Oasis of No(guchi)

Subconsciously, I guess I'm playing catch-up, visiting the Frick for the first time in May and the Noguchi Museum today. I'd been curious about the out-of-the-way place since occasionally taking lunch-hour walks past it when I worked in Long Island City.  The NYC Ferry to Astoria provides the easiest access from Upper Manhattan, and lovely views to boot in both directions.

"Yellow Landscape" (1943)

Free Fridays the first of the month and an exhibit about the sculptor's relationship with New York City got me in the fairly nondescript front door.  Would you believe that the museum provided umbrellas and water bottles for the mostly young crowd who had lined up in the late-afternoon sun?  In Japan, they call that omotenashi.

In 1961, Isamu Noguchi established a studio half an hour north of what was then called the 59th Street Bridge, eventually buying property in the industrial neighborhood that included an abandoned factory which he used to make and warehouse his art.  This semi-outdoor gallery used to be a gas station. 

The museum and its adjacent garden opened to the public on a seasonal basis in 1985, while Noguchi was still alive; after renovations were completed in 2004, it became year-round and one of New York City's best-kept secrets.  Social media may have changed that.

"Narrow Gate" (1981)

"The Well" (top, 1982)

"The Big Bang" (1978)

"Unmei" (1972)

Being born a Japanese-American early in the 20th century--particularly to literary parents with a complicated relationship in Los Angeles--can't have been easy. After spending most of his childhood in Japan, Noguchi returned to the United States to study, enrolling at Columbia University as a pre-med student.  His artistic ambitions had been thwarted by an internship with the sculptor who went on to supervise the construction Mount Rushmore.  

"To Bring To Life" (1979)

But with encouragement from people he met in New York, including a bacteriologist and a dancer, both Japanese, and his mother, he dropped out of college and began taking classes at the Leonardo da Vinci Art School.  He also trained with European sculptors, including Constantin Brâncuși in Paris, and traveled the world for nearly a decade but found that there was no market for his abstract work, particularly during the Great Depression. 

"The Mountain" (1984)

Noguchi had just turned 37 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor but his official residency in New York spared him from being sent to an interment camp like other Californian Nisei (North and South Americans with at least one parent who had immigrated from Japan). Instead, he formed a group of writers and artists to advocate on their behalf as patriotic citizens.  

"Sun At Midnight" (1973)

Noguchi also briefly served as an arts and crafts instructor at an interment camp in Arizona where administrators ignored his designs to make the place more livable, a barrier he would face throughout his career.  

Vertical View (1973)

The federal government later accused him of being a spy as a result of his advocacy; if not for ACLU intervention, he would have been deported. 

"The Roar" (1966)

After World War II, Noguchi hit pay dirt with furniture and lighting design.  In 1952, he also submitted a parabolic design to memorialize the Japanese civilians killed when the Americans dropped nuclear bombs in a show of uniquely destructive force.  

Only the arch would have been aboveground.  He extended the legs of the parabola below the earth, with a depository for the ashes of the dead and a contemplation chamber located between them. His American blood made it a difficult sell. Three decades later, Noguchi tweaked the original concept to become a monument protesting nuclear weapons in Washington, DC but it never gained traction then, either.  I suspect the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have had an impact on my own family, but as they say in the recovery community, "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."  

"Memorial to the Dead, Hiroshima" (model, 1982)

Fortune, however, did favor the sculptor later in the decade when he became the first solo artist to represent the U.S. at the 1986 Venice Biennale.  "Slide Mantra," the ten-foot tall centerpiece (and one of Noguchi's last major works), exemplified his conviction that play was as important to humanity as art. 

A slide show documents the on-site assembly of the pre-fabricated marble sculpture delivered by boat in eight pieces.  It weighed 20,000 pounds and was later moved to Miami's recently renovated Bayfront Park, home to two other Noguchi sculptures, including the Challenger Memorial which was dedicated in early 1989, a few weeks after his death at the age of 84.  I'm definitely scheduling a Folly Chariot field trip this winter!

However, Noguchi's work at the Biennale, his first major European exhibition, wasn't universally acclaimed because he insisted on including his Akari light sculptures.  Like his iconic table, they had been (and remain) commercial juggernauts.  They also comprise a beautiful display in the gift shop.  Noguchi's reluctance to make fussy distinctions among design, craft and "art" may have cost him the Golden Lion Prize at the Biennale but income from their sale have helped sustain his legacy by robustly funding his museum.

Portrait busts were Noguchi's bread and butter during his early years.  Prior to 1950, when he stopped making them entirely, he had sculpted more than a hundred with extraordinary variation in material. Michio Itō is the Japanese dancer who encouraged him to become an artist.

(1926)

Noguchi collaborated with Buckminster Fuller on the shape of the Dymaxion car

(1929)

. . . which, when completed, he drove on an extended road trip in Connecticut with Clare Booth Luce.

(1933)

It can't be said that José Clemente Orozco, the Mexican muralist, was a looker.

(1931)

Although I didn't notice Noguchi's iconic coffee table on display, his chess table (rear) is similar.  

"Time Lock" (1944-45)

I like the brightly colored pieces even more.

Aside from "Yellow Landscape" (at the top of this entry), "Noguchi's New York" was less impressive in the context of the entire collection, perhaps because so few of his proposed projects--including three playgrounds blackballed by Robert Moses--actually came to fruition.

But modern dance pioneer Martha Graham (whom he also sculpted), asked him to design the sets for the 1962 premiere of "Phaedra."

And the temporary exhibit did teach me that Noguchi felt that his primary self-identification was as strong as mine.

I'm really a New Yorker . . . There's no way out but to say that I'm just a New Yorker, not Japanese, not a citizen of the world.  Just a New Yorker who goes wandering around like many New Yorkers, and like a lot of New Yorkers, I was one of those bitten by some kind of an idealism . . .

Maiastra (1971)