The Noguchi Museum

Isamu Noguchi

On My 18th, our class had the great opportunity to go visit the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, Queens. This museum is unique for being the only one in the country dedicated to one artist, the Japanese-American  designer, artist, engineer, Isamu Noguchi.

However, in the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the museum for the first time ever a guest artist has been invited to temporarily exhibit in the museum. The elected artist was Tom Sachs. The reason they picked him is because his work is similar to Noguchi's. They both like to mix Japanese and Western cultures.

Noguchi had a Japanese father and an American mother. He got rejected by his dad who was ashamed of having a child with a western woman. He lived everywhere and said that he felt at home anywhere because he never really had a home. It is  probably the reason he mixes Japanese and Western culture so much and also the contrast between rough and smooth. 

Noguchi died in 1985 at the age of 84-year-old. There is a Noguchi Museum in Japan as well, half of his ashes are in the New York City Museum and the other half in the Japanese one.

I enjoyed this museum more than I would have ever imagine. I had a very zen feeling all along the visit. I loved the purity and the simplicity in the rooms. It grew my interest for the Japanese culture and on a funny note I felt like Noguchi pretty much invented Ikea ( probably Ikea got really inspired by the artist) The Sachs part of the museum was not my favorite as I was not really feeling all the satanic references in his work.

Sculptures Analysis

Here is a sculpture from Isamu Noguchi. It is a 3D metal and free standing work. As I did not see any trace of welding, I assume that it could have been formed by casting. The work is additive and subtractive as we can see that some part have been cut out, or carved, to show off an inside part of the sculpture.

It is abstract with a geometrical shape. The texture is smooth with a stripes pattern on each triangle pattern.The positive shape is the metallic part, while the negative space is the cut out triangles and the 

empty space around the inside pyramid. 

This sculpture was realized by Tom Sachs. It is a representational abstract, free standing and additive work. It also is an ensemble. He collected different objects from the everyday life such as Q-tips and tampons and assembled them all to recreate a Japanese tree. For some parts he welded, some he nailed, some he glued, he used all kinds of methods to join the materials. The "tree" is the positive space and everything around is the negative space. The sculpture has an organic shape (tree-like shape). The texture is a mix of smooth and rough, depending on the object used under the layer of golden material. 

The Socrates Sculptures Park

To end this post, I will share the picture I took in the entrance of the Socrates Sculptures Park. I thought it was beautiful and reminded Noguchi's spirit with the contrast between cultures and textures...