Viewing page 68 of 100

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Art: Japan Influences Noguchi Work;

By CARLYLE BURROWS

The sources of refreshment in the work of an artist are many, but none is more valuable perhaps than the effect of a change of scene. Some of the most intensely individual of our artists are now reporting frequently from foreign lands, notably from Italy and from France; but the newest revitalized is the artist just now represented at the Stable Gallery where Isamu Noguchi is showing his work done in Japan during a two years' stay from 1950 to '52.
  
It would require much description to embrace this new work in terra cotta and ceramic. There is a wide diversity of objects, from articles reflecting his work as an industrial designer, to sculpture as creative and imaginative as any he has conceived in the past but fresh, new and stimulating. Range is from small, figurative forms of life through objects of native daily use, such as adaptations of receptacles and furniture, to what may be, in the long run, the epitome of primitive life such as the totem pole. In one of the latter, and most challenging of the exhibits the full creative power of the artist is surely brought to bear upon an attractively dramatic, columnar object.
 
Noguchi's ceramic phase began with his recent visit to Japan where he took up his residence in a remote village near Kamakura at a studio and kiln lately vacated by a noted ceramic artist One of the rather wonderful aspects involved in this work is the several uses made of traditionally noted clays for fired objects of high durability that are of bronze or neutral color and refined but of still dullish texture. On one hand stands the provocatively shaped geometrical form of receptacles, stuck in their different openings with trailing sprigs of bush or vine. And with these vase-like objects are fanciful masks and figures, whose springing thoughtfully from life suggests the ever challenging human experience. The new sculpture style, if such it is, thus draws much from the Oriental environment for theme and for content; more than that, it releases warm and witty moods of creative fantasy peculiarly Japanese. 

[[photo]]
Ceramic sculpture, "Centipede," by Isamu Noguchi (above), at the Stable Gallery,