"I am not a designer."
That is the clever subtitle of the retrospective of the work of Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) that had its preview last night at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The rest of the statement, which Noguchi made in 1949, is: "The word design implies catering to the quixotic fashion of the time." He wanted nothing to do with that. And yet of course he was a designer, of tables, chairs, and, perhaps most famously, lighting. "Everything is sculpture," he once said, equally enigmatically. "Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture." He was indeed a sculptor himself. He was also the creator of theatrical sets, notably for Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring, and outdoor architectural spaces, all of which he called, again enigmatically, "gardens" -- never mind that there is nary a blade of grass growing in some of those landscapes.
He was, said PEM's acting director and CEO, Kurt T. Steinberg, "not interested in staying in his lane."
Beautifully designed, with lighting and a color scheme right out of Mad Men -- or, as two women we met at the reception afterwards said, The Dick Van Dyke Show -- the show features more than 200 objects, as well as a film showing some of Noguchi's playgrounds, along with a video of modern dancer Ruth Page (1899-1991) in a sack-like costume he designed for her. A re-creation of the dress is in the show, too, as is a re-creation of the Appalachian Spring set, including a very stylized rocking chair set on a minimalist front porch.
Bob and I, for our part, were physically and sentimentally thrust back into his parents' mid-century-modern milieu -- Bob's circa 1956 childhood home, designed here in Andover, Massachusetts, by an acolyte of Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus movement. We agreed that his father would have loved the show, including the design elements that he "borrowed" from Noguchi for some of the plexiglas tables he designed for AKKO (pronounced ah-koh), the company he founded in his retirement.
Unafraid to be commercial, Noguchi controversially displayed some of his everyday objects when he was chosen to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale in 1986. A man without a political agenda, he nonetheless went to Hiroshima to work on a memorial to those killed in the WWII devastations. He also asked and was granted permission to live in a Japanese internment camp, hoping to see for himself how to make life better for those who were interned. He wasn't accepted by the residents, however; free to go, or not be there in the first place, this son of a Japanese father and a mother of Irish descent wasn't one of them. And when he realized that the U.S. government would never implement the improvements he might propose, he left.
He was an outsider -- never a bad situation for an artist. Or maybe that lifelong status was the reason he became an artist in the first place. His father, a writer in Los Angeles, was not involved in his upbringing. His mother, thinking her son should absorb Japanese culture, moved with him from the U.S. when he was eight to Chigasaki, then Yokohama. He did not fit in. “I became a stranger to myself, a stranger in the land," he once said. At age thirteen, he was sent back to the U.S., alone, to attend the Interlaken School, a progressive boarding school located on Silver Lake near Rolling Prairie, Indiana. The philosophy of its founder, Edward Rumely, was reflected in the school's motto: "Knowledge through Experience." The curriculum was hands-on, active learning, and he thrived.
The show was curated by a feisty team: Monica Obniski of the High Museum in Atlanta, Marin R. Sullivan, an independent art historian and curator, and PEM's R. Ruthie Dibble and Lan Morgan. A feat of both organizational and creative skills, "Isamu Noguchi: 'I am not a designer'" presents all sides of a very complex, sometimes contradictory individual, immersing us in his world at a time when the opportunity to escape our own is particularly welcome.
That is the clever subtitle of the retrospective of the work of Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) that had its preview last night at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The rest of the statement, which Noguchi made in 1949, is: "The word design implies catering to the quixotic fashion of the time." He wanted nothing to do with that. And yet of course he was a designer, of tables, chairs, and, perhaps most famously, lighting. "Everything is sculpture," he once said, equally enigmatically. "Any material, any idea without hindrance born into space, I consider sculpture." He was indeed a sculptor himself. He was also the creator of theatrical sets, notably for Martha Graham's Appalachian Spring, and outdoor architectural spaces, all of which he called, again enigmatically, "gardens" -- never mind that there is nary a blade of grass growing in some of those landscapes.
He was, said PEM's acting director and CEO, Kurt T. Steinberg, "not interested in staying in his lane."
Beautifully designed, with lighting and a color scheme right out of Mad Men -- or, as two women we met at the reception afterwards said, The Dick Van Dyke Show -- the show features more than 200 objects, as well as a film showing some of Noguchi's playgrounds, along with a video of modern dancer Ruth Page (1899-1991) in a sack-like costume he designed for her. A re-creation of the dress is in the show, too, as is a re-creation of the Appalachian Spring set, including a very stylized rocking chair set on a minimalist front porch.
Bob and I, for our part, were physically and sentimentally thrust back into his parents' mid-century-modern milieu -- Bob's circa 1956 childhood home, designed here in Andover, Massachusetts, by an acolyte of Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus movement. We agreed that his father would have loved the show, including the design elements that he "borrowed" from Noguchi for some of the plexiglas tables he designed for AKKO (pronounced ah-koh), the company he founded in his retirement.
Unafraid to be commercial, Noguchi controversially displayed some of his everyday objects when he was chosen to represent the U.S. at the Venice Biennale in 1986. A man without a political agenda, he nonetheless went to Hiroshima to work on a memorial to those killed in the WWII devastations. He also asked and was granted permission to live in a Japanese internment camp, hoping to see for himself how to make life better for those who were interned. He wasn't accepted by the residents, however; free to go, or not be there in the first place, this son of a Japanese father and a mother of Irish descent wasn't one of them. And when he realized that the U.S. government would never implement the improvements he might propose, he left.
He was an outsider -- never a bad situation for an artist. Or maybe that lifelong status was the reason he became an artist in the first place. His father, a writer in Los Angeles, was not involved in his upbringing. His mother, thinking her son should absorb Japanese culture, moved with him from the U.S. when he was eight to Chigasaki, then Yokohama. He did not fit in. “I became a stranger to myself, a stranger in the land," he once said. At age thirteen, he was sent back to the U.S., alone, to attend the Interlaken School, a progressive boarding school located on Silver Lake near Rolling Prairie, Indiana. The philosophy of its founder, Edward Rumely, was reflected in the school's motto: "Knowledge through Experience." The curriculum was hands-on, active learning, and he thrived.
The show was curated by a feisty team: Monica Obniski of the High Museum in Atlanta, Marin R. Sullivan, an independent art historian and curator, and PEM's R. Ruthie Dibble and Lan Morgan. A feat of both organizational and creative skills, "Isamu Noguchi: 'I am not a designer'" presents all sides of a very complex, sometimes contradictory individual, immersing us in his world at a time when the opportunity to escape our own is particularly welcome.
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