Isamu Noguchi

Monday, July 14, 2008



There's an interesting an article down at the International Herald Tribune on Asian American artist Isamu Noguchi and his work with Akari lights and his upcoming exhibition opening Friday at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park:

As fathers go, Yonejiró Noguchi was lousy. Abandoning his mistress and their unborn baby in America was bad enough, but he rejected them again two years later when they came to see him in Japan. The son grew up to become a gifted sculptor, but his father banned him from returning to Japan under his name.

Isamu Noguchi went anyway, and his father eventually agreed to meet him, albeit grudgingly. The struggle to balance his American roots and Japanese heritage haunted Noguchi's life. It also pervaded his work as an artist, furniture designer, ceramicist, theater designer and landscape architect from the start of his career in 1927 when he assisted the sculptor Constantin Brancusi in Paris, until his death in New York in 1988.
Read the full article here.