First Major Exhibition of Rarely Seen Ceramic Works by Isamu Noguchi to Open In Only West Coast Venue, The Japanese American National Museum

A major survey of postwar Japanese ceramic art focusing on the work of Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) and his Japanese contemporaries opens at its only west coast venue, the Japanese American National Museum, on February 7, 2004. Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics is a landmark traveling exhibition organized by the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, and is the first major museum presentation of Noguchi’s ceramics in the U.S. Timed to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth, the exhibition is the first of three presentations over the next four years by the Japanese American National Museum on Noguchi, his art, and his experience as a Japanese American.

“We are pleased to join the Sackler Gallery and the Japan Society in presenting Noguchi’s very powerful, but rarely seen, work in ceramics,” says Irene Hirano, President and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum. “We look forward to the opportunity Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics provides to celebrate the artist’s life and to explore issues of cultural identity—a subject that has particular resonance in a country as diverse as the U.S.”

Internationally recognized as an innovative and influential force in the history of modern sculpture and design, Noguchi is best known for his stone and metal sculpture, furniture design, Akari paper lamps, public gardens, and outdoor installations. During three short visits to Japan, however, in 1931, 1950, and 1952, the artist produced a radical and original body of ceramic sculpture that established an important new direction for Japanese ceramics and dramatically transformed the landscape of international modernism. Noguchi’s visits to Japan proved to be especially intense and creative periods, when he exchanged new and innovative ideas with some of Japan’s most prominent postwar ceramic artists, exploring issues of personal and national identity and ways in which the ceramic traditions of the past could inform and inspire contemporary work.

“Isamu Noguchi is the most significant Japanese American artist of the twentieth century,” says Karin Higa, Director of Curatorial and Exhibitions and Senior Curator of Art for the Japanese American National Museum. “This is a wonderful opportunity for the public to experience this lesser known body of work by Noguchi, as well as that of some of Noguchi’s Japanese contemporaries, and to see the interplay of traditional Japanese ceramics with Noguchi’s own twentieth-century sensibilities.”

This exhibition brings together 36 examples of Noguchi’s ceramic art and 38 pieces by nine of his Japanese peers, who worked in both traditional and avant-garde styles. Among the works by Noguchi—few of which have been exhibited in the United States since 1954—is an early portrait bust, as well as representational and abstract sculpture and functional vessels. The Japanese works include vessels by Kitaoji Rosanjin (1883–1959) and Kawai Kanjiro (1890–1966); tea ceremony utensils by Kaneshige Toyo (1896–1967) and Arakawa Toyozo (1894–1985); sculpture by Tsuji Shindo (1910–1981) and Okamoto Taro (1911–1996); and abstract sculptural ceramics created by Yagi Kazuo (1918–1979), Yamada Hikaru (1924–2001) and Suzuki Osamu (1926–2001).

Among the masterpieces of Noguchi’s lifetime oeuvre featured in the exhibition is the large sculpture War (1952), which recalls the traditional Japanese helmet shape and expresses Noguchi’s innovative interpretation of signs and symbols in Japanese culture, and My Mu (1950) gives the Zen concept of nothingness (mu) a highly modernist form that presages much of Noguchi’s later work in stone.

Organized by the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics includes loans from the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the National Museums of Modern Art in Tokyo and Kyoto, as well as other museums and private collections in both Japan and the United States.

Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics was organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. It was made possible by grants from the Feinberg Foundation, Sachiko Kuno, Ryuji Ueno and the S&R Foundation, Masako and James Shinn, H. Christopher Luce, and other generous donors. The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Transportation assistance is provided through the generosity of All Nippon Airways. The exhibition is endorsed by the Japan Foundation. Organizational assistance is provided by The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.

The presentation of this exhibition and related programs at the Japanese American National Museum is generously supported by Fujima Kansuma; the Los Angeles County Arts Commission; City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department; Bank of America; Gordon Yamate and Deborah Shiba, D.D.S.; Mariko Gordon/Daruma Asset Management, New York; Frank L. Ellsworth and Kirstin Ellsworth. Local media sponsors are KSCI-TV and The Rafu Shimpo.

ISAMU NOGUCHI

Isamu Noguchi was born on November 17, 1904, in Los Angeles, the son of Japanese poet Yone Noguchi and American writer Leonie Gilmour, who separated soon after his birth. Throughout his life, Noguchi felt caught between, and simultaneously drawn to, two very different cultures. He spent his early childhood in Japan before returning to the United States where he trained as a sculptor in New York. A Guggenheim traveling fellowship enabled him to work in Paris with renowned sculptor Constantin Brancusi, and to travel throughout Asia between 1927 and 1931. In China, Noguchi was intrigued by Tang dynasty terra-cotta figurines, while in Japan he drew inspiration from unglazed prehistoric clay tomb sculptures known as haniwa. These encounters left a lasting impression on Noguchi, who would later describe his experience as “my close embrace of the earth…a seeking after identity with some primal matter beyond personalities and possessions.”

As an artist, Noguchi was drawn to clay—a medium used in Japanese art since prehistory and one that could be worked quickly and expressively to reveal informal, spontaneous, and humorous qualities not visible in less flexible media such as bronze or stone. Noguchi, like other artists in his time, found that clay was a natural medium through which he could interpret and react to the struggle between tradition and modernity in postwar Japan.

“Noguchi’s knowledge of Euro-American traditions of modern sculpture, and his experience working with stone, metal, and wood, informed his use of various Japanese clays,” says Sackler curator of ceramics Louise Allison Cort. “But his ceramic work in Japan also reflects his investigation of Japanese cultural themes. Through clay, Noguchi found a way to explore the Japanese dimension of his dual cultural identity.”

By the time Noguchi returned to Japan in 1950, he had become a sculptor and designer of international renown. Asked to hold an exhibition, but unable to ship existing objects from America in time, Noguchi was invited by his friend and fellow artist Kitagawa Tamiji (1894–1989) to work at a ceramic facility in Seto where he spent a week of intense labor, producing more than 20 vessels and sculptures including Journey, My Mu, and The Policeman (all 1950), which are on view in the ceramics exhibition. Japanese viewers were startled by Noguchi's daring and experimental departure from the vessel forms of traditional ceramics.

Late in 1951, he began another extended visit to Japan, staying near the city of Kamakura as a guest of the well-known traditionalist potter, Kitaoji Rosanjin, who is represented in the show by such important works as Shigaraki Large Jar (1957) and Basket-shaped Vase (1951). Noguchi spent an exceptionally creative, yearlong period at Rosanjin’s, during which time he became absorbed in what he described as the “uniquely coarse Japanese earth.” He adopted the materials used by Rosanjin and two potters later designated Living National Treasures, Kaneshige Toyo and Arakawa Toyozo, who breathed new life into the time-honored clays and glazes of Japan’s regional kilns. The works Noguchi created during this time reflected his immersion in many aspects of Japanese culture including its craft traditions, Zen Buddhism, haiku, and the aesthetics of the tea ceremony, as well as ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement.

Inspired by Teshigahara Sofu (1900–1979), founding director of Tokyo’s vanguard Sogetsu school of ikebana, Noguchi made ceramic sculptures that also could function as vases for avant-garde ikebana by Teshigahara, such as Lonely Tower and War, both on view in the exhibition, which were featured in his solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura in 1952.

Noguchi’s 1952 exhibition inspired a number of young Japanese potters to push the boundaries of classic Asian ceramic forms and utilitarian design, infusing their work with the principles of international art movements, such as Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism. Yagi Kazuo, Yamada Hikaru, and Suzuki Osamu, who had formed the avant-garde group Sodeisha (Crawling Through Mud Society) in 1948, were admirers of Paul Klee, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. “The unconventional approach to working with Japanese clay by esteemed outsider Isamu Noguchi provided a jolt of energy to help these artists move across the boundary from vessel to what the Japanese art world called objet. They led the way in redefining ceramics as a valid medium for abstract sculpture,” says Cort.

On view are works demonstrating the evolution of the Sodeisha artists’ forms, from upright, symmetrical, wheel-thrown, glazed vessels to abstract, nonfunctional works hand sculpted in unglazed Shigaraki clay. Highlighting this transformation are Yamada Hikaru’s 1958 sculpture, Work, and his 1964 Tower B, as well as Yagi Kazuo’s Mr. Samsa’s Walk (1954). Inspired by Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Yagi’s signature work features whimsical wheel-thrown cylindrical components and is considered a masterpiece of modern Japanese ceramics.

CATALOGUE

A fully illustrated 240-page book entitled Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth, accompanies the exhibition. Co-authored by Dr. Bert Winther-Tamaki, Associate Professor of Art History at University of California-Irvine and a leading authority on Noguchi, and curator Louise Allison Cort, the book also includes contributions by Niimi Ryu, Musashino Art University, Tokyo, on the Japanese cultural environment in the 1950s and Dr. Bruce Altshuler, former director of the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, on the reception of Noguchi’s ceramic work in the United States. Jointly published with the University of California Press, Berkeley, the catalogue is available in hardcover for $49.95 from Japanese American National Museum Store. The store also has an expanded selection of design objects for sale throughout the Noguchi exhibition.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Saturday, February 7, 2004
2 p.m.
“Crawling Through Mud: Avant-garde Ceramics in Post-War Japan”
Lecture by Louise Allison Cort, Curator of Ceramics, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Saturday, February 28, 2004
2 p.m.
“Isamu Noguchi: Sculpture in the Elusive Sense of Belonging”
Bert Winther-Tamaki, Associate Professor of Art History, University of California, Irvine

Saturday, April 3, 2004
11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Family Day with Clay

Saturday, May 15, 2004
11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Family Day with Clay

(additional public programs to be announced)

JAPANESE AMERICAN NATIONAL MUSEUM

The Japanese American National Museum is dedicated to fostering greater understanding and appreciation for America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by preserving and telling the stories of Americans of Japanese ancestry. Since its incorporation in 1985, the National Museum has grown into an internationally recognized institution, presenting award-winning exhibitions, groundbreaking traveling exhibits, educational public programs, innovative video documentaries and cutting-edge curriculum guides. The National Museum raised close to $60 million to renovate an historic building in 1992 and open a state-of-the-art Pavilion in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo Historic District in 1999. There are now over 50,000 members and donors representing all 50 states and 16 different countries.

GENERAL INFORMATION

The Japanese American National Museum is located at 369 East First Street in the historic Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles. For more information, call (213) 625-0414 or visit www.janm.org. Museum hours are Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Museum admission is $6 for adults, $5 for seniors and $3 for students and children. Admission is free for Museum members and children under age six. Admission is free to everyone on Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. and every third Thursday of the month from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Reservations are required for public programs. Public programs are free for Museum members or with paid admission. Metered street parking and public parking lots are conveniently located near the Museum for a nominal fee.

Guided group tours are available for this exhibition. For reservations, call (213) 830-5601 or e-mail to groupvisits@janm.org.