Isamu Noguchi: A Study of Space

Description

Sculptor, garden designer, and architect, Isamu Noguchi throughout his long career designed exterior and interior spaces that deftly bring together influences from various disciplines. His conception of a "sculpture of space"—his most significant contribution to modern sculpture—was fundamental to these designs. Isamu Noguchi: A Study of Space is the first comprehensive study of Noguchi's public works, including playgrounds, earthworks, gardens, parks, plazas, memorials, interior design, fountains, and sculptures.

Noguchi moved between disciplines with ease, approaching landscapes from the point of view of an artist and seeking the absolute integration of sculpture, space, and building. An intricate system of material, aesthetic, cultural, and even mythic interconnections characterizes all of his works. Artist Constantin Brancusi, choreographer Martha Graham, and visionary thinker Buckminster Fuller were important early influences. The ancient environments of leisure and ritual and the ceremonial spaces of past cultures—the Samrat Yantra Observatory in India, the Great Serpent Mound in Ohio, Egyptian pyramids, Zen mediation gardens—served as important and enduring sources of inspiration. Noguchi's Japanese-American heritage—and his ongoing exploration of this dual identity—also infused his designs with a unique understanding of both Eastern and Western traditions.

More than seventy-five projects are presented in archival photographs—many showing Noguchi's beautiful bronze and plaster models—as well as plans and other drawings created especially for this book. Among the major works are the sunken gardens at Yale University's Beinecke Library in New Haven, Connecticut, and at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York (both in collaboration with Gordon Bunshaft of the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill); the Billy Rose Sculpture Garden in Jerusalem; the Jardin Japonais and Patio des Délégués at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris; five proposals for the Riverside Drive playground in New York (in collaboration with architect Louis I. Kahn); nine fountains for Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan; Tengoku at the Sogetsu Flower Arranging School in Tokyo; Red Cube at the Marine Midland Bank Plaza in New York; Black Sun at the Seattle Art Museum; and his own Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in Long Island City, New York.

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Two entirely disparate aspects of our present zeitgeist--the embrace of multicultural complexity in place of its former suppression, and the current elision of landscape design with "real" sculpture and art--might seem to be as adolescent as our own postmodern age. Both, however, were fully embodied in the work of the great Japanese-American Isamu Noguchi (1904-88), which as early as the 1930s was finding reconciliation in cultural rootlessness, and eroding the line between landscape and sculpture. Ana Maria Torres's handsome, erudite, and broad-ranging study of Noguchi's public works drives these two points home. Complete with a wealth of black-and-white photographs of both his completed works and models of his unrealized ones, the book prompts us to consider from new angles some of the unique accomplishments of this very enterprising artist who incorporated elements of ancient outdoor sites into exterior work that provided an uncannily fitting complement to the very midcentury-modern architecture that it was commissioned to accompany.

Here, more than 75 projects are presented and considered; they are divided into seven chapters (each of which focuses on a subsection of Noguchi's vast output, including playgrounds; "earthworks"; gardens, plazas, and parks; memorials; fountains; interiors; and public sculptures) and engrossingly narrated by Torres. Each chapter is kick-started by a Noguchi excerpt about the work in question. The thematic organization of the book means that we keep bouncing back to the 1930s just when we are familiarizing ourselves with the projects and artistic preoccupations of Noguchi's final decade. But that format also underscores how his style and ambitions evolved in a uniquely personal manner, even as they seem to reflect perfectly the spirit of their particular age.

The exciting work that is included here is almost too vast and varied to be summarized, although a small sampling of highlights might include Noguchi's gardens for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, for which he convinced architects Marcel Breuer, Pier Luigi Nervi, and Bernard Zehrfuss to relocate a mobile of Alexander Calder in order for him to expand on his own ideas (needless to say that Calder was not pleased); the famous sunken garden for Yale University's Beinecke Library, with its three bold marble sculptures--of a pyramid, a ring, and a cube--and marble paving work that was inspired by that of Michelangelo's Piazza del Campidoglio, which Noguchi adored; the massive pylon water fountain and sprawling circular plaza that he designed for downtown Detroit from 1971-79, much to the delight of legendary mayor Coleman Young, who prompted him to design a subterranean amphitheater just beneath it for the city's annual Ethnical Festival; and, three years before his death, the garden of the Domon Ken Museum of Photography in Sakata, Japan: an enclosed court of water that runs over four stone terraces, with a single granite pillar rising up near the center--surely one of the most serenely beautiful vistas in modern architecture, even as reproduced here (as are all of the photos, somewhat unfortunately) in laconic black and white.

There is some less monumental work here that fascinates and delights, too, including the boldly biomorphic and drop-dead mod undulating ceilings that Noguchi designed for St. Louis's American Stove Company building (1948) and Rockefeller Center's Time-Life Building (1947, now shamefully destroyed), plus potentially terrific unrealized work, such as plans that he devised in the 1960s (with beloved collaborator Louis Kahn) for a playground for New York's Riverside Park.

There is one thing that this very satisfying retrospective makes clear about Noguchi: instead of letting the contradictions of his own ancestry undermine his work, he used them to his advantage in a way that--for all of the diverse global influences of his oeuvre--struck this reviewer as quite distinctly and resourcefully American. --Timothy Murphy

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Customer Reviews

Illuminating a visionary but in black-and-white
Noguchi is, unfortunately, not as well known by the public as the major artist that he was. This book does a good job of showing the relationship between conception and the final realization of his major public spaces and public sculptures (the intention of the book), but a full understanding of Noguchi requires seeing his other works, such as his furniture and stage designs. The major drawback of the book is that the illustrations are entirely in black and white. While Noguchi's works were primarily about shape and their relationships and distribution through space, it would have been nice to see the photographs of the finished spaces and sculptures in color to get a better sense of their ambience. This book is appropriate for sculptors, environmental artists, architects, larger public libraries, and libraries in academic institutions with art programs that include instructors open to a broad range of ideas inart....

2001-05-27 | Academic librarian (Silicon Valley) | Helpful Votes: 10 | Rating: 4

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The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey without Borders

Description

Isamu Noguchi, born in Los Angeles as the illegitimate son of an American mother and a Japanese poet father, was one of the most prolific yet enigmatic figures in the history of twentieth-century American art. Throughout his life, Noguchi (1904-1988) grappled with the ambiguity of his identity as an artist caught up in two cultures.

His personal struggles--as well as his many personal triumphs--are vividly chronicled in The Life of Isamu Noguchi, the first full-length biography of this remarkable artist. Published in connection with the centennial of the artist's birth, the book draws on Noguchi's letters, his reminiscences, and interviews with his friends and colleagues to cast new light on his youth, his creativity, and his relationships.

During his sixty-year career, there was hardly a genre that Noguchi failed to explore. He produced more than 2,500 works of sculpture, designed furniture, lamps, and stage sets, created dramatic public gardens all over the world, and pioneered the development of environmental art. After studying in Paris, where he befriended Alexander Calder and worked as an assistant to Constantin Brancusi, he became an ardent advocate for abstract sculpture.

Noguchi's private life was no less passionate than his artistic career. The book describes his romances with many women, among them the dancer Ruth Page, the painter Frida Kahlo, and the writer Anaïs Nin.

Despite his fame, Noguchi always felt himself an outsider. "With my double nationality and my double upbringing, where was my home?" he once wrote. "Where were my affections? Where my identity?" Never entirely comfortable in the New York art world, he inevitably returned to his father's homeland, where he had spent a troubled childhood. This prize-winning biography, first published in Japanese, traces Isamu Noguchi's lifelong journey across these artistic and cultural borders in search of his personal identity.

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Customer Reviews

A Great Read
I really enjoyed reading this book .Not only was it informative but beautifully written .The book deals with Isamu Noguchi's life with insight and sensitivity .Definitely worth buying.

2008-05-03 (Australia) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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sculptor, heartlander, world traveler, aka
"Sam" Gilmour, heartlander, great sculptor, world traveler, free spirit, aka "Noguchi"--
The sadly neglected tale of a shy 13 year-old boy traveling alone to LaPorte, Indiana for early schooling "as a true American" and known there as "Sam" Gilmour, was later to become widely known as one of the world's greatest sculptors -- Isamu Noguchi (a future Jeopardy question?). A new biography "The Life of Isamu Noguchi: Journey Without Borders" includes revealing details and childhood snapshots for the first time from the archives of Lilly Library at Indiana University. This biography, only recently published in English, unfolds like a panoramic tapestry of life ... colorful, insightful, personal. It includes his stressful adaptations to cultural duality, personal relationships with notable companions, and his bonding with the idea of "mound builders" of native Americans.

After traveling alone across the ocean and the country, he began his new, Midwestern experience by hiking down the remote dirt road for the first time past the farms, fields, and woods to the Interlaken boarding school, feeling overwhelmed by the "vastness, the sweep, the panorama of that open Indiana countryside." Soon, when fateful WW I events abruptly closed the boarding school, he lived alone on the abandoned premises for a month "like Daniel Boone". Finally good fortune had him transferring to the public LaPorte High School and living with a locally prominent family in town, he graduated four years later in 1922. Typically, he had a newspaper route. Aspiring to be an "all-American boy", the yearbook included his illustrations and classmates elected him "Biggest Bull-Head."

And so goes the first 100 pages. The next 340 pages of this epic follow his footprints through the Sands of Time, continuing 'Sam's Splendid Adventure' to the peaks of artistic expression in dance theatre, architecture, and sculpture. Along the way, this "Hoosier" sojourns with many of the greatest artistic spirits this world has ever seen.

On a very personal note, I met with Noguchi a couple of times ('70s) in my New York work, and had once played a basketball game ('50s) at his Indiana high school (big deal there, then). Regrettably, I didn't realize at the time that our paths had previously crossed, albeit if only in space-time. Somewhere, sometime, "somewhat" dedicated individuals must necessarily put out a wake-up call to the Arts in Indiana patrons at colleges, museums, and libraries on this wholly unusual and neglected chapter of American cultural history at the turn of the 20th Century with its demographic changes of nation building immigration, new industrialization, and new urbanism. Fittingly, the Noguchi Foundation has an extensive curriculum guide available. His centennial birth date is November 17, 2004.

2004-10-19 (Bloomington, IN) | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 5

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The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum

Description

A catalogue of the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in New York City, which portrays more than 200 of Noguchi's finest works, spanning more than 60 years of intense sculptural activity. His sculptures adorn major public collections of modern art and his parks and plazas are known worldwide.

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Customer Reviews

one of America's great artists ... in his own words
This is a very special volume. Noguchi is one of the greatest American artists ever. Here you have his seminal collection selected by him, illustrated, ... and perhaps most importantly ... presented in his own words.

The full tale of Noguchi's profound American duality is best revealed and amplified in additional volumes. Here is an extraordinary view of the essence.

2004-04-25 (Bloomington, IN) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 5

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Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth

Description

Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) is renowned for his stone and bronze sculpture, his gardenlike installations in public spaces, and his furniture designs. Far less familiar, but no less important, is Noguchi's work in clay, which he executed in three intensive sessions in 1931, 1950, and 1952, all during visits to Japan. The pieces included in this elegant volume and the accompanying exhibition comprise the first major museum presentation of Isamu Noguchi's ceramics and the introduction of the work of major postwar Japanese ceramic artists with whom Noguchi collaborated or interacted. Supported by four linked essays and opulently illustrated in full color and black and white, Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics highlights the sculptor's struggles with cultural identity and his experimentation with the conflicts between modernity and tradition.

Noguchi's sculptures in the medium of clay reveal informal, spontaneous, and humorous aspects not visible in less flexible media such as bronze or stone. Through clay, Noguchi probed unresolved personal issues surrounding his ambiguous cultural identity as the son of a Japanese father and American mother. Because Noguchi made his ceramics in Japan, his work also creates links to a diversity of approaches within the ceramic world of Japan. These range from traditionalists such as Kitaoji Rosanjin and the Living National Treasure designates, to primitivists exemplified by Okamoto Taro and Tsuji Shindo, to avant-garde experimentalists led by the Sodeisha group. An understanding of the nature and scope of the concerns Noguchi expressed through clay is crucial to understanding his work as a whole, and consideration of Japanese ceramic artists in the 1950s reveals a largely unknown genre of modern Japanese art.

Copublished with the Smithsonian Institution

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Customer Reviews

Japanese Ceramics,Noguchi
I had ordered two copies of this book
One as a birthday gift, and the other for myself
When they arrived both books had smeared ink on the cover
I think it was the printing ink used
Since these were the last two books in stock, they could not be replaced

I feel that whoever ships out books should pull any books with defects, than notify the buyer,

I decided against giving the book as a gift

2007-11-10 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 1

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cosmic enlightenment
Noguchi is truley a master. The most complete catalog of this artists work in clay. As a ceramic sculpture student, this book has given me a world of new insight ang inspiration. Noguchi has been an influence for me for some time and it is wonderful to have such a wonderful resource. Louise Allison Cort has done a remarkable job and I look forward to future catalogs.

2004-01-24 (Pine Valley, NY USA) | Helpful Votes: 7 | Rating: 5

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Isamu Noguchi (Modern Masters Series)

Description

This work offers an insight into Isamu Nogushi's unusual life and art. In a career of over 60 years (1904-1988), the artist often worked simultaneously on different projects - sculpting wood and stone, designing stage sets, making furniture and lamps, and creating urban sculptures.

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Customer Reviews

Great reference for Sculpture Class
This book is filled with examples of Noguchi's artwork, mostly sculpture. I am currently enrolled in a Sculpture Class and found viewing the pictures a helpful reference for the sculptures I produced. It is most important as an artist to be influenced by other artists, and I feel that this book was successful in doing just that.

2000-03-26 | Helpful Votes: 5 | Rating: 4

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Isamu Noguchi: A Sculptor's World

Description

A Sculptor's World is the long-awaited reprint of Isamu Noguchi's 1968 autobiography. It remains Noguchi's most comprehensive statement about the art that brought him international acclaim. Told in words and images, A Sculptor's World is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the life and work of this seminal artist or a general interest in the art of sculpture. Also reprinted in this volume is the original foreword to the book by R. Buckminster Fuller, from which the above quote is taken. In my long experience as an intimate witness of Noguchi's work, I believe that whatever the external entities of his coordinate translating may be, they represent a faithful manifest of the intellectual and harmonic being, Noguchi. In my estimation, the evoluting array and extraordinary breadth of his conceptioning realizations document a comprehensive artist without peer in our time.--R. Buckminster Fuller

Foreword by Bonnie Rychlak.

Clothbound, 9.25 x 10 in./260 pgs / 13 color and 255 b & w.

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Customer Reviews

Noguchi
I was very happy to find out this book (originally published in '68) had been re-published by another publisher. Wonderful book to know about Noguchi's works and his autobiographical comments for the background.

2008-07-30 | Old book worm (Flagstaff, AZ USA) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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Insight Noguchi
This is one beautiful book! Gorgeous reprint, true in form and spirit. A great read too as it is written from Noguchi's point of view and explains his first 42 years. Insightfull. Too bad it was slightly damaged...

2007-09-10 | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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all encompasing noguchi - just take your time
Although I read the first publishing of this book (1968), i can only assume that the most recent printing lives up to the earlier edition. For a student of art, landscape architecture, furniture design, or sculpture this is a wonderful book to have in your collection. Spanning decades, noguchi explains his motives and reasons behind the pieces he so lovingly created. The text can be thick at times, but that is not necesisarily a bad thing. There is a wealth of information to be had; one only has to find it. There are quite a few photographic plates of noguchis work, however they were all in black in white except for a few. This is not necesisarily a bad thing either, as colorful pictures can be easily found on the web or in other (less auto-biographical) books. All in all, noguchi has much wisdom to offer, as long as you have the patience and interest to match the subject matter.

2004-08-03 (San Luis Obispo, CA) | Helpful Votes: 11 | Rating: 5

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