Left: Isamu Noguchi, The Kite (1959), Man Walking (1959), and The Gold Mirror (1958), anodized aluminum. The Noguchi Museum Archives © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / Artists Rights Society. Right: Isamu Noguchi with Kouros (1945) at the exhibition ‘Fourteen Americans’, Museum of Modern Art, New York, September 10, 1946 – December 8, 1946. Photo: Eliot Elisofon. The Noguchi Museum Archives © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / Artists Rights Society.
Constantly during his travels between New York and Japan during his working life, artist Isamu Noguchi loved to stop over in Greece. Soon enough, Noguchi saw himself as quite the regular, always in awe and admiration of the country's colossal beauty.
And now, The Noguchi Museum launches a new exhibition titled Objects of Common Interest: Hard, Soft, and All Lit Up with Nowhere to Go, in collaboration with New York research and design studio Objects of Common Interest, celebrating Isamu Noguchi's most inspired works.
Left: Isamu Noguchi, Kyoko Kawamura, and Penny Bach with the Omphalos stone in Delphi, Greece, 1988. The Noguchi Museum Archives © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / Artists Rights Society. Right: Isamu Noguchi, letter to Zissimos Lorenzatos, December 26, 1969. Zissimos Lorenzatos Archive, National Bank of Greece, Cultural Foundation/Hellenic Literary and Historic Archives (NBGCS/HLHA). Courtesy of Stephanos Troupakis (The Estate of Zissimos Lorenzatos).
The artist's love for Greece and its inspirations are reverent throughout many of his aptitudes ; from written letters, abstract thoughts to his use of materials such as greek marble and plaster present in some of this most famous sculptures titled Torso, 1926 and Girl Torso, 1958. Being an artist who considered himself borderless and nationless he once wrote, "Greece… Oh, it’s my love. I feel as if I were born here. I think that every artist who discovers Greece must feel the same… I believed in Apollo and the Gods of Olympus before I knew of any other."
Left: Isamu Noguchi, Torso, 1926. Plaster. The Noguchi Museum Archives © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / Artists Rights Society. Right: Isamu Noguchi, Girl Torso, 1958. Greek marble. Photo: Rudolph Burckhardt © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / Artists Rights Society.
From 15 September, 2021 to 13 February, 2022, The Noguchi Musuem will exhibit a finely selected curation of Isamu Noguchi's work, ones that are significant and grounded within his love affair with Greece. The show will also include the works by Objects of Common Interest, alongside Noguchi's works as curated by The Noguchi Museum's curator Dakin Hart.
Left: Isamu Noguchi tests Slide Mantra (1986) for Isamu Noguchi: What is Sculpture?, Venice Biennale, June 29–September 28, 1986. The Noguchi Museum Archives © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / Artists Rights Society. Right: Work in progress, Structure, in Isamu Noguchi's MacDougal Alley studio, c.1945. The Noguchi Museum Archives© The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum / Artists Rights Society.
More information on the exhibition is available on noguchi.org as well as updates and information shared through the exbihitions co-collaborators Objects of Common Interest.
