Isamu Noguchi 1904–1988

By Patrick Heath

Isamu Noguchi, Kouros, 1945, Marble, 117 1/8 × 42 1/2 × 25 3/8 in. (297.5 × 108 × 64.5 cm), Base: 1 1/4 × 42 1/8 × 34 in. (3.2 × 107 × 86.4 cm), The Noguchi Museum

Isamu Noguchi (November 17, 1904 – December 30, 1988) was a Japanese American sculptor and land-architect whose kaleidoscopic oeuvre and mercurial career mark him as one the veritable artistic polymaths of the 20th Century. Noguchi has garnered renown and fascination by palpably combining a wide network of disparate influences within his work. His expansive cultural synthesis and deep affinity for the assimilating force of itinerant globalism make it hard to define Noguchi’s work through the lens of a particular movement. He applied himself to public projects, gardens, playgrounds, furniture, lighting and set design, with the express view that nature was utterly essential to the human condition and an undying will to expound this belief through art.

Noguchi was born in 1904 to a Yonejiro Noguchi, a Japanese poet and Léonie Gilmour, an American writer. He was born in Los Angeles, but after a volley of familial issuses, his mother moved with him to Yokohoma to be with his father in 1907, at the age of two. Yonejiro would quickly find a Japanese wife and distance himself from his son and Léonie; however, Noguchi started his schooling in Japan and remained there until he was thirteen at which time he returned to the United States, alone. Noguchi attended high school in Indiana and began to identify as a ‘Hoosier’, adding to the cultural tapestry that would come to shape his life. The most important thing to note in Noguchi’s formative years is the difficulty with which he was forced to negotiate the perceived dichotomies between ‘East’ and ‘West’. In his attempts to formulate a personal identity in such heterogeneous cultures, particularly within the context of the Russo-Japanese war, Noguchi went to lengths such as changing his name (during his teenage years, he took the name Sam Gilmour) to mitigate potential grievances caused by his cultural heritage.

Noguchi’s artistic career suffered a turbulent genesis; having graduated high school in 1922, he briefly became apprenticed to Gutzon Borglum at the sculptor’s studio in Connecticut. During the summer Noguchi learned little about the process of sculpture from his master, instead he was given uninspiring menial tasks in the workshop. The summer culminated with Borglum telling his student that he would never find success as an artist. From Connecticut, Noguchi moved to New York and embarked on a pre-medical degree at Columbia University. Under the influence of his friends Hideyo Noguchi and Michio Itō, Noguchi undertook evening sculpture classes at the Lenoardo Da Vinci Art School, instructed by Onorio Ruotolo. He was afforded a small exhibition of terracotta and plaster works only three months after starting these classes, and, in 1926, after disenrolling from degree at Columbia, Noguchi was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship three years before the scheme was supposed to admit him. Isamu’s rise through the New York art scene was meteoric and was symptomatic of the incredible success he would later enjoy.

The next decade of Noguchi’s life was given to extensive and capricious travel. He first settled in Paris in the April of 1927, where he became the first and only assistant of Constantin Brancusi. In Paris, Noguchi was taken by his mentor’s adherence to abstraction and modernism, infusing his highly finished pieces with a lyrical and emotional expressiveness, all with an elusive, enigmatic allure. The following years saw Noguchi travel around Asia and Europe; he became enthralled with Indian architecture, Chinese calligraphy, and Japanese pottery – this myriad of influences can be perceived in works such his terracotta Queen (1943) which combines flowing architectural lines with the delicate qualities found in Kofun Period pottery.

Noguchi returned to the United States for most of the Second World War.  His art was little known in the country of his birth until 1940, when he completed an impressive sculpture symbolising press freedom, which was commissioned in 1938 for the Associated Press Building in Rockefeller Center, New York City. This was Noguchi’s first foray into what would eventually become numerous celebrated public works, ranging from playgrounds to plazas, gardens to fountains, all reflecting his belief in the social significance of sculpture within the public sphere, and furthering his notion that ‘Everything is sculpture. Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture.’ Noguchi would go on to produce gardens for Reader’s Digest in Tokyo (1951; later destroyed) and UNESCO headquarters in Paris (1956–58); sunken gardens in stone for the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University (1960–64) and Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City (1961–64); and many other public spaces in cities from Los Angeles and Detroit to Osaka, Jerusalem, Bologna and Munich.

Besides public land architecture and sculpture, another important facet of Noguchi’s oeuvre was the mass production of his functional designs. In 1937, he designed a Bakelite intercom for the Zenith Radio Corporation, and in 1947, Noguchi began a collaboration with the Herman Miller company, when he joined with George Nelson, Paul László and Charles Eames to create a catalogue containing some of the most recognisable and pivotal modern furniture ever produced; his most famous piece, the Noguchi Coffee Table, was a part of this collection. This design and others—such as his designs for Akari light sculptures which were initially developed in 1951 using traditional Japanese materials—are still being produced today.

The latter phase of Noguchi’s career is testament to the resounding nature of his internationality. In 1962, he had established a stone workshop in Monte Altissimo, Italy to which he would make frequent travels - often yearly. In 1969, he had purchased a studio on the island of Shikoku off the cost of Japan, another region known for its tradition of stone sculpture. Noguchi’s main residence always remained in New York however; his studio on Long Island was open until his death and was principally concerned with the artist’s ambitious land projects. The quality and scale of Noguchi’s sculpture did not wane as he came towards the end of his life; his final period is remembered for its adherence to the cutting of hard stone such as granite and basalt, Noguchi even remarked that ‘[stone] is a direct link to the heart of matter – a molecular link. When I tap it, I get the echo of that which we are – in the solar plexus – the centre of gravity of matter. Then, the whole universe has a resonance!’ In 1982 Noguchi was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding lifetime contribution to the arts and, in 1985, he founded the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (now The Noguchi Museum) across the street from his studio in Long Island. Isamu Noguchi died on December 30, 1988, in New York City. Towards the end of his life, Noguchi, reflecting on the generous and expansive legacy of his transgressive sculpture, came to identify as a ‘citizen of spaceship earth.’ In its obituary for the artist, the New York Times adroitly encapsulated Noguchi’s artistic life, calling him "a versatile and prolific sculptor whose earthy stones and meditative gardens bridging East and West have become landmarks of 20th-century art."

Bibliography

Brenson, Michael. "Isamu Noguchi, the Sculptor, Dies at 84", The New York Times, (December 31, 1988)

Duus, Masayo, ‘The life of Isamu Noguchi: journey without borders’, trans. Duus, Peter, (Princeton University Press, 2004)

Kitamura, Katie, ‘The Life and Work of the Japanese-American Sculptor Isamu Noguchi’, AnOther, (October 7th 2021) https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/13578/isamu-noguchi-sculptor-life-work-career-barbican-exhibition [Accessed 16/11/2021]