|
Isamu Noguchi
- Wholesale Designer Furniture
Isamu Noguchi,
November 17, 1904 - December 30, 1988) was a prominent Japanese
American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career
spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known for his
sculpture and public works, Noguchi also designed stage sets for
various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced
lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured
and sold.
Among his furniture work was his collaboration with the Herman
Miller company in 1948 when he joined with George Nelson, Paul
László and Charles Eames to produce a catalog containing what is
often considered to be the most influential body of modern
furniture. His work lives on around the world and at the The
Noguchi Museum in New York City.
Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles, the illegitimate son of
Yone Noguci, a Japanese poet who had gained great acclaim in the
United States, and Leonie Gilmour, an American writer who edited
much of his work. Yone had ended his relationship with
Gilmour earlier that year, instead planning to marry his true
romance, Washington Post reporter Ethel Armes. After proposing
to her, Yone left for Japan in late August, settling in Tokyo
and awaiting Armes' arrival; their engagement fell through
months later when she learned of Leonie and her newborn son.
In 1906, Yone invited Leonie to come to Tokyo with their son.
She at first refused, but growing anti-Japanese sentiment
following the Russo-Japanese War eventually convinced her to
take up Yone's offer The two departed from San Francisco in
March 1907, arriving in Yokohama to meet Yone. Upon arrival,
their son was finally given the name Isamu . However, Yone had
taken a Japanese wife by the time they arrived, and was mostly
absent from his son's childhood. After again separating from
Yone, Leonie and Isamu moved several times throughout Japan.
In 1912, while the two had settled in Chigasaki, Isamu's half
sister, Ailes Gilmour (known today as an early pioneer of the
American Modern Dance movement) was born to an unknown father.
Here the family had their own house built, a project that Leonie
had Isamu "oversee". She also tried to nurture her son's
artistic ability during this time, putting him in charge of
their garden and apprenticing him to a local carpenter. However,
they moved once again in December 1917 to an English-speaking
community in Yokohama.
In 1918, Noguchi was sent to the United States for schooling. He
attended school in Rolling Prairie, Indiana. After graduation,
he left with Dr. Edward Rumely to LaPorte, where he found
boarding with a Swedenborgian pastor, Samuel Mack. Noguchi began
attending La Porte High School, graduating in 1922.
After high school, Noguchi explained his desire to become an
artist to Rumely; though he preferred that Noguchi become a
doctor, he acknowledged Noguchi's request and sent him to
Connecticut to work as an apprentice to his friend Gutzon
Borglum. Best known as the creator of Mount Rushmore National
Memorial, Borglum was at the time working on a huge set of
equestrian sculptures for the city of Newark, New Jersey. As his
apprentice, Noguchi received little training as a sculptor; his
tasks included arranging the horses and modeling for the
monument as General Sherman. He did, however, pick up some
skills in casting from Borglum's Italian assistants, later
fashioning a bust of Abraham Lincoln. At summer's end, Borglum
told Noguchi that he would never become a sculptor, prompting
him to reconsider Rumley's prior suggestion.
He then traveled to New York City, reuniting with the Rumely
family at their new residence, and with Dr. Rumely's financial
aid enrolled in February 1922 as a premedical student at
Columbia University. Soon after, he met the bacteriologist
Hideyo Noguchi, who urged him to reconsider art, as well as the
Japanese dancer Michio Itō, whose celebrity status later helped
Noguchi find acquaintances in the art world. Another influence
was his mother, who in 1923 moved from Japan to California, then
later to New York.
In 1924, while still enrolled at Columbia, Noguchi followed his
mother's advice to take night classes at the Leonardo da Vinci
Art School. The school's head, Onorio Ruotolo, was immediately
impressed by Noguchi's work. Only three months later, Noguchi
held his first exhibit, a selection of plaster and terra cotta
works. He soon dropped name from Gilmour (the surname he had
used for years) to Noguchi.
After moving into his own studio, Noguchi found work through
commissions for portrait busts, he won the Logan Medal of the
arts. During this time, he frequented avant-garde shows at
the galleries of such modernists as Alfred Stieglitz and J. B.
Neuman, and took a particular interest in a show of the works of
Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
In late 1926, Noguchi applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship. In
his letter of application, he proposed to study stone and wood
cutting and to gain "a better understanding of the human figure"
in Paris for a year, then spend another year traveling through
Asia, exhibit his work, and return to New York. He was awarded
the grant despite being three years short of the age
requirement.
Noguchi arrived in Paris in April 1927 and soon afterward met
the American author Robert McAlmon, who brought him to
Brancusi's studio for an introduction. Despite a language
barrier between the two artists (Noguchi barely spoke French,
and Brancusi did not speak English[10]), Noguchi was taken in as
Brancusi's assistant for the next seven months. During this
time, Noguchi gained his footing in stone sculpture, a medium
with which he was unacquainted, though he would later admit that
one of Brancusi's greatest teachings was to appreciate "the
value of the moment." Meanwhile, Noguchi found himself in good
company in France, with letters of introduction from Michio
Itō helping him to meet such artists as Jules Pascin and
Alexander Calder, who lived in the studio of Arno Breker. They
became friends and Breker did a bronze bust of Noguchi.
Noguchi only produced one sculpture – his marble Sphere Section
– in his first year, but during his second year he stayed in
Paris and continued his training in stoneworking with the
Italian sculptor Mateo Hernandes, producing over twenty more
abstractions of wood, stone and sheet metal. Noguchi's next
major destination was to be India, from which he would travel
east; he arrived in London to read up on Oriental Sculpture, but
was denied the extension to the Guggenheim Fellowship he needed.
In February 1929, he left for New York City. Brancusi had
recommended that Noguchi visit Romany Marie's café in Greenwich
Village. Noguchi did so and there met Buckminster Fuller, with
whom he collaborated on several projects,including the modeling
of Fuller's Dymaxion car.
Upon his return, Noguchi's abstract sculptures made in Paris
were exhibited in his first one-man show at the Eugene Schoen
Gallery. After none of his works sold, Noguchi
altogether abandoned abstract art for portrait busts in order to
support himself. He soon found himself accepting commissions
from wealthy and celebrity clients. A 1930 exhibit of several
busts, including those of Martha Graham and Buckminster Fuller,
garnered positive reviews,[18] and after less than a year of
portrait sculpture, Noguchi had earned enough money to continue
his trip to Asia.
Noguchi left for Paris in April 1930, and two months later
received his visa to ride the Trans-Siberian Railway. He opted
to visit Japan first rather than India, but after learning that
his father Yone did not want his son to visit using his surname,
a shaken Noguchi instead departed for Peking. In China, he
studied brush painting with Qi
Baishi, staying for six month before finally sailing for Japan.
Even before his arrival in Kobe, Japanese newspapers had picked
up on Noguchi's supposed reunion with his father; though he
denied that this was the reason for his visit, the two did meet
in Tokyo. He later arrived in Kyoto to study pottery with Uno
Jinmatsu. Here he took note of local Zen gardens and haniwa,
clay funerary figures of the Kofun era which inspired his terra
cotta The Queen.
Noguchi returned to New York amidst the Great Depression,
finding few clients for his portrait busts. Instead, he hoped to
sell his newly-produced sculptures and brush paintings from
Asia. Though very few sold, Noguchi regarded this one-man
exhibition (which began in February 1932 and toured Chicago, the
west coast, and Honolulu) as his "most successful".
Additionally, his next attempt to break into abstract art, a
large streamlined figure of dancer Ruth Page entitled Miss
Expanding Universe, was poorly received.[20] In January 1933 he
worked in Chicago with Santiago Martínez Delgado, on a mural for
the Chicago International Fair, then again found a business for
his
portrait busts; he moved to London in June hoping to find more
work, but returned in December just before his mother Leonie's
death.
Beginning in February 1934, Noguchi began submitting his first
designs for public spaces and monuments to the Public Works of
Art Program. One such design, a monument to Benjamin
Franklin, remained unrealized for decades. Another design, a
gigantic pyramidal earthwork entitled Monument to the American
Plow, was similarly rejected, and his "sculptural landscape" of
a playground, Play Mountain, was personally rejected by Parks
Commissioner Robert Moses. He was eventually dropped from the
program, and again supported himself by sculpting portrait
busts. In early 1935, after another solo exhibition, the New
York Sun's Henry McBride labeled Noguchi's Death, depicting a
lynched
African-American, as "a little Japanese mistake." That same year
he produced the set for Frontier, the first of many set designs
for Martha Graham.
After the Federal Art Project started up, Noguchi again put
forth designs, one of which was another earthwork chosen for the
New York City airport entitled Relief Seen from the Sky;
following further rejection, Noguchi left for Hollywood, where
he again worked as a portrait sculptor to earn money for a
sojourn in Mexico. Here, Noguchi was chosen to design his first
public work, a relief mural for the Abelardo Rodriguez market in
Mexico City. The 20-meter-long History as Seen from Mexico in
1936 was hugely political and socially conscious, featuring such
modern symbols as the Nazi swastika, a hammer and sickle, and
the equation E = mc˛.
Noguchi returned to New York in 1937. He again began to turn out
portrait busts, and after various proposals was selected for two
culptures. The first of these, a fountain built of automobile
parts for the Ford Motor Company's exhibit at the 1939 New York
World's Fair, was thought of poorly by critics and Noguchi alike
but nevertheless introduced him to fountain-construction and
magnesite. Conversely, his second sculpture, a nine-ton
stainless steel bas-relief entitled News, was unveiled over the
entrance to the
Associated Press building at the Rockefeller Center in April
1940 to much praise. Following further rejections of his
playground designs, Noguchi left on a cross-country road trip
with Arshile Gorky and Gorky's fiancée in July 1941, eventually
separating from them to go to Hollywood.
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment
was reenergized in the United States, and in response Noguchi
formed Nisei Writers and Artists for Democracy". Noguchi and
other group leaders wrote to influential officials, including
the congressional committee headed by Representative John Tolan,
hoping to halt the internment of Japanese Americans; Noguchi
later attended the hearings but had little effect on their
outcome. He later helped organize a documentary of the
internment, but left California before its release; as a legal
resident of New York, he was allowed to return home. He hoped to
prove Japanese-American loyalty by somehow helping the war
effort, but when other governmental departments turned him down,
Noguchi met with John Collier, head of the Office of Indian
Affairs, who convinced him to travel to the internment camp
located on an Indian reservation in Poston, Arizona to promote
arts and crafts and community.
Noguchi arrived at the Poston camp in May 1942, becoming its
only voluntary internee. Noguchi first worked in a carpentry
shop, but his hope was to design parks and recreational areas
within the camp. Although he created several plans at Poston,
among them designs forbaseball fields, swimming pools, and a
cemetery, he found that the WRA authorities had no intention of
implementing them. Noguchi also realized that, despite his
heritage, he had little in common with the internees, who he
described as being mostly unintellectual, nonpolitical farmers.
In June, Noguchi applied for release, but intelligence officers
labeled him as a "suspicious person" due to his involvement in
"Nisei Writers and Artists for Democracy". He was finally
granted a month-long furlough on November 12, but never
returned; though he was granted a permanent leave afterward, he
soon afterward received a deportation order. The FBI, accusing
him of espionage, launched into a full investigation of Noguchi
which ended only through the ACLU's intervention. Noguchi would
later retell his wartime experiences in the British World War
Two documentary series The World at War.
Upon his return to New York, Noguchi took a new studio in
Greenwich Village. Throughout the 1940s, Noguchi's sculpture
drew from the ongoing surrealist movement; these works include
not only various mixed-media constructions and landscape
reliefs, but lunars – self-illuminating reliefs – and a series
of biomorphic sculptures made of interlocking slabs. The most
famous of these assembled-slab works, Kouros, was first shown in
a September 1946 exhibition, helping to cement his place in the
New York art scene. He also designed furniture and lamp designs
for Herman Miller and Knoll, and continued his involvement with
theater, designing sets for Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring
and John Cage and Merce Cunningham's production of The Seasons.
Near the end of his time in New York, he also found more work
designing public spaces, including a commission for the ceilings
of the Time-Life headquarters. In March 1949, Noguchi had his
first one-person show in New York since 1935 at the Charles Egan
Gallery.
In the ensuing years he gained in prominence and acclaim,
leaving his large-scale works in many of the world's major
cities.
In 1955, he designed the sets and costumes for a controversial
theatre production of King Lear starring John Gielgud.
In 1962, he was elected to membership in the American Academy of
Artsand Letters.
In 1971, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts
and Sciences.
Isamu Noguchi died on December 30, 1988 at the age of 84. In
their obituary for Noguchi, the New York Times called him "a
versatile and prolific sculptor whose earthy stones and
meditative gardens bridging East and West have become landmarks
of 20th-century art.".
The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum currently serves
as Noguchi's official Estate.. The U.S. copyright representative
for the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum is the
Artists Rights Society. |
