It was in June of that year that he encountered the paper chochin (lanterns) of Gifu for the first time. “They do not encumber our space as mass or as possession, if they hardly exist in use, when not in use they fold away in an envelope.” -Isamu NoguchiĪfter a trip back to New York City – during which he met film actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi, whom he would marry the following year – Noguchi was back in Japan again, arriving in the spring of 1951. Tange was the overall planner for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, and began discussions about involving Noguchi in designs for the site. His reputation preceded him, and the country’s progressive architects, artists, and designers were eager to collaborate with him, among them Kenzo Tange, who was developing a synthesis of European-style modernism and traditional Japanese building styles. We can begin in May of 1950, when, following an extensive tour of Asia, Noguchi set foot in Japan for the first time in almost twenty years. To understand why, we have to return to the Akari origin story and see it in context. Yet even this lofty understanding of the Akari, as conjoined presence and absence, containment and emanation, doesn’t fully do them justice. In a sense – and this is why he insisted on presenting them in Venice – they are the purest sculptures he ever made, insofar as he thought of sculptures as “energy concentrations, irrational but meaningful… impalpable voids and pressures, the punctuations of spaces.” This is extremely practical, while also enhancing the metaphor that Noguchi was after: “They do not encumber our space as mass or as possession, if they hardly exist in use, when not in use they fold away in an envelope.” As he never failed to point out, the Japanese word akari is a direct equivalent of the English light it means both illumination and weightlessness. The sorcery is compounded by the fact that they can be “packed knocked down,” as period advertisements put it – that is, collapsed flat for storage and shipping. This radical mobility gives the Akari an air of magic, with each new form a singular act of prestidigitation. Artwork © 2023 The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York The Noguchi Museum Archives, BM_MTN_1000_1966. Light as a feather they perch, some pinned to the wall, others clipped to a cord, and all may be moved with the thought.” Read More New York: The World Journal Tribune Magazine (18 December 1966): Cover. His Akari, he said, were “consonant with our appreciation of the ‘less-thingness’ of things, the ess encumbered perceptions. Long before digital culture brought domestic minimalism into vogue, and environmental concerns challenged our habits of consumption, Noguchi was already imagining a way to live light on the land. The present gathering of them – fifty-five lights in all – weighs perhaps a hundred pounds. For although they are certainly as sculptural as anything Noguchi carved in basalt or marble, there is indeed remarkably little to these luminous objects. And while he certainly didn’t realize it, Taylor also put his finger on another aspect of the Akari that was equally prescient. In retrospect, we can see that Noguchi’s cross-disciplinary instincts, like so much else about the man and his work, were far ahead of their time. ![]() Taylor was not alone in bristling at the sight of commercially available products in the US Pavilion: the temerity of it! In those days, the lines between design and fine art were sharply drawn. Noguchi was representing America at the Venice Biennale that year, and had made the controversial decision to include his Akari alongside his stone sculptures. ![]() He was writing about Isamu Noguchi’s Akari lights, and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. “How little can you get away with and still be called sculpture?” So asked the London art critic John Russell Taylor, in 1986. © 2023 The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York Lighting the Way by Glenn Adamson Isamu Noguchi working on Akari prototypes (models 9, 26, and 14 on various bases) in Japan, c.
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