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Isamu Noguchi
Japan (1904 - 1988)
Isamu Noguchi was a prominent Japanese-American artist and landscape architect whose artistic career spanned six decades, from the 1920s onward. Known widely 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 Laszlo 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 Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in New York City.
In 1918, Noguchi was sent to the United States for schooling. He first attended Interlochen, a progressive boarding high school in Indiana. However, Noguchi only attended the school for one summer; it closed in August, and was converted into a motor truck training ground for recruits entering World War I. After a bout with Spanish flu, Noguchi found himself nearly abandoned, most of the camp's residents having left after the war's end. In December, the wife of Interlaken's director C. A. Lewis brought him to nearby Rolling Prairie to attend school. After graduation, he left with Dr. Edward Rumley, Interlaken's founder, to LaPorte, where he found boarding with a Swedenborgian pastor, Samuel Mack. Noguchi began attending La Porte High School, graduating in 1922.
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), 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 Ito helping him to meet such artists as Jules Pascin and Alexander Calder.
Noguchi returned to New York in 1937. He again began to turn out portrait busts, and after various proposals was selected for two sculptures. 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 fiancee in July 1941, eventually separating from them to go to Hollywood.
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