NEW YORK CITY.- A major survey of postwar Japanese ceramic art focusing on the work of Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) and his Japanese contemporaries opens at Japan Society Gallery on October 9. ‘Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics’ is a landmark traveling exhibition which premiered at and was organized by the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, and is the first major museum presentation of Noguchi’s ceramics in the U.S.

Internationally recognized as an influential force in the history of modern sculpture and design, Noguchi is best known for his stone and metal sculpture, furniture design, Akari paper lamps, public gardens and outdoor installations. However, during three short visits to Japan in 1931, 1950, and 1952, the artist produced a radical and original body of ceramic sculpture that established an important new direction for Japanese ceramics and dramatically transformed the landscape of international modernism. Noguchi’s visits to Japan proved to be especially intense and creative periods, when he exchanged new and innovative ideas with some of Japan’s most prominent postwar ceramic artists, exploring issues of personal and national identity and ways in which the ceramic traditions of the past could inform and inspire contemporary work.

This exhibition brings together 37 examples of Noguchi’s ceramic art and 36 pieces by nine of his Japanese peers, who worked in both traditional and avant-garde styles. Among the works by Noguchi—few of which have been exhibited in the United States since 1954—are two early portrait busts, as well as representational and abstract sculpture and functional vessels. The Japanese works include vessels by Kitaoji Rosanjin (1883 - 1959) and Kawai Kanjiro (1890 - 1966); tea ceremony utensils by Kaneshige Toyo (1896 - 1967) and Arakawa Toyozo (1894 - 1985); sculpture by Tsuji Shindo (1910 - 1981) and Okamoto Taro (1911 - 1996); and abstract sculptural ceramics created by Yagi Kazuo (1918 - 1979), Yamada Hikaru (1924 - 2001) and Suzuki Osamu (1926 - 2001).

Among the masterpieces of Noguchi’s lifetime oeuvre featured in the exhibition is “Even the Centipede” (1952), a vertical, totem pole-like arrangement of eleven abstract, unglazed stoneware pieces that represent Noguchi’s most elaborate effort to hoist and suspend ceramic forms off the table surface. The large sculpture “War” (1952) recalls the traditional Japanese helmet shape and expresses Noguchi’s innovative interpretation of signs and symbols in Japanese culture. “My Mu” (1950) gives the Zen concept of nothingness (mu) a highly modernist form that presages much of Noguchi’s later work in stone.

“This exhibition explores an aspect of Noguchi’s art and life – ceramics and his connection to Japanese aesthetics – that is central to an appreciation of one of the 20th century’s greatest sculptors,” says Japan Society Gallery Director Alexandra Munroe. “’Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics’ also offers a selective survey of postwar Japan’s most experimental ceramic artists, and serves as a history of the vital intellectual and artistic trends that define Japanese as well as international modernism of the 1950s.”

Isamu Noguchi was born in the United States, the son of Japanese poet Yone Noguchi and American writer Leonie Gilmour, who separated soon after his birth. Throughout his life, Noguchi felt caught between and simultaneously drawn to two very different cultures. He spent his early childhood in Japan, then returned to the United States where he trained as a sculptor in New York. A Guggenheim traveling fellowship enabled him to work in Paris with renowned sculptor Constantin Brancusi, and to travel throughout Asia between 1927 and 1931. In China, Noguchi was intrigued by Tang dynasty terra-cotta figurines, while in Japan he drew inspiration from unglazed prehistoric clay tomb sculptures known as haniwa. These encounters left a lasting impression on Noguchi, who would later describe his experience as “my close embrace of the earth…a seeking after identity with some primal matter beyond personalities and possessions.”

In 1931, while working in a Kyoto potter’s studio, Noguchi produced “The Queen,” a monumental, abstract figure resonant of traditional East Asian forms – an aesthetic that would become a hallmark of the artist’s career. This work is a highlight of the Japan Society Gallery presentation. During this time, he also produced portrait heads, smaller figure studies, and functional urns. As an artist, Noguchi was drawn to clay—a medium used in Japanese art since prehistory and one that could be worked quickly and expressively to reveal informal, spontaneous, and humorous qualities not visible in less flexible media such as bronze or stone. Noguchi, like other artists in his time, found that clay was a natural medium through which he could interpret and react to the struggle between tradition and modernity in postwar Japan.

"Noguchi’s knowledge of Euro-American traditions of modern sculpture, and his experience working with stone, metal and wood, informed his use of various Japanese clays," says Sackler curator of ceramics Louise Allison Cort. "But his ceramic work in Japan also reflects his investigation of Japanese cultural themes. Through clay, Noguchi found a way to explore the Japanese dimension of his dual cultural identity."

By the time Noguchi returned to Japan in 1950, he had become a sculptor and designer of international renown. Asked to hold an exhibition, but unable to ship existing objects from America in time, Noguchi was invited by his friend and fellow artist Kitagawa Tamiji (1894 - 1989) to work at a ceramic facility in Seto where he spent a week of intense labor, producing more than 20 vessels and sculptures including “Journey,” “My Mu,” and “The Policeman” (all 1950), which are on view at Japan Society Gallery. Japanese viewers were startled by Noguchi’s daring and experimental departure from the vessel forms of traditional ceramics.

Late in 1951, he began another extended visit to Japan, staying near the city of Kamakura as a guest of the well-known traditionalist potter, Kitaoji Rosanjin, who is represented in the show by such important works as “Shigaraki Large Jar” (1957) and “Basket-shaped Vase” (1951). Noguchi spent an exceptionally creative, yearlong period at Rosanjin’s, during which time he became absorbed in what he described as the "uniquely coarse Japanese earth." He adopted the materials used by Rosanjin and two potters later designated Living National Treasures, Kaneshige Toyo and Arakawa Toyozo, who breathed new life into the time-honored clays and glazes of Japan’s regional kilns. The works Noguchi created during this time reflected his immersion in many aspects of Japanese culture including its craft traditions, Zen Buddhism, haiku, and the aesthetics of the tea ceremony, as well as ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement.

Inspired by Teshigahara Sofu (1900 - 1979), founding director of Tokyo’s vanguard Sogetsu school of ikebana, Noguchi sculpted numerous clay vases as well as ceramic sculptures such as “Lonely Tower” and “War,” both on view at Japan Society Gallery, which were featured in his solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura in 1952.

Noguchi’s 1952 exhibition inspired a number of young Japanese potters to push the boundaries of classic Asian ceramic forms and utilitarian design, infusing their work with the principles of international art movements, such as Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism. Yagi Kazuo, Yamada Hikaru and Suzuki Osamu, who had formed the avant-garde group Sodeisha (Crawling Through Mud Society) in 1948, were admirers of Paul Klee, Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. "The unconventional approach to working with Japanese clay by esteemed outsider Isamu Noguchi provided a jolt of energy to help these artists move across the boundary from vessel to what the Japanese art world called objet. They led the way in redefining ceramics as a valid medium for abstract sculpture," says Cort.

On view at Japan Society Gallery are works demonstrating the evolution of the Sodeisha artists’ forms, from upright, symmetrical, wheel-thrown, glazed vessels to abstract, nonfunctional works hand sculpted in unglazed Shigaraki clay. Highlighting this transformation are Yamada Hikaru’s 1958 sculpture, Work, and his 1964 “Tower B,” as well as Yagi Kazuo’s “Mr. Samsa’s Walk” (1954). Inspired by Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Yagi’s signature work features whimsical wheel-thrown cylindrical components and is considered a masterpiece of modern Japanese ceramics.

The exhibition installation at Japan Society Gallery is designed by Tim Culbert and Celia Imrey of ImreyCulbert Architects, New York. The fiber optic lighting is designed by Shozo Toyohisa, Tokyo.

Organized by the Smithsonian’s Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, ‘Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics’ includes loans from the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the National Museums of Modern Art in Tokyo and Kyoto, as well as other museums and private collections in both Japan and the United States. Following its presentation at Japan Society, the exhibition travels to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where it will be on view from February 7 – May 30, 2004.

A fully-illustrated 240-page book entitled “Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics: A Close Embrace of the Earth,” accompanies the exhibition. Co-authored by Dr. Bert Winther-Tamaki, Associate Professor of Art History at University of California-Irvine and a leading authority on Noguchi, and curator Louise Allison Cort, the book also includes contributions by Niimi Ryu, Musashino Art University, Tokyo, on the Japanese cultural environment in the 1950s and Dr. Bruce Altshuler, former director of the Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, on the reception of Noguchi’s ceramic work in the United States. Jointly published with the University of California Press, Berkeley, the catalogue is available in hardcover for $49.95 on the Japan Society website at: www.japansociety.org or by calling 212-715-1272.

Among the variety of programs accompanying the exhibition is a series of lectures including: “Isamu Noguchi: Sculpture and the Elusive Sense of Belonging”, Monday, November 3 at 6:30 pm. Bert Winther-Tamaki, Associate Professor of Art History, University of California at Irvine and co-author of the exhibition catalogue.

“Inside the Studio: Akira Yagi and Louise Cort”, Wednesday, December 3 at 6:30 pm. Louise Cort, Curator of Ceramics at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and exhibition curator with acclaimed ceramic artist Akira Yagi.

The exhibition, organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., is supported at the Japan Society in New York by ITO EN, Ltd.; the Mary and James G. Wallach Foundation; The Cowles Charitable Trust; The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum; Halsey and Alice North; Joan Mirviss; and John and Polly Guth. This exhibition is made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State agency.

Programs at Japan Society Gallery are made possible in part by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund and the Friends of Japan Society Gallery. Special thanks to Charles Cowles.

The exhibition at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery was made possible by grants from the Feinberg Foundation, Sachiko Kuno, Ryuji Ueno and the S&R Foundation, Masako and James Shinn, H. Christopher Luce, and other generous donors.

The exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Transportation assistance is provided through the generosity of All Nippon Airways.

The exhibition is endorsed by the Japan Foundation. Organizational assistance is provided by The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto.