Worth, TX. His garden for the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University (1960-64) blended sculptures of a pyramid, circle and cube in a white marble garden space. Though placed on the stark, hard surface of the marble, his forms remain sensuous and poetic.
Between 1973 and '78 he designed the Philip A. Hart Plaza in Detroit, a large civic plaza that remains one of his most impressive works. Terraced downward towards the river, it centers on a gigantic, twisted steel pylon and a circular fountain that combines a play of lights and water jets—a remarkable combination of sculpture, architecture, and landscaping.
Other Noguchi environmental constructions include a sunken garden for the Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, NYC (1964), and his first playground, created in Japan at "Children's Land' near Tokyo (1966). While designing sculptural gardens and public plazas, he continued making independent sculptures, such as the 24-foot high Red Cube (1968), standing in front of what used to be the Marine Midland Building in NYC, and the towering, 101-foot Bolt of Lighting, Memorial to Ben Franklin in Philadelphia, which was designed in the '30s but not installed until 1984. In 1968 he had his first American retrospective at the Whitney Museum.
Among his best-known international works are the gardens for UNESCO in Paris (1958), the Billy Rose Art Garden in Jerusalem (1965), and two peace bridges in Hiroshima (1952). Closer to home is the Storm King Art Center of Mountainville, NY (1977). On view here is Momo Taro, the gigantic stone representation of the peach boy legend (Momotaro). (See article on December 1987-January 1988)
Perhaps Noguchi's greatest personal satisfaction was the opening of part of his studio on Long Island City (Queens) NY in 1985 as The Noguchi Garden Museum. The museum contains than 250 stone, wood and clay pieces as well as dance sets and documentation of his gardens and playgrounds. (The building will be closed until the spring of 2003 for renovation, but changing exhibitions of Noguchi's works can be seen in a temporary space at 36-01 43 rd Avenue, Long Island City.) Noguchi has worked in every medium—stone, marble and wood. All his works blend Oriental respect for materials with the spare sophistication of Western art.
Noguchi's energy and creativity continued into the '80s, with an airport sculpture and a master plan for a 400-acre park, both in Japan. He received the National Medal of Arts m Washington, DC in 1987. Still working, he died in New York City in 1988 at the age of 84.
Editor’s note: It is rud that when Calligraphics arrived at MAG in 1960, some eager unpackers began removing the rope fiber that bound the characters to the brass rod. Luckily some curators stopped the action.
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