Essay #3

                Visiting Noguchi Museum was awesome. It wasn’t an ordinary museum that I thought of. Most museums that I went in New York was crowded, filled with many exhibitions of other artists, with strong system of security. In this museum, we were able to look at Noguchi’s work as close as we want and feel the atmosphere (negative space) around the sculpture of his work. Most of the Noguchi’s work was a sculpture and it was based on an abstract art. As I walked around the museum, I like the way how museum only had the exhibitions of his work and few works of Tom Sachs who is related to Noguchi. That way, I was able to focus on Noguchi’s values of art.

                In the beginning of tour in the museum, the tour guide began talking about Noguchi's parents to describe the background of Noguchi. Noguchi is an artist who is half American and half Japanese. He went to Japan with his mother to find his father but Noguchi was rejected by his father that he is his son. The interesting part is that, even though he was rejected by his father who is a Japanese men, Noguchi didn’t deny the fact that part of his gene is from Japan. In his sculptures, you can find the combination of eastern and western which is based on his identity.

 First work that I saw in the museum was Two Intrude on Nature’s Way. It was his late work made by basalt material. It is heavy and dense. This sculpture have two opposites. One part is almost flat and the behind of the sculpture is caved in. What was interesting about this sculpture is that it is divided into 3 sections and when you compare it with his first figurative abstractive work, you can actually see the similarity from the outline. This sculpture also shows the combination of Eastern and Western feature. One part of the stone is shows a natural looking stone which isn’t carved at all. This shows the Eastern practice of leaving the natural things as it is and the Western practice of carving whatever it is and making it into some different form. This way, the part where it’s not touched is has a rough texture and the part where it is carved have a smooth texture.

                At the outdoor of the museum, we looked at a sculpture called well. It is a well that water flows from the top to bottom. This sculpture also had a two different side. It had very smooth texture and on the other hand, it also had rough texture of the stone. It had parts where it’s not touched and also where it was carved artificially. Noguchi carved the stone and put the initial of his name. On the top of this sculpture, there was symmetrical shapes of square which have a sharp edges and a circle that is round. What was interesting about this sculpture is that it had a movement of water and it is pumped up inside the sculpture and we can see the water flowing down outside from the sculpture.

               

 Noguchi has went to lots of trips around the world. He made the sculpture as he went to the trips. Some pieces are combined from other place with the pieces in the United States. One of his work for example is Fudo. Fudo means guardian of Buddha. This sculpture is made with a stone from Japan and he carved it. Then he took the stone to the United States and put the metal as a base which integrates the two.