ISAMU NOGUCHI (1904-1988)

Born Sam Gilmour in Los Angeles in 1904 to Leonie Gilmour, an Irish American teacher and editor, and Yone Noguchi, a Japanese poet, Isamu Noguchi was known as a sculptor, designer, architect and craftsman. He is remembered for the creation of large abstract stone sculptures as well as gardens, fountains and furniture. Yet it was conflict and contrast that marked his work, including the struggle with nature and the cultural divide between the two different worlds in which his parents existed.

In 1906, Leonie Gilmour took her son to Japan to be closer to his father. He attended Japanese and Jesuit schools and developed an appreciation for his father’s country’s landscape, architecture and craftsmanship. But, his mother later enrolled him in a progressive boarding school in Indiana as well.

Originally majoring in medicine at Columbia University, Noguchi discovered he was more interested in some sculpture classes on the Lower East Side. Dropping out of college, Noguchi began working in a studio full time and became engaged in the work of the Surrealists and with contemporary abstract sculpture. A Guggenheim Fellowship enabled him to study in Paris, where he worked with the modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi and met Alexander Calder and Alberto Giacometti.

Upon his return to New York in 1929, he made a living doing sculpted portraits, thanks to patronage of people such as composer George Gershwin. But, Noguchi yearned to follow his interest in abstract sculpture and in 1930s, moved to Mexico City to work on a three-dimensional mural with painter Diego Rivera. The size and scale of the mural was more to Noguchi’s liking and his work with Rivera led to his own commission of the Associated Press building in New York.

While 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were unconstitutionally incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II, Noguchi was not held since he lived outside the restricted area on the West Coast. In a desire to feel closer to other Japanese Americans, Noguchi voluntarily entered a camp in Arizona, where he attempted to set up an art school. However, Noguchi abandoned his project after several months and left camp after a few months.

After the war, Noguchi returned to Japan, where he discovered a community of young artists eager to seek out new directions and ideas. It was here that Noguchi gained the opportunity to work on larger site-specific pieces, including gardens and fountains. Noguchi even made an unsuccessful proposal for a Hiroshima monument. Noguchi would return to Japan constantly to study and work. In three different periods, including five months in Kyoto in 1931, one week in Seto in 1950 and several months in Kita Kamakura and briefly in Bizen in 1952, Noguchi worked on ceramics with other Japanese modern artists. It is these works that led to the development of the exhibition Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in 2003.

In the end, Noguchi worked with modern artists in a variety of fields, including architecture, choreography and painting. He collaborated with Buckminster Fuller, Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham and George Ballanchine. He passed away in December of 1988 at the age of 84. Yet his influence is still strong and his design work in furniture such as his Akari lamps and free-form coffee tables remains extremely popular today. He left a legacy of gardens in such faraway places as Paris, Jerusalem and New York and outdoor sculptures and environments in 17 different American cities.

TOYOZO ARAKAWA (1894-1985)
Arakawa only began making works of note at the age of 40. Born in Mino Province (Gifu today), his father was a farmer and the area had a tradition of making inexpensive utilitarian pottery. First working on the business side, Arakawa became manager of Tozan Miyanaga’s workshop, putting him in contact with high-quality ceramics and artists. Working with Rosanjin Kitaoji, Arakawa discovered the some famous wares had been fired in Mino, where he was from. Inspired, Arakawa established his own workshop to recreate this Mino tradition and began creating his own works. An American architect Antonin Raymond befriended Arakawa and helped sell his work in the post-war.

TOYO KANESHIGE (1896-1967)
Like Arakawa, Kaneshige only began to seriously pursue ceramics after he turned 40. Kaneshige was interested in the old Bizen tradition. He had assisted his father, who did figural sculpture, as a young man and did his own sculptures. For extra income, however, Kaneshige made clay crucibles and became interested in older Bizen storage jars. His work began reflecting this style and after the war, picked up an older style from the Fourth Century Korea, Sue ware. Kaneshige and Arakawa eventually began working together with a similar purpose.

KANJIRO KAWAI (1890-1966)
One of the Folk Craft Movement artists, Kawai was still considered an independent potter. Trained at the industrial ceramics department of Tokyo Technical College, Kawai was more of a scientist who worked on improving the quality of glaze. An early strong interest in Chinese ceramics styles made his work popular and he did one-man shows in department stores. Along with two friends, Kawai coined the term mingei, short for minshuteki kogei or “common people’s craft”. Kawai was one of the first potters to be recognized outside of Japan in 1929 and he won the grand prize at the Paris International Exhibition in 1937. In the post-war, he began connecting his work to the concerns of international sculpture and painting, including Picasso.

ROSANJIN KITAOJI (1883-1959)
Rosanjin Kitaoji acted as Noguchi’s host in Japan in 1952 and allowed him to use his studio in Kita Kamakura to make ceramics. Apprenticed as a calligrapher, Kitaoji learned ceramics from porcelain artist Seika Suda (1862-1927) and also studied cooking. Operating a members-only restaurant in Tokyo, Kitaoji made his own ceramic plates to present his cuisine. He began exhibiting his ceramics in 1928 and after falling out with his restaurant business partner, began doing pottery full time. An expert in raw materials, he traveled to the U.S. and Europe in the 1950s, where his work was popular.

TARO OKAMOTO (1897-1966)
Okamoto studied painting in Paris in the 1930s, becoming a member of the avant-garde artistic and literary circles. He also belonged to the Abstraction-Creation and surrealists groups. When Noguchi visited Japan in the 1950s, he and Okamoto were considered “modern primitives”. Sogetsu School founder Sofu Teshigahara challenged Okamoto to try flower arranging, who created ceramic sculpture Face as a container for the flowers.

OSAMU SUZUKI (1926-2001)
One of the founders of the Sodeisha (Crawling Through Mud Association) group along with Kazuo Yagi and Hikaru Yamada, Suzuki and others were key to the development of abstract sculptural ceramics within Japan. Their Sodeisha group lasted until 1998. Suzuki grew up in a pottery workers’ neighborhood and studied ceramics at the Kyoto Municipal Technical College. Suzuki and his Sodeisha group pushed the boundaries of ceramics, but eventually, he returned to the classic Kyoto style of porcelain-coated objects with Chinese-style pale blue glaze.

SHINDO TSUJI (1910-1981)
Trained in Western-style oil painting, Tsuji began sculpting in wood before moving to clay in the 1950s. Thanks to his colleague Kazuo Yagi, he began making ceramics and finally displayed his work in 1955. Tsuji began creating larger pieces, including Mountain Man which was part of the 1958 Venice Biennale. A friend of Noguchi, he called his work “clay sculpture (tocho)”, a similar term used by Ichiga Numata.

KAZUO YAGI (1918-1979)
Yagi is considered by many as the most important influential figure in postwar sculptural ceramics. One of the founders of the Sodeisha group, Yagi grew up in Kyoto, the son of a potter, who was part of the Akatsuchi (Red Clay) ceramic group. The younger Yagi was interested in sculpture, but eventually saw himself as a chawanya, roughly, a maker of everyday tableware. The Sodeisha group’s name was found by Yagi’s calligraphy teacher in a Chinese language treatise. In 1950, Yagi’s work began attracting international attention when a board member of the Museum of Modern Art, New York bought some of his pieces. Beyond his artistry, Yagi was the leading figure of the Sodeisha group because he wrote many essays and articles in which he challenged the opinions of leading figures in the art world.

HIKARU YAMADA (1924-2001)
Another member of the Sodeisha group, Yamada also grew up in Kyoto, but his father was a Buddhist priest. A protégé of Munemaro Ishiguro, Yamada was a founding member of a reformist group Shinshokai. Yamada and Yagi began giving poetic rather than descriptive titles to their ceramics. In the post-war, Yamada worked in increasingly abstracted variations and by the 1950s, he and Yagi began utilizing neutral names for their ceramics, like Work. Yamada began creating more complex pieces, influenced by cubist ideas.