Isamu Noguchi

We will explore the works, career and sensibility of Japanese American sculptor and landscape designer Isamu Noguchi, who is much associated today in Japan with some iconic ‘mid-century’ interior design products (a table, paper lanterns etc) and who had an ambiguous relationship with Japanese art critics in his time. There is surprisingly little by way of documentaries about Noguchi in the public domain, despite a wealth of both video material and books having been produced about him.

This video, a bit overdone with the soundtrack etc, provides a glimpse of his self-curated collection in the small museum of his work he established in New York, in a space he also created many works in.

 

Isamu Noguchi was was of the most renowned sculptors of the postwar era. Born to an American mother and a Japanese father, the latter a Keio University professor, he was brought up initially by his mother in Japan  and then was educated in the USA. and went to France to further his art training. Upon arriving in Paris he soon met legendary sculptor Brancusi. Noguchi spent much time in Japan, was much influenced by a range of Japanese aesthetics but also exercised great influence in Japan through is work in less familiar materials such as stone (as a material to be cut, shaped, polished rather than found and curated as Japanese garden designers had done). Noguchi’s landscape design work, and a range of sculptures, became important complements to key modernist architectural projects such as the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the UNESCO building in Paris.

Here, in this short video Noguchi talks about why we works in varied materials and his related concern to transcend the constraints of the time he inhabits:

 

This is a nice video of the making of an Akari lamp, designed by Noguchi, by craftsmen in Gifu. I have two myself!

 

Here is a slightly wacky old video featuring the Israel Museum sculpture garden. Noguchi designed the garden landscape and the sculptures are by varied other prominent artists:

What follows are several documentaries of varied length on his work and life.

Some great archival footage of Noguchi re the Californian Scenario project, now now as the Noguchi Garden. Here is a link to details and photos by visitors to it and a nice short essay.

Isamu Noguchi setting in place the sculpture Water Stone, made when he was in his mid-80s, for a dedicated space in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (‘The Met’).

A short video, with somewhat annoying soundtrack, on the Morenuma park project in Hokkaido that is on a grand scale, especially for Japan.

 

And a Japanese television segment on him from 1994; very positive but a rather cliched Japanese response to his Japanese ancestry.

Noguchi was encouraged in postwar Japan by, the sometimes reactionary, pioneering culinary designer/critic Rosanjin. On the hand, his proposal for the key sculpture at the Hiroshima Peace Park – initiated by architect Kenzo Tange – faced opposition because of his American citizenship and was not adopted. Tange himself had been complicit with prewar imperialistic imaginings but put that behind him.

The trailer for the film Leonie that dramatises the experiences of Noguchi’s mother