Customer Reviews

Isamu Noguchi

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I am doing a study on the Noguchi Akari lamps right now. Every where I looked I could not find any good pictures of them. Most books all but completely skip over them. This book is almost only Akari Lamps, but It also contains photos of his stone sculptures. If you are looking for a good read, this is not for you as it contains very little written pages. If you are looking for beautiful full size photos of his lamps and stone, this is one of a kind.

This book presents the "Space of Akari and Stone" display of Noguchi's work. That 1980 showing staged about a dozen of Noguchi's understated stone sculptures with over a hundred of his paper lamps, all in an architectural space backed by other of his works. The book's format is a photographic stroll through the display, stopping at works and viewpoints of interest.

The first image looks into the exhibit's entryway. Dichotomies already emerge. Bright paper illuminates dark stone. Architectural angles contrast with natural irregularities, along a continuum of shape from geometric to organic. An upright work in stone dominates that first room of the display, like a sentinel guarding the entrance. Dichotomies continue within that piece: rugged outlines contrast with a few shaped surfaces at its ends. The other works in stone are fabricated in similar ways - a few polished or tool-marked surfaces in human geometries, amid the fractal geometries of natural surfaces.

Noguchi's lamps predominate later along our tour. As with his works in stone, they combine geometric frames with natural irregularities of wrinkled paper and wandering reeds that support the shapes. And what shapes! Tubby and humorous or long and elegant, each presents a peaceful compromise between human intent and the will of the material itself. Then, beyond form and substance, each Akari functions as a cage in which light itself is captured.

No book can capture the spatial sense of the sculpture, or the kinesthetics of walking through an exhibit and around the works exhibited. When the photos are as gorgeous and inviting as these, that lack is almost maddening - I want to reach into the page and touch the pieces. Still, it's better to see the flat image of Noguchi's 3D work than never to experience it at all.

//wiredweird

This book is a beautiful treasure itself with full-sized gorgeous photos elegantly recording his 1985 exhibit "Space of AKARI & Stone".