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

Here, more than 75 projects are presented and considered; they are divided intoseven 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 byTorres. Each chapter is kick-started by a Noguchi excerpt about the work inquestion. The thematic organization of the book means that we keep bouncing backto the 1930s just when we are familiarizing ourselves with the projects andartistic preoccupations of Noguchi's final decade. But that format alsounderscores 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 besummarized, although a small sampling of highlights might include Noguchi'sgardens for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, for which he convinced architectsMarcel Breuer, Pier Luigi Nervi, and Bernard Zehrfuss to relocate a mobile ofAlexander Calder in order for him to expand on his own ideas (needless to saythat Calder was not pleased); the famous sunken garden for Yale University'sBeinecke 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'sPiazza del Campidoglio, which Noguchi adored; the massive pylon water fountainand 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 designa subterranean amphitheater just beneath it for the city's annual EthnicalFestival; and, three years before his death, the garden of the Domon Ken Museumof Photography in Sakata, Japan: an enclosed court of water that runs over fourstone terraces, with a single granite pillar rising up near the center--surelyone of the most serenely beautiful vistas in modern architecture, even asreproduced here (as are all of the photos, somewhat unfortunately) in laconicblack and white.

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

There is one thing that this very satisfying retrospective makes clear aboutNoguchi: instead of letting the contradictions of his own ancestry undermine hiswork, he used them to his advantage in a way that--for all of the diverse globalinfluences of his oeuvre--struck this reviewer as quite distinctly andresourcefully American. --Timothy Murphy ... Read more

Reviews (1)

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 execution 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 in art. A good complement to this book would be Bruce Altshuler's "Isamu Noguchi" (Modern Masters, Vol 16), 1995. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

accessible, significant, colorful, inexpensive
Easily the most accessible guide to Noguchi's works of a lifetime. This edition is distinguished by large illustrations, many in color, presented in an inexpensive paperback.

It is perhaps the best primer for recognizing the significance of the wide ranging yet simple aesthetic gifts to the rest of us from this complex soul.

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. ... Read more

Book 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 ... Read more

Reviews (1)

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. ... Read more

Book 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. ... Read more

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... beautifully photographed, stunningly illustrated
This book is a beautiful treasure itself with full-sized gorgeous photos elegantly recording his 1985 exhibit "Space of AKARI & Stone". ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document, covering the life and work of Isamu Noguchi, is an entry from Contemporary Authors, a reference volume published by Thomson Gale. The length of the entry is 771 words. The page length listed above is based on a typical 300-word page. Although the exact content of each entry from this volume can vary, typical entries include the following information:

• Place and date of birth and death (if deceased)
• Family members
• Education
• Professional associations and honors
• Employment
• Writings, including books and periodicals
• A description of the author's work
• References to further readings about the author

Book Description

The life of the Japanese-American sculptor and designer IsamuNoguchi (1904-1988) was an unending spiritual and physical voyage between thetwo cultures of his birthright. In this definitive biography and critical study,Dore Ashton maps Noguchi's spiritual journey both in the events of his life andin the milestones of his art: the sculptures, gardens, public spaces, and stagedecors that gained force and significance from his double heritage. ... Read more

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early Indiana schooling, profoundly American duality
This volume is one of the more comprehensive reviews of Noguchi's life and work. Having met with Noguchi a couple of times at the premises of the future Museum, I regret not having then the insight now made accessible by our new digital lifestyle resources. His cross-cultural, multi-media artistry reflects Midwestern adolescence with Pacific overtures. Ashton states "Noguchi's biography is rich in hints of the sources of his formative years, and while no single source can be isolated, some are more suggestive than others. Dr. Rumely, the progressive educator who founded the Interlaken School in Indiana where Noguchi began his American education, had placed Noguchi in the home of ... a Swedenborgian minister. The boy was thrust into a situation in which the thoughts that had helped shape the modern movement -- through such figures as Blake, Emerson, Poe, and Baudelaire -- were sacred. ...the notion of a universal rhyming scheme had attracted nineteenth-century artists who wished to see some kind of elemental unity in the universe; who relished the endless possibilities of analogy."

Combining influences of the industrializing modernity of small cities and towns of the Midwest at this time, and seemingly inspired both by ancient Japanese "tumuli" and the Native American Mound Builders, his mnemonic response to the sights of such landscapes "got me going". With this amplified illumination into Noguchi's background and more familiarity with his abiding interests in "earth sculpturing", perhaps new educational paradigms should be considered in our thinking of art, architecture and American historic preservation. ... Read more

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First-rate reproduction, great attention to details.
This book is a reprint of Herman Miller company's 1952 catalog and it's a super reproduction. With all the Nelson, Eames and Noguchi material inside, this book shows some of the best furniture produced in the 1950s. Great reprint job. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Proceso, published by CISA Comunicacion e Informacion, S.A. de C.V. on June 20, 1999. The length of the article is 1047 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: ISAMU NOGUCHI, OPACADO EN EL MUSEO TAMAYO.(TT: Isamu Noguchi, overshadowed in the Tamayo Museum.)
Author: Raquel Tibol
Publication: Proceso (Magazine/Journal)
Date: June 20, 1999
Publisher: CISA Comunicacion e Informacion, S.A. de C.V.
Page: 63

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

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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. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Capper's, published by Ogden Publications, Inc. on May 11, 2004. The length of the article is 443 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Post dates.
Publication: Capper's (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 11, 2004
Publisher: Ogden Publications, Inc.
Volume: 126Issue: 10Page: 12(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description

One of the greatest artists of the past century, Noguchi worked with an extraordinary range of materials to produce an equally extraordinary array of sculptural creations. Among the most powerful and haunting were his designs for theatre, especially the theatre of dance. This book celebrates that sculpture with splendid photographs of 37 set designs, mainly for Martha Graham, and with commentary on each that tells the story of the dance as well as the story behind the sculptor's creation, usually in his own words. This handsome, large-format book is a treasure for both art lovers and dance lovers. ... Read more