Isamu Noguchi: To Touch the Earth
The Law of Unintended Consequences interferes with the way the World is supposed to be, but it can also throw a spanner in the works of exhibitions that set out to present a certain view of the artist and his art. The exhibition held to celebrate the centenary of the sculptor Isamu Noguchi is an example of such an agenda becoming gloriously derailed.
During his lifetime (1904 – 1988), Noguchi became something of a 'UNESCO Man,' a symbol of the new "transcendent humanity" that could supposedly exist far beyond ethnicity; a bit like the futuristic world portrayed in the 1960s Star Trek TV series. In recent years this universalist notion has become increasingly tarnished as the tyrannies that best exemplified it – the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia – have crumbled and tribalism runs rampant in our world. However, it still lingers in those places where it is least likely to cause a problem or actually exist, namely mono–ethnic states like Japan where they continue to pay lip service to such idealistic and unrealistic notions, as with this exhibition.
Chika Mori, a curator, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, is quite happy to express the formula.
"He's not Japanese and he's not American," she says expansively. "He's a man of the Earth. Nationality is not important. He had no idea of boundaries of barriers, both nationally and artistically."
This is clearly how this exhibition intends to present Noguchi – as a universal figure and a cosy symbol of our globalized World, but the closer you look at his art and life – and this exhibition helps you to examine both – the more this cosy narrative implodes, with Noguchi's story becoming a case of an artist unable to escape from the ethnic dimension or to achieve fulfilment through it.
Although now often thought of as a Japanese artist, Noguchi was born in the USA, had a White American mother, and lived most of his life in the States. For a time, it seems that he even tried to be an all-American boy, graduating from high school in Indiana as Sam Gilmour (his mother's surname), before deciding to 'become' Japanese by adopting his father's surname. His decision to 'be Japanese' did not include settling in Japan, as he continued to live in America, apart from an extended stay in Japan in the immediate post-War period.
It is possible to see his adoption of Japanese identity as a cynical career ploy. Presenting himself as Japanese obviously gave his art more of an exotic cachet than it would have had under his WASP-sounding moniker 'Sam Gilmour.'
"When he was living in New York, there was a trend that respected Japanese culture," Mori explains. "He was also inspired by Zen and started to notice he was Japanese."
Despite this, early works, like Globular (1928), a smooth lump of polished brass, have little to characterize them as Japanese. They reflect instead the abstract minimalism and international modernism that Noguchi imbibed as an art student in New York and Paris, and as an assistant in 1927 to the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
Other key works, like the vaguely sexual Avatar (1947), owe an obvious debt to the biomorphic forms of the Surrealists.
However, his assumption of Japanese identity went deeper than seeking to benefit from art consumer trends and an appetite for the exotic. In the post-War years it seems he made a more concerted effort to expand his Japanese identity, marrying a Japanese actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who had identity issues of her own, and, for a time, even living in a traditional house in Gifu Prefecture, where he designed paper lanterns for the local paper–lantern industry. By bringing his art into countless households, it was these lamps that literally made him a household name.
It is easy to read this period of his life as an attempt to 'come home' to his Japanese roots. However, unlike America, racial categories in Japan have always been much more rigorous and exclusionary. This was driven home for Noguchi when, after doing some minor work for Hiroshima's Peace Park, his design for the "Memorial to the Atomic Dead of Hiroshima" was rejected simply on the grounds that he wasn't Japanese.
This drove home the fact that Noguchi would never be fully accepted in Japan, something he later expressed when he wrote of the Chinese-American artist, Li–Lan.
"In the same way as I do, she belongs to that increasing number of not exactly belonging people."
Nevertheless, he continued to follow his interest in Japanese aesthetics. Indeed, following his disenchantment with being accepted as Japanese, the quota of 'Japanese-ness' in his art actually increased. Late sculptures, like the confusingly titled Chinese Sleeve (1987), made from flat sheets of black bronze, sharply folded as if to mimic origami, have an unmistakable Japanese character. With the conventional way of becoming Japanese blocked, it's as if his art became the path to reach this elusive goal. Nothing makes this more obvious than the direct reason for the exhibition.
"Although one year late for his centenary, we decided to have this exhibition this year to celebrate the opening this year of Noguchi's last great project, Moerenuma Park in Sapporo," Mori explains.
The exhibition includes a scale model of this extensive leisure site, as well as photographs, and design models. This project for a park was a massive advance on Noguchi's small 'Zen–themed' gardens, like the one he created for the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in the 1950s. Begun in 1989, it was very much a product of the economic expansiveness of the Bubble Years.
"A normal park has no ups and downs," Mori points out. "But for this park he built mountains and ponds. He wanted to directly touch to the Earth."
Although Mori enthusiastically sees in this an ecological message of the universal man living in harmony with nature, the Law of Unintended Consequences allows a different message to emerge from the exhibition, casting Noguchi's desire to touch the Earth as a final, desperate attempt to leave his mark on the land that rejected him.
"Isamu Noguchi: From Sculpture to Spatial Design" was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, from September 16 to Novenber 27, 2005
C.B.Liddell
Previously unpublished
October, 2005
During his lifetime (1904 – 1988), Noguchi became something of a 'UNESCO Man,' a symbol of the new "transcendent humanity" that could supposedly exist far beyond ethnicity; a bit like the futuristic world portrayed in the 1960s Star Trek TV series. In recent years this universalist notion has become increasingly tarnished as the tyrannies that best exemplified it – the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia – have crumbled and tribalism runs rampant in our world. However, it still lingers in those places where it is least likely to cause a problem or actually exist, namely mono–ethnic states like Japan where they continue to pay lip service to such idealistic and unrealistic notions, as with this exhibition.
Chika Mori, a curator, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, is quite happy to express the formula.
"He's not Japanese and he's not American," she says expansively. "He's a man of the Earth. Nationality is not important. He had no idea of boundaries of barriers, both nationally and artistically."
This is clearly how this exhibition intends to present Noguchi – as a universal figure and a cosy symbol of our globalized World, but the closer you look at his art and life – and this exhibition helps you to examine both – the more this cosy narrative implodes, with Noguchi's story becoming a case of an artist unable to escape from the ethnic dimension or to achieve fulfilment through it.
Although now often thought of as a Japanese artist, Noguchi was born in the USA, had a White American mother, and lived most of his life in the States. For a time, it seems that he even tried to be an all-American boy, graduating from high school in Indiana as Sam Gilmour (his mother's surname), before deciding to 'become' Japanese by adopting his father's surname. His decision to 'be Japanese' did not include settling in Japan, as he continued to live in America, apart from an extended stay in Japan in the immediate post-War period.
It is possible to see his adoption of Japanese identity as a cynical career ploy. Presenting himself as Japanese obviously gave his art more of an exotic cachet than it would have had under his WASP-sounding moniker 'Sam Gilmour.'
"When he was living in New York, there was a trend that respected Japanese culture," Mori explains. "He was also inspired by Zen and started to notice he was Japanese."
Despite this, early works, like Globular (1928), a smooth lump of polished brass, have little to characterize them as Japanese. They reflect instead the abstract minimalism and international modernism that Noguchi imbibed as an art student in New York and Paris, and as an assistant in 1927 to the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
Other key works, like the vaguely sexual Avatar (1947), owe an obvious debt to the biomorphic forms of the Surrealists.
However, his assumption of Japanese identity went deeper than seeking to benefit from art consumer trends and an appetite for the exotic. In the post-War years it seems he made a more concerted effort to expand his Japanese identity, marrying a Japanese actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi, who had identity issues of her own, and, for a time, even living in a traditional house in Gifu Prefecture, where he designed paper lanterns for the local paper–lantern industry. By bringing his art into countless households, it was these lamps that literally made him a household name.
It is easy to read this period of his life as an attempt to 'come home' to his Japanese roots. However, unlike America, racial categories in Japan have always been much more rigorous and exclusionary. This was driven home for Noguchi when, after doing some minor work for Hiroshima's Peace Park, his design for the "Memorial to the Atomic Dead of Hiroshima" was rejected simply on the grounds that he wasn't Japanese.
This drove home the fact that Noguchi would never be fully accepted in Japan, something he later expressed when he wrote of the Chinese-American artist, Li–Lan.
"In the same way as I do, she belongs to that increasing number of not exactly belonging people."
Nevertheless, he continued to follow his interest in Japanese aesthetics. Indeed, following his disenchantment with being accepted as Japanese, the quota of 'Japanese-ness' in his art actually increased. Late sculptures, like the confusingly titled Chinese Sleeve (1987), made from flat sheets of black bronze, sharply folded as if to mimic origami, have an unmistakable Japanese character. With the conventional way of becoming Japanese blocked, it's as if his art became the path to reach this elusive goal. Nothing makes this more obvious than the direct reason for the exhibition.
"Although one year late for his centenary, we decided to have this exhibition this year to celebrate the opening this year of Noguchi's last great project, Moerenuma Park in Sapporo," Mori explains.
The exhibition includes a scale model of this extensive leisure site, as well as photographs, and design models. This project for a park was a massive advance on Noguchi's small 'Zen–themed' gardens, like the one he created for the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris in the 1950s. Begun in 1989, it was very much a product of the economic expansiveness of the Bubble Years.
"A normal park has no ups and downs," Mori points out. "But for this park he built mountains and ponds. He wanted to directly touch to the Earth."
Although Mori enthusiastically sees in this an ecological message of the universal man living in harmony with nature, the Law of Unintended Consequences allows a different message to emerge from the exhibition, casting Noguchi's desire to touch the Earth as a final, desperate attempt to leave his mark on the land that rejected him.
"Isamu Noguchi: From Sculpture to Spatial Design" was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, from September 16 to Novenber 27, 2005
C.B.Liddell
Previously unpublished
October, 2005
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