Zoma's Essay #3: Isamu Noguchi

The Noguchi museum is unique, in the sense that it displays permanently the work of one artist: Isamu Noguchi.  Tom Sachs another artist has been associated, but the museum was entirely dedicated to Noguchi. Noguchi was born from an American mother and a Japanese father. He can be considered as a self-made person, for having started at the age of fourteen to live by himself, far away from his parents. He may also be considered at a certain point as an improvised artist, for having started studies in medicine, and suddenly shifted to fulfill a career as an artist. The hybrid root of Noguchi, and also his trips in many countries have modeled his view of art. We will study two works of Noguchi, and also make comparison between them.
  

Noguchi’s work titled "To Intrude on Nature's Way" is a sculpture. It is half-carved from a piece of basalt. Many of the artist's work used the same technic. This concept stemmed from Noguchi’s hybrid roots Japanese and American. The uncarved part of the stone illustrates Japanese culture where the stone is in its natural form, symbolizing the attachment to pure nature. The carved part of the artwork represents the west civilization, characterized by its transformation of nature, its industrialization. However, if the artist is contrasting the two cultures, he does believe by representing them together in one piece that their mixing would be very productive. By this work, Noguchi also affirms his hybrid identify. The style of the work appears first to be non-representational. But the instructor has compared this work to another work of the artist, that was a stunning realistic sculptural portray made by the Artist. There were quite similitudes between both works, as they are both picturing a human body, a female body. Therefore, we would qualify the work as abstract, representing a female body in a very distorted way. We also learned something very important in the comparison, because we used to believe that artists who make abstract or non-representational woks had difficulties making representational works. So, we were very surprised that the artist with his ability of doing such realistic artwork abandoned this style in order to make non-representational and abstract artworks.  

"To Intrude on Nature's Way" as representing a female body, the sculpture was cut horizontally in three pieces as to show the three parts of the human body: the head, the thorax and the legs. The back of the sculpture is carved as to represent the back of the body. There is also a base would be the feet. The color is in the uncarved parts yellow, and black in the carved parts. The texture is rough. The positive space is the sculpture and its base included as part of the sculpture, and the negative space is the space around. We can interpret this by the view of the artist presenting the Eastern and the western cultures as center of a world gravitating around them, and emphasizing the necessity of unifying them to anticipate the future.

The second artwork is "The well". It is a variation of a Tsukubai that is a Japanese washbasin for purification. Like the previous artwork "To Intrude on Nature's Way", “The Well” is a sculpture carved in a piece of basalt. But in this work, the artist seems to have done a much finest work. Many parts are carved and there is stunning duality in the texture. Even though, we can see some rough areas in the piece, the whole thing looks very shiny due to the smooth falling water on the piece. This smooth, shiny and reflecting artwork gives the sensation of peace and tranquility to the observer. The artist was able to convey the idea of purity present in the Tsukubai that is a washbasin to purify those accessing a tea ceremony or holy places. Another aspect in the texture compare to the previous work can be seen in the symbol of roughness and the impurity of the human body in the previous work, in comparison to the smoothness and purity of the water that is used to clean the body and make it pure. 

In this work "The Well", Noguchi included a fourth dimension that is the movement and dynamism of the piece given by the falling water. It is also a sign of life. This artwork "has life". It is a “living artwork" and the viewer has this sensation. As also another major difference compare to previous work, Noguchi has chosen to place "The well" in the garden. Here, the symbol is tremendously great. The negative space of this artwork is the garden, as the natural surroundings of a river is the forest. In this work, the artist, also like the previous work, illustrates the duality between East and West. The roughness of the stone, and the purity of the water represent the East, whereas the shininess of the carved areas represent the West viewed as a transformer and a modeler.

In the general work of the artist, we see that the artist is a multiculturalist artist trying to conciliate eastern and western cultures which he comes from both, and views their reconciliation as a radiant horizon for the future. The artist also used non-representational and abstract art to convey his ideas, and he might see in this style of art the best way to express his basic ideas and sentiments, but also his deep feelings that himself barely apprehends. Noguchi is also a designer, engineer who through all his works, has broken the barriers and borders between those disciplines.