Exhibition: Isamu Noguchi

Noguchi's Hiroshima Peace park Design

For Isamu Noguchi, his sculpture was a way of coming to terms with who he was. Born to an American mother and a Japanese father who shunned him, he nevertheless rejected his American identity and tried to become Japanese. However, when his design for the Hiroshima Peace Park was rejected on the grounds that he was a foreigner, Noguchi accepted his ambiguous status and thereafter spent most of his time in the USA.

While many see a "Zen" influence in his sculptures, his most direct artistic influences were European minimalists like the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. The show includes 73 works, most of which are sculptures, but also includes examples of stage and set design commissioned by the experimental dancer Martha Graham. The main theme of the exhibition explores how Noguchi's abstract sculptures were indirectly inspired by Japanese, Christian, and Greek myths, like the tale of Chronos.

"Isamu Noguchi: Connecting the World through Sculpture," Yokohama Museum of Modern Art, April 15 to June 25, 2006.
Japanzine
April, 2006