Seattle Times, June 5, 2005
Visual Arts
Noguchi: Artist without a country has a place in Seattle
By Sheila Farr, Seattle Times art critic

The late artist Isamu Noguchi saw himself as a man without a country. With a Japanese father and an American mother, Noguchi was born in Los Angeles in 1904 and raised in both nations, but he never fit completely into the culture of either place. Until his death in 1988, he remained a restless world traveler, obsessive creator, meticulous craftsman and renowned womanizer, who once got chased from Frida Kahlo's bed at gunpoint by her enraged husband, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (no slouch himself when it came to seduction).

Noguchi took risks as an artist, too. Known primarily as a stone sculptor, he also applied his skills to landscape and furniture design, functional ceramics, dance sets and photography.

The particular blend of classical Japanese aesthetics and Modernism that characterizes Noguchi's art has always struck a chord here in the Northwest, perhaps because of our long-standing affinity with Asian art and design. Seattle boasts two outdoor sculptures by Noguchi: "Black Sun" at Volunteer Park and "Landscape of Time" at the Federal Building at Second Avenue and Marion Street downtown. Another major Noguchi, the looming black steel "Skyviewing Sculpture" stands on the campus of Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Yet oddly, until now, no Seattle museum has hosted a Noguchi exhibition. Organized to honor the centennial of the artist's birth, "Isamu Noguchi — Sculptural Design" opens Thursday at the Seattle Art Museum, a welcome addition to SAM's lineup as it heads into the final months before closing for expansion in January.

The show debuted last year at Vitra Design Museum in Germany in collaboration with the Isamu Noguchi Foundation of New York. The exhibition should play well in Seattle, given the region's admiration for Noguchi as well as the current raging popularity for mid-20th century design.

The show holds another attraction, too: The presentation was conceived and designed by renowned multimedia artist and theatrical designer Robert Wilson, known for such groundbreaking productions as "Einstein at the Beach," a collaboration with composer Philip Glass.

The apprenticeship

Early in Noguchi's career, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled to Paris, where he apprenticed with renowned sculptor Constantin Brancusi. Brancusi's distilled abstractions were so mesmerizing to the younger artist that he modeled his Paris studio after Brancusi's and for many years much of his sculpture ended up resembling the older artist's as well.

Seattle art dealer Bryan Ohno, who assembled two Noguchi exhibits at his Pioneer Square gallery, recounts a telling story about how, as a young art student he tracked down Noguchi and begged to be taken on as an apprentice. Noguchi refused.

"I said you apprenticed with Brancusi, so you should take me," Ohno recalls. "He said it took him 20 years to break free of Brancusi and do his own work." Noguchi told Ohno it was more important for young artists to work with master craftsmen and absorb technique, as he himself had done, learning woodworking, ceramics and stone-cutting from artisans in Japan.

Noguchi started out by sculpting portraits of famous people and wealthy art collectors. In the 1920s, Martha Graham commissioned a portrait bust of herself from the young Noguchi. In 1935, she asked him to design a stage set for her dance "Frontier." Noguchi saw the commission as a challenge, a way to expand his ideas about sculpture to include the broader space of the theater and the way the audience interacts with it. "I used a rope, nothing else," the artist is quoted in his biography by Masayo Duus. "It's not the rope that is the sculpture, but it is the space which it creates that is the sculpture."

From the almost mystical design of that first set, Noguchi went on the create the set for Graham's masterpiece "Appalachian Spring" — a design he described as "like Shaker furniture" — as well as a number of others.

Part of Noguchi's motivation to work in the field of design was financial. With no other means of support except his sculpture and occasional grants, Noguchi was glad to try his hand at more commercial projects. He designed a coffee table for furniture designer Robsjohn Gibbings but never heard back on the project, his biography states. When he discovered that the table was being marketed without his approval, Noguchi was miffed. He promptly designed another table for the Herman Miller Furniture Company that sold well and helped relieve the artist's concerns about money.

Art, war and love

Oddly, it was World War II and the conflict between Noguchi's two homelands — not to mention a love affair with the beautiful young niece of Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru — that finally brought him into his own as a sculptor. In the early days of the war, Noguchi won a competition to create a bas-relief sculpture at the entrance to the Associated Press building in Rockefeller Center that brought him some long-sought critical acclaim. "News," Noguchi's nine-ton stainless steel casting of simplified figures working with typewriter, camera, telephone and notepad, won praise in The New York Times when it was unveiled in 1940.

For a while, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Noguchi put aside his own work. Inspired by a desire to support the United States and show solidarity with his fellow Japanese Americans, Noguchi voluntarily entered the internment camp at Poston, Ariz., where he hoped to start an arts and crafts cooperative. He was quickly disillusioned. The sophisticated artist soon learned he was an outsider among the Japanese Americans interned at Poston, too. In the midst of mostly farmers with little interest in art or politics, Noguchi despaired. When he finally was able to gain his release, he returned to his New York studio. He was stunned when the FBI, convinced that Noguchi was a spy, ordered him deported. The American Civil Liberties Union stepped in to defend him and the deportation order was eventually reversed.

Meanwhile, Noguchi met and fell for the young beauty Nayantara Pandit, in New York as a student. Noguchi, truly smitten, was in the midst of his affair with her during the creation of his pink marble sculpture "Kouros" (Greek for young man) assembled of carved and notched pieces of stone. The new style he was trying out was based in part on Asian calligraphy, he said. Its title referenced the classical Greek kouros sculptural form, but was informed by contemporary abstractions by émigré artists, including his friend Arshile Gorky.

Symbol of freedom

In 1946, the 9-foot-tall sculpture was included in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition "Fourteen Americans," along with works by Mark Tobey, Gorky, Robert Motherwell and David Hare, among others. A breakthrough for Noguchi, "Kouros" was the hit of the show and an eight-page feature in Art News described him as "one of America's most distinguished yet least-known artists." Noguchi explained to one critic that cold abstraction in art didn't interest him. "It has to recall something which moves a person — a recollection, a recognition of his loneliness, or tragedy, whatever it is at the root of his recollection." In the sculpture portion of the SAM exhibition, you will see examples of Noguchi's stone-work, melding organic and geometric forms, smooth and rough surfaces, classical Japanese and Modernist principles. That's what characterizes Noguchi's style, Ohno said. "I think the duality issue was constant in his work."

Noguchi quickly became a celebrity in Japan, too. "He had a great impact on a lot of artists right after World War II," Ohno said. "He almost has more of a cult figure stature in Japan than in this country. When those young artists after the war were trying to find a voice, Noguchi gave them a lot of confidence. Noguchi lived the free lifestyle that every Japanese artist wanted but couldn't attain. They were trapped by rules, trapped by tradition. He was the symbol of freedom in that regard. The roots of his influence really began at that time and continue to this day."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2002297759_noguchi05.html

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infoZine, Friday, June 03, 2005
Traditions of Asia Collide with Contemporary Art in Past in Reverse Exhibition
On view through August 28 at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Kansas City, Mo. - infoZine - The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art will highlight the innovative ways Asia's contemporary artists incorporate cultural histories and age-old techniques into their artwork when it presents Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia, on view June 3 - August 28, 2005. Past meets present in a diverse range of works by more than twenty contemporary Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean artists and artist groups in this exhibition, which includes paintings, sculpture, photography, installation works, video, and digital media. Museum admission and parking are free.

Past in Reverse will open with a public reception, 5:30-7:30 p.m., Friday, June 3 at the Kemper Museum. In addition to the reception, which is free and open to everyone, the public is also invited to participate in a variety of other educational activities planned in conjunction with the exhibition; see pages threefive for details.

[image] Cai Guo-Qiang, Painting Chinese Landscape Painting, Digital rendering of proposal for Miramar Air Show day program, Performed October 15, 2004, Six T-34 skywriting propeller planes, Courtesy of the artist
Past in Reverse is a rich overview of how artists combine ancient techniques and expressions with new technologies to reveal the viability of incorporating longstanding traditions into contemporary art, honoring their respective cultural and artistic heritages in an increasingly globalized world. These artists explore conceptual and aesthetic principles that are rooted in the arts and culture of their particular regions. For example, Cai Guo-Qiang uses imagery from traditional Chinese landscape painting (a mountain, a long, tumbling waterfall) to create a skywriting drawing during an air show in California, an event that is documented in a video in the exhibition. In Game Series: Plant Contest (2000), photographer Cao Fei adds a modern advertising sensibility to her image of women reenacting the ancient Chinese pastime of composing poems in homage to flowers they have picked.

A fully illustrated, 184-page soft-cover catalogue featuring an introductory essay by the exhibition's curator, Betti-Sue Hertz, accompanies Past in Reverse. The handsome catalogue includes four other scholarly essays by an international team of noted experts: Taehi Kang (South Korea), Li Xianting (China), Midori Matsui (Japan), and Zhang Zhaohui (China). Full-color illustrations of works in the exhibition, extended entries devoted to each artist, a checklist, and biographies of the artists and essayists are also included in the catalogue. It sells for $35.00, and is available in the Museum Shop or via the Web site at www.kemperart.org.

Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia was organized by the San Diego Museum of Art, and major support was provided by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation.

Exhibition artists and artist groups
Ryoko Aoki (born 1973, Japanese, lives in Kyoto)
Yiso Bahc (19572004, South Korean)
Cai Guo-Qiang (born 1957, Chinese, lives in New York)
Cao Fei (born 1978, Chinese, lives in Guangzhou)
Flyingcity Urbanism Research Group (South Korean, formed 2000, live in Seoul)
Hiroshi Fuji (born 1960, Japanese, lives in Fukuoka)
G8 Public Relations and Art Consultation Corporations (formed 2002,Taiwanese, live in Taipei)
Hung Yi (born 1970, Taiwanese, lives in Taichung)
Hee-Jeong Jang (born 1969, South Korean, lives in Seoul)
Soun-gui Kim (born 1946, Korean, lives in Paris)
Kim Young Jin (born 1961, South Korean, lives in Seoul)
Leung Mee Ping (born 1961, Chinese, lives in Hong Kong)
Michael Lin (born 1964, Japanese, lives in Paris)
Mitsushima Takayuki (born 1954, Japanese, lives in Kyoto)
Shao Yinong and Muchen (born 1961 and 1970 respectively, Chinese, live in Beijing)
Wilson Shieh (born 1970, Chinese, lives in Hong Kong)
Wang Jianwei (born 1958, Chinese, lives in Beijing)
Wang Qingsong (born 1966, Chinese, lives in Beijing)
Yang Fudong (born 1971, Chinese, lives in Shanghai)
Yangjiang Calligraphy Group (formed 2002, Chinese, live in Yangjiang)
Shizuka Yokomizo (born 1966, Japanese, lives in London)

http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/8186/

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The Daily Yomiuri, June 2, 2005
How photography turned into art
Robert Reed / Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Ten years have passed since the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography opened at the Ebisu Garden Place as the first comprehensive museum in Japan dedicated to the art of photography. In these 10 years the museum has brought us a number of memorable exhibitions on a wide range of themes. However, the quality of these themed exhibitions are only half of what makes a good comprehensive museum. The other half is the quality of its permanent collection.

Unlike with the many museums that divide their gallery space between rotating displays of their permanent collection and themed exhibitions, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography has given the viewing public few opportunities to see how its collection has been growing over the past decade--until now.

This year the museum is putting its permanent collection on full display in a four-part exhibition series titled 10th Anniversary Commemorative Exhibition--How Photography Changed People's Viewpoint that started in April and will continue until early November. The first part, titled Origins, explored the beginnings of photography and the early photographic images created in Japan after the first cameras arrived in 1848 and foreign and domestic image-seekers began to record the closing years of the Tokugawa reign.

Last Saturday saw the opening of part two. Its theme is Creation--The Opening of the Modern Age and it spans a period from around 1880 to the 1940s. Although the debate about whether photography can be considered art or not has continued throughout most of its history, it is interesting to note how quickly the photographers themselves got over the sheer wonder of the new technology's ability to record images and began pursuing its artistic potential.

Because the camera obscura had been a tool of artists since the Renaissance, it was natural that artists should begin to explore the image-making possibilities of the early cameras, and that some of them would become absorbed in that pursuit. In fact, it was only about a decade after the invention of what we now call photography that the first photography societies were formed in France and Britain in the early 1850s--both of which still exist today--and it was as early as 1859 that a photography section was established in the prestigious Paris Salon art exhibitions.

As researcher Satomi Fujimura notes in her essay for the book that serves as the catalog for the latest exhibition, the photography display at the Salon did not really represent an acceptance of photography as art, but certainly fueled the debate.

Angered by the fact that the Salon organizers had chosen to set up the small photography display in a corner apart from the paintings, the photographer and caricature artist Nadar wrote an article criticizing the art world for failing to recognize its debt to photography.

Highlighted in the first section of the Creation exhibition is the early "art photography" movement known in Britain as Pictorialism. Here, a large work by Henry Peach Robinson catches the eye with its unnatural lighting and composition. In a complete reverse of the practice of painters using photographs as an aid in composing paintings, Robinson would first do a painting to plan his photo. Then he would take separate photographs of suitable figures, props and backgrounds and paste them together. After touching up the edges he would then photograph the collage to create the finished image.

While Robinson's is certainly an extreme case, there is an undeniable artificiality to the photographs of this era, which is due in part to technological limitations such as slow shutter speeds that forced photographers to literally pose their subjects like statues. Nonetheless, photographers like Peter Henry Emerson of the Naturalist movement succeeded in creating impressive rural scenes reminiscent of works by naturalist painters like Millet. A computer monitor in this gallery, and several more in other parts of the show, offer an additional archive of works of the period to flip through.

Improvements in cameras and films eventually helped remove the posed quality of early photographs and created the potential for new, and this time uniquely photographic, developments in photography as a genuinely artistic medium.

One of the leaders of the break from pictorialism was an American of German descent who had studied photography in Berlin and London before returning to New York. Soon after his return to New York, Alfred Stieglitz founded the "Photo Secession" movement with photographers including Edward Steichen and started publishing the group's photographs in a series of publications.

By the time Paul Strand began showing his photographs at Stieglitz's "291" gallery, a new style of "social documentary" photography was taking root. In this section of the show the break from Pictorialism is illustrated in now famous works like Stieglitz's The Steerage (1907), Steichen's Rodin The Thinker (ca 1905) and Stand's Blind Woman. Students of photography have surely seen these works reproduced in books, but this is a chance to see original prints from the museum's collection.

One of the focuses of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography's collection is Japanese photography, and the third gallery of this exhibition explores early Japanese Pictorialism in works from the first three decades of the 20th century.

The next section of the show explores the technological development of photography in the 1930s with the advent of strobe lighting that made possible shutter speeds the equivalent of a millionth of a second. This period also saw cameras adapted to microscopic photography for the first time.

But it is surely the last galleries of the exhibition that will delight photography lovers the most. Here you will see original prints of some of the most famous photographs of the 20th century by European artists including Jean Eugene Auguste Atget, Brassai, Henri Cartier-Bresson and August Sander, and by Americans including Man Ray and "f64" group members Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and Ansel Adams. Another section is dedicated to the Japanese art photography movement of the 1930s, centered on publications like Koga and Photo Times.

In the final section of the show devoted to Japanese photographers there may be some new discoveries for many visitors, like the works of Kiyoshi Koishi and the striking photo collection titled Hikari that is viewable on a computer monitor.

The third part of the 10th-anniversary exhibition will begin on July 23. Titled Reconstruction, it will focus on the work of 12 photographers who lived through World War II in the Pacific theater as a means of exploring the social role of photography in the 20th century.

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How photography Changed People's Viewpoint--Part 2: Creation

Through July 18, 2005. Open: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. (until 8 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays). Closed Mondays except July 18.

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, a seven-minute walk from JR Ebisu Station in Ebisu Garden Place.
www.syabi.com

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/newse/20050602woaa.htm

 

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Matthias Arnold
(Art-Eastasia list)

http://www.chinaresource.org
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