16
“A New Nature”,
Isamu Noguchi at The White Cube, Bermondsey, London.
Written by Gill Lawson
The White Cube gallery is a small gallery in SE London and is one of a number of galleries owned by art dealer, Jay Jopling. It is a light, airy space which showed the sculptures of Noguchi really well. Noguchi gave a talk where he encouraged his listeners to “forge a new nature from the materials of urbanisation and technology” and this is what the exhibition is based around.
Noguchi (1904-1988) was a Japanese/American artist who had a strong belief in the social influence of sculpture. He was born in America but when the anti Japanese feeling started following the Russo-Japanese war (1904), Leonie Gilmour, his mother took him to Japan where his father was. His mother encouraged his artistic and carpentry talents. He later returned to America for school and then as an apprentice to Gutzon Borglum of Mount Rushmore fame. He then took sculptor lessons with Onorio Ruotolo in New York. He was influenced by the art works and philosophy of Brancusi and moved to Paris to work in his studio.
He did portrait sculpture, design commissions, landscape design and had his first large commission in 1940 for the Associated Press building to symbolise the freedom of the press.
He became politically active after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbour and was voluntarily held in a Japanese detention camp. When he was released he set up a studio in New York where he started working in stone and exploring new materials of the time.
As well as sculpture he did stage sets for Martha Graham and collaborated in mass design of furniture and lighting some of which are still being produced today.
In 1985 he opened The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum in NewYork to display his work.
At White Cube there is a beautiful example of his mass light production Akari Cloud. These are
made in the traditional method using mulberry bark paper and bamboo. The effect of all of these lanterns hanging together is mesmerising if a little like being in a Habitat shop!
Akari Cloud
The Ceiling and Waterfall (1956-7) is a steel structure that was designed for the front of an office building in Texas. It is beautiful and enhanced by the sound of the water running down it.