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ISAMU NOGUCHI

"Isamu Noguchi shows ceramics made in Japan during the summer and fall of 1952 along with sculpture that has been seen before--stone and wood carvings made in this country. This makes it possible by comparison to assess the growing Japanese influence on his work which to this looks like a happy one. For one thing, working directly as he did (except for some hanging wall sculpture of gray cast-iron) and working with Japanese clays in the regions where they are found, the vases, plates or figures have the spontaneous and improvisational character of sketches. He has had to work fast and second thoughts were ruled out. For a nother thing, he seems to have gotten away from the Western artist's concern about theplace in the world of what he makes. His objects are his surrou dings quite literally. ....He says of things that could be considered flat dishes 'sculpture may lie down .' The vases do not have to have water in them, they do not have to contain grasses or flowers. There are ffogs and centipedes and Japanese figures expressed in the terms required by the language of curved sheets of clay, that have an ease, grace and appreciation and respect for the earth, for the mineral as well as the animal and the human world that this reviewer has not seen in modern Western ceramic art, including Picasso. All the careful calculation that was needed in his stone carving has urned into something that, because it includes and admits and loves actuality instead of an ideal, has an elegance that is of the sort that is looked for in what passes for perfection...." Fairfield Porter, "Art News" Dec., 1954