Isamu Noguchi, Akari, Modelle 27N, 2N, BB3-70FF, BB2-S1, 14A, BB1-YA1, 31N. Photo: The Kagawa Museum. © INFGM / 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich.
Phillips is proud to sponsor Isamu Noguchi at Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland, a new exhibition exploring the artist as a citizen of the world and his particular ways of merging cultural traditions and technologies into an incomparable body of work. Open 23 September 2022 through 8 January 2023, the exhibition is curated in collaboration with the Barbican in London and Museum Ludwig in Cologne, as well as in partnership with LaM – Lille Métropole Musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut. To celebrate the exhibition's debut, we spoke with curator Fabienne Eggelhöfer about how Noguchi's work is seen by contemporary audiences, his genre-defying career, and the ways in which Paul Klee's own work influenced Noguchi's oeuvre.
Phillips: Tell us how the Isamu Noguchi exhibition came about.
Fabienne Eggelhöfer: It has been a long-time wish of the Zentrum Paul Klee to dedicate a solo exhibition to Isamu Noguchi. I visited the archive of the Noguchi Foundation in Queens, New York, for the first time in 2016. For the realization of such an ambitious project, we needed to find partners in Europe. Two excellent partners were found in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the Barbican in London. Starting in 2019, the curators of the three institutions worked intensively on the planning of the exhibition and, with the support of experts from the Isamu Noguchi Foundation, realized a selection of works as well as the catalog. In 2020, we offered the LaM - Lille Métropole, musée d'art moderne, d'art contemporain et d'art brut in Villeneuve d'Ascq to take over the exhibition.
P: How has our view of Noguchi's work today evolved from in the past? Is there a wider worldwide appreciation?
FE: Isamu Noguchi is mainly known in the US and Japan. With this exhibition we now want to bring his work closer to the audience in Europe. Noguchi is a unique position in the art of the 20th century, because he made no distinction between the so-called fine art and design. In addition, he experimented with a wide variety of techniques - traditional craft as well as industrial machines. He was not interested in acquiring a particular style. All this led to the fact that he remained rather a marginal figure in art history and in the art scene. In 1986 he was invited to exhibit in the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale. There, in addition to sculptures, he showed his Akari lamps, for which he is known to a wide audience. He was ridiculed by art critics for showing design objects that, in their opinion, had nothing to do with the art world. Today, Noguchi is absolutely contemporary with this interdisciplinary approach.
Isamu Noguchi, My Arizona, 1943/1978 teilweise rekonstruiert. Photo: Kevin Noble. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 00071 © INFGM / 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich.
P: Noguchi felt at home both in the United States and Japan; what do you think drew him to Europe and what resonates about his work with European audiences?
FE: In Western countries, Noguchi was often portrayed as a Japanese artist, while in Japan he was considered as an American. He suffered from this indeterminate affiliation throughout his life. Thanks to a scholarship, he was able to travel to Paris for the first time in 1927, where he stayed for a few months and was assistant to the sculptor Constantin Bracusi. Like many of his American artist colleagues, Noguchi was exposed to European avant-garde art, such as Surrealism, and incorporated his impressions into his early works. He visited Paris regularly, and in 1958 he designed the garden of the new UNESCO headquarters. In 1962 he was given a studio at the American Academy in Rome. There he worked in the marble quarries in Pietrasanta, Tuscany. It is typical of Noguchi that he worked with the local material.
In general, Noguchi was and is little known to the European public. He was able to show his works in some group exhibitions, which were organized by American cultural officials after the war and were supposed to present the cultural nation USA in Europe as an open and diverse society. Among other exhibitions in some galleries, his works were exhibited at the II and III documenta in Kassel (1959 and 1964). In 1986, he was selected for the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale. However, there are very few works in European collections. In general, there was uncertainty and a lack of understanding of his work. This also had to do with the fact that Noguchi, with his interdisciplinary approach, did not fit into any of the traditional categories. He was too diverse in every respect to succeed in the narrow, discriminating, and heavily art market-driven post-World War II European art scene. It is precisely this diversity of his work that we want to convey to the public with this exhibition. We are convinced that it will be appreciated today.
P: How do you see the relationship between institutions and exhibitions? How does Zentrum Paul Klee lend itself to Noguchi’s work?
FE: In addition to an exhibition of Paul Klee, the Zentrum Paul Klee always presents other artists who are connected in one way or another with his work. In the 1930s, Paul Klee's work was regularly exhibited in New York. At that time, Isamu Noguchi was searching for his own artistic expression and regularly visited exhibitions of modern European art. J. B. Neumann, one of Klee's gallery owners in New York, was one of the most important interlocutors for the young Noguchi. He learned from Neumann about Klee's artistic attitude, which was formative for Noguchi. Later, Noguchi exchanged ideas with the Japanese artist Hasegawa Saburo, who was also a great admirer of Klee. It was above all Klee's pictorial thinking that confirmed Noguchi in his artistic attitude. For both artists, creative nature was a model for their artistic processes. In 1982, Noguchi created a sculpture entitled "Klee's stone." The large exhibition space (1600 m2) at the Zentrum Paul Klee provides the ideal setting to display Noguchi's works, as if in a large park through which visitors can stroll.
Isamu Noguchi, My Mu, 1950. Photo: Kevin Noble. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 00212 © INFGM / 2022, ProLitteris, Zurich.
P: Noguchi’s career spanned architecture, dance, sculpture, and design. When you first conceived of the exhibition layout, were you presented with any challenges in those genres, to both interact with one another and also within their own sphere of conversation and consideration?
FE: It was clear from the beginning that we wanted to show precisely this versatility and multidisciplinarity of Noguchi’s work. For the artist, there was no difference between fine art and design, and that's why we wanted to mix the works. In the tradition of the Bauhaus, where the aim was to break down the boundaries between art and design, the Zentrum Paul Klee regularly presents artists who work in different fields at the same time, such as Max Bill, to whom we dedicated an exhibition last year.
P: What do you want visitors to take away from the exhibition?
FE: We want to show how Noguchi used a wide variety of traditions, techniques and materials, constantly reinventing himself and creating works that touch everyone in different ways. There are no hierarchies between art and design. In this openness we see the contemporary appeal of his work. The old-fashioned distinction between painting, sculpture, and paper works is just as obsolete today as the distinction between free and applied art and the separation by geographic region. As before, many museums should take Noguchi's attitude as an example in dealing with their collections and overcome the old departmental boundaries.
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