Noguchi East and West [Paperback]

Dore Ashton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1993

The life of the Japanese-American sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) was an unending spiritual and physical voyage between the two cultures of his birthright. In this definitive biography and critical study, Dore Ashton maps Noguchi's spiritual journey both in the events of his life and in the milestones of his art: the sculptures, gardens, public spaces, and stage decors that gained force and significance from his double heritage.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sculptor Isamu Noguchi's work shows him to be a romantic pained by an acute sense of loss, suggests art historian Ashton in this biographical study. Illustrated.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This captivating biography of world-renowned sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi highlights his lifelong personal and artistic struggle to reconcile Western ideas with his traditional Oriental heritage. Guided by her personal insight and friendship with the artist, art critic Ashton focuses on Noguchi's travels in the United States and abroad, his diversified work as sculptor and designer of public and private gardens, theater sets and furniture, as well as his professional and social relationships with fellow artists Constantin Brancusi, Arshile Gorky, and Henry Moore; dancer Martha Graham; actor/director John Gielgud; composer John Cage; and engineer/inventor Buckminster Fuller. Recommended. (Illustrations and index not seen.)-- Stephen Allan Patrick, East Tennessee State Univ. Lib., Johnson City
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 331 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (September 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520083407
• ISBN-13: 978-0520083400
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,311,919 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars early Indiana schooling, profoundly American duality, March 31, 2004

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Glenn Ralston (Bloomington, IN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Noguchi East and West (Paperback)

This volume is one of the more comprehensive reviews of Noguchi's life and work. Having met with Noguchi a couple of times at the premises of the future Museum, I regret not having then the insight now made accessible by our new digital lifestyle resources. His cross-cultural, multi-media artistry reflects Midwestern adolescence with Pacific overtures. Ashton states "Noguchi's biography is rich in hints of the sources of his formative years, and while no single source can be isolated, some are more suggestive than others. Dr. Rumely, the progressive educator who founded the Interlaken School in Indiana where Noguchi began his American education, had placed Noguchi in the home of ... a Swedenborgian minister. The boy was thrust into a situation in which the thoughts that had helped shape the modern movement -- through such figures as Blake, Emerson, Poe, and Baudelaire -- were sacred. ...the notion of a universal rhyming scheme had attracted nineteenth-century artists who wished to see some kind of elemental unity in the universe; who relished the endless possibilities of analogy."

Combining influences of the industrializing modernity of small cities and towns of the Midwest at this time, and seemingly inspired both by ancient Japanese "tumuli" and the Native American Mound Builders, his mnemonic response to the sights of such landscapes "got me going". With this amplified illumination into Noguchi's background and more familiarity with his abiding interests in "earth sculpturing", perhaps new educational paradigms should be considered in our thinking of art, architecture and American historic preservation.