1. A Broad Practice 6
2. Object to Space 18 3. Landform 42
4. Grounds for Play 72
5. Garden as Sculpture: Paris 98
6. Gardens within Bounds 118
7. Sculptures for Sculpture: Jerusalem, Houston 156
8. Water: Furor & Stillness 178
9. California Scenario: Costa Mesa 198
10. Noguchi and Japanese Aesthetics 226
11. Sculpture(d) Park: Sapporo 240
12. Mure, and Reflection 256 Notes 270
Bibliography 283
Postface & Acknowledgments 290 Index 293
While sculpture always remained central to his artistic practice, Isamu Noguchi’s (1904–1988) interests and production spanned exceptionally broad terrain, arguably more diverse in type, material, and range of scales than those of any other sculptor active in the twentieth century [1-1]. In addition to object sculptures, whose production continued throughout his lifetime, Noguchi designed stage sets for dance; plazas, courtyards, and gardens; and furniture and lamps that have enjoyed extensive and continuous production. For some critics the scope of his creative endeavors, some of them commercial, diminished their respect for Noguchi as an artist; these writers conveyed difficulty in recognizing the possibility of excelling in more than one arena, even over time.1 In his thinking Noguchi made no distinction between design, craft, and the so-called fine arts, and thus evinced values traditional to Japan. In his view ceramics, furniture and light design, theater sets, and gardens, could all be art should their aesthetic qualities sufficiently transcend those generated by the simple address of need. According to Noguchi, his Akari were not so much utilitarian objects to provide illumination as sculptures with light as their medium [1-2].
Although his gardens include several of the twentieth century’s most iconic landscape designs and have received almost universal praise, Noguchi nonetheless occupies a place removed from the normal practice of landscape architecture. He did not design landscapes whose primary mission was to address a functional program through systematic study, nor to manifest or adhere to ecological principles or social codes. As an artist Noguchi relied more on intuition, bolstered by focused study where needed, than on objective analysis, and he shaped his landscapes as sculptures employing space as their primary vehicle. Without question, Noguchi also addressed the programmatic and cultural conditions of each commission, but his rankings of these concerns often diverged from those more characteristic of the landscape architecture profession. Instead, Noguchi approached landscape design as a spatial and formal art, and from his earliest environmental projects in the 1930s to the works of his later maturity, he succeeded in conceiving and constructing a series of remarkable places. 1-1
4-24
Playscapes. Piedmont Park, Atlanta, 1976. Site plan. [ © The Noguchi Museum / ARS]
4-25
Playscapes. General view.
4-26
Playscapes.
Piedmont Park, Atlanta, 1976.
Climbing structures with spiral slide beyond.
4-27
Playscapes.
Retrieving the swings proposed for the proposed Ala Moana Playground.
5-2 [opposite]
UNESCO garden. Paris, 1958.
Cubic and conic forms on the Delegates Patio also serve as seating.
5-3
UNESCO garden. Delegates Patio.
Compositions of seating, stones, and plants. The source stone is in the rear to the right.
[following page]: 5-4
Torii Kiyostune.
Interior of a Kabuki Theater, pre-1915.
The hanamichi is on the left.
[Library of Congress]
5-5
UNESCO garden. First scheme. Model.
[ © The Noguchi Museum / ARS]
5-6
K atsura Imperial Villa. Kyoto, seventeenth century. The Ama-no-hashidate peninsula.
suggested a different concept for each area. Noguchi, as he explained, gradually became more and more involved, ever more ambitious for [the garden] to be something exceptional. In the beginning I had hoped only to integrate the two levels by raising portions of the lower one containing greenery and trees. However, as I elaborated on the model it became apparent to me that it would be ideal if the area below should be transformed into a major sculptural effort through the introduction of rocks and so forth.7
The issue, of course, was how to obtain the funding to finance the project; almost immediately he initiated a personal campaign to secure financial support from international sources with which and with whom he was acquainted. Soliciting the assistance of Contessa Pecci Blunt, Noguchi contacted potential sponsors, among them Toshikazu Kase, the Japanese ambassador to France. On 28 August 1956, the artist wrote UNESCO Cultural Division head Michel Dard, informing him that, shortly before leaving Paris I met with Mr. Sojiro Ishibashi, powerful industrialist and patron of the arts in Japan, and took him to see the model I had made. He told me that he would like to help and could possibly do so through his being an adviser to the government on such matters.8
Next followed contact with the Japanese ambassador to the United States, in which Noguchi capitalized on his father’s nationality and heritage: [UNESCO] wished from the first to have an Asian among the artists involved. I was apparently selected by an international committee of the arts partly with this in mind, a compromise, as someone whose efforts would be both modern and Japanese in feeling, which is what they wanted. A garden is, after all, a collaboration of architecture and the poetry of spaces.9
Toru Hagiwara, posted in the Japanese embassy in Bern, strongly backed the project, but suspected that certain members of the Japanese Diet—the governmental body that would ultimately finance the undertaking—would be troubled by the differences in form and character between a traditional Japanese garden and the mass and modernist character of the building.10 Despite the odds, a happy ending was forthcoming.
A February 1957 governmental memo to Akira Matsui, the Japanese represen-
6-24 Cour tyard.
Beinecke Rare Book Library. Chips and deformations along the edges enrich the form of the torus, intended by Noguchi to symbolize energy.
10-15
12-10
Stairs to upper level, above Isamu-ya (Noguchi house).
12-11
Reaching the upper level, eyes fall on the stone.
12-12
Eroded stone as sculpture. Or had it been shaped, at least in part?
