ISAMU NOGUCHI: A STUDY OF THE SCULPTURE.
Item
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Title
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ISAMU NOGUCHI: A STUDY OF THE SCULPTURE.
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Identifier
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AAI8319769
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identifier
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8319769
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Creator
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GROVE, NANCY E.
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Contributor
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Rosalind Krauss
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Date
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1983
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Fine Arts
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Abstract
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Isamu Noguchi is the greatest living American sculptor. During the past sixty years he has produced seven hundred studio sculptures in stone, wood, clay, metals, plastics, and mixed media, as well as hundreds of designs for lamps, furniture, interiors, plazas, playgrounds, sets, gardens, and unrealized projects. His experiments with neon and with earthworks antedate other artists' interest in those media by more than thirty years. His involvement with theater and with the articulation of large-scale public spaces has provided an ongoing example of an artist concerned with restoring sculpture to its ancestral role as an active part of daily life.;Though he has become one of the most visible, Noguchi has remained one of the least understood of artists. Critics and historians alike have had difficulty understanding his variety of materials and approaches and his ever-changing styles, as well as the meaning of his work and its extra-sculptural sources. This study is the first to address the oeuvre as a whole. It uses examples drawn from different periods, media, and modes--figural, nonfigural, and environmental--to elucidate both the profound unity of Noguchi's work and the variety of strategies he has evolved to convey his complex of archetypal meanings. Those strategies include the development of archetypal male, female, child, and family images, as well as images or archetypal forms and forces: the moon, the sun, voids, cubes, helixes, gravity, weightlessness, and energy. All these strategies come together and interact as conjunctions of horizontals, verticals, and water in his sets and environments.;The study also examines Noguchi's sources in poetry, science, and myth, beginning with his poet father and continuing with extended discussions of his relationships with Buckminster Fuller and Martha Graham. His relationship to Brancusi is also discussed, as are his connections (or lack of connections) to his artistic peers and his impact upon younger artists. It is important to understand Noguchi now, for his work, although decisively different from that of any other artist of this century, offers a humanistic alternative pointing to the future.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Art History
