Isamu Noguchi (1904 - 1988 )

Originally named Isamu Gilmour, Isamu Noguchi was born in Los Angeles in 1904 to Leonie Gilmour, an Irish-American teacher and editor, and Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet. “It is the cultural divide between his parents, between East and West, between two distinct histories of art and thought, that would engage him his entire life.”(1) In 1906 the young Noguchi moved to Japan with his mother; there he went to Japanese and Jesuit schools. During his time in Japan he gained an appreciation for landscape and architecture. He was later sent to Indiana to attend a progressive boarding school that his mother had read about.

After high school, Noguchi went on to study medicine at Columbia University and took sculpture classes on the side. He quickly decided that he was in the wrong field and that art was his true passion. Leaving for Manhattan, he found a studio where he could sculpt full-time. In New York Noguchi became acquainted with contemporary abstract sculpture and the work of the Surrealists. This eventually led him to Paris on a Guggenheim Fellowship; there he met and worked with the great modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Although he also met the sculptors Alexander Calder and Alberto Giacometti, it was Brancusi’s engagement with the abstract and his belief in understanding the pre-disposed forms of his materials that made a strong impression on Noguchi.(2)

When he returned to New York in 1929, Noguchi’s sculpted portraits earned him a new level of recognition and provided him financial support. In the 1930’s, he moved to Mexico City to help the painter Diego Rivera on a large three-dimensional mural. Although the project was not his own, he was impressed and influenced by the scale of the mural and his work in Mexico City did not go unnoticed. He was eventually given a chance to work on a large-scale project of his own – the entrance to the Associated Press Building in New York. During the Great Depression, one of his projects was a relief sculpture, “The Letter,” created on commission for the post office in Haddon Heights, New Jersey (see below).

After World War II, Noguchi returned to Japan and found a community of young artists eager to share in the optimism of his new ideas. He continued making individual sculptures but was also given the chance to do larger site-specific works such as fountains and gardens. “For Noguchi, Japan was both his past and his future, providing him with a history of craftsmanship as well as aesthetic inspiration.”(3) He returned to Japan many times throughout his life to work, study, and live.

Noguchi was a sculptor, designer, architect, and craftsman. His gardens and fountains were creations meant to bring out the true beauty of their surroundings. He thought that through sculpture and architecture, viewers could better connect themselves with nature. According to the artist, "The art of stone in a Japanese garden is that of placement. Its ideal does not deviate from that of nature... But I am also a sculptor of the West. I place my mark and do not hide."(4)

Noguchi died at the age of 84 in December 1988, but his art continues to interest artists and the public alike. He designed gardens in Paris, Jerusalem, and New York, and produced public sculpture in seventeen American cities. The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in New York City stands as an important record of his creative genius. (Mike Bencze)

(1-4) PBS American Masters web site (see link below).

The Letter

“The Letter,” 1939, cast stone relief, Haddon Heights Post Office. Photograph courtesy Fred Adelson.

Drawing for “The Letter,” 1939, Haddon Heights Post Office. Photograph courtesy National Archives & Records Administration, record group 121-GA.

Installation drawing for “The Letter,” 1939, Haddon Heights Post Office. Photograph courtesy National Archives & Records Administration, record group 121-GA.

In 1939, Noguchi received a commission from the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts to create a sculptural relief for the Haddon Heights, New Jersey Post Office. This New Deal agency provided work for thousands of artists across the country during the Great Depression. Noguchi’s relief, titled “The Letter” (shown above), is a simplified, curvilinear figure of a reclining woman.

Noguchi and other modern sculptors and painters faced fierce public resistance to the emphasis they placed on abstraction, distortion of figure, brightness of color, and looseness of brushstroke. Many of their encounters with the general public were unhappy and unproductive. Referring to Noguchi’s figure of a reclining woman, the postmaster in Haddon Heights said: “The patrons of this office are proud of the Post Office and I dislike greatly to have anything which they all seem to consider an eye sore.”(5)

Noguchi found himself a place among the pioneering generation of modern artists. He was inspired by and even worked with many American architects, choreographers, and painters. He met Buckminster Fuller and helped construct models, worked on outdoor projects, and investigated how people thrive in their environment. He also created sets for the choreographers Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, and George Ballenchine. While well respected by many artists, including Frida Kahlo, Arshille Gorky, and Willem de Kooning, his work defies categorization and he never really belonged to any movement or school. (Mike Bencze)

(5) Marlene Park and Gerald E. Markowitz, Democratic Vistas: Post Offices and Public Art in the New Deal (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1984),