Isamu Noguchi: Sculpture of Space

The sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi (1904 – 1988) was a prototypical 20th Century individual. Noguchi was born in Los Angeles, California to a Japanese father and an American mother. He grew up in both Japan and America and began his career as the assistant to Constantin Brancusi in Paris in 1927. Through his sculpture he became an interpreter between the East and the West. His refusal to use any single sculptural style or material, and his frequently changing, trans-global residences left critics and art historians often unable to adequately understand or even fully familiarize themselves with his work. Ultimately, Noguchi’s lifelong aesthetic and cultural pursuits reflected the social turbulence and restlessness characteristic of his time. It is through this lens that his achievements should be evaluated. Isamu Noguchi’s concept of a “Sculpture of Space” is his most significant contribution to modern sculpture; it lies at the heart of this exhibition. Noguchi conceived his larger projects as gardens, as public spaces — he stated that they were developed “… not as sites with objects but as relationships to a whole.” They existed between the East and the West, between historical traditions and the spirit of the mechanical age, between the past and the future. Illustrating his approach, Isamu Noguchi: Sculpture of Space presents twenty-two projects including the United Nations Playground, New York’s Riverside Drive Playground, California Scenario in Costa Mesa, CA and Tengoku for Sogetsu Flower Arranging School in Tokyo.