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Lot Essay
"The whole world is made of stone. It is our fundament. When I tap it, I get an echo of that which we are." - Isamu Noguchi
The enduring symbolism of ancient stone, whose surface is writ with the unfathomable passage of time, evoking ancient rituals and shelter, proved to be a long-abiding interest for the artist Isamu Noguchi. Throughout his career, he was captivated by rock and stone formations, traveling the world to discover new and interesting varieties. In the last decade of his life, he was more active than ever, and working in his outdoor studio in Shikoku, Japan, he tackled large fragments of granite, basalt, and in the present work, a five-foot piece of rare jasper. Standing like an ancient sentinel or guardian, Untitled retains its original, natural shape, but Noguchi has carved a series of incisions into the piece, to introduce negative space to the monolithic stone. It is in these opposing forces—positive vs. negative, man-made vs. organic, light vs. dark—that the power and poetry of Noguchi’s symbolic world comes into its own.
Untitled, 1980, epitomizes the power and gravitas of Noguchi’s late stone sculpture. Although its edges are jagged – the stone is essentially a fragment cleaved out of raw material – the planar cuts were created with absolute technical precision. The central oval form acts as a portal, allowing the viewer to peer into the stone to witness the beautiful mineral formations hiding within. The sculpture’s smooth, outer shell is contrasted with this interesting crystalline interior, and the geometry of the incised cuts plays off the organic shape of the stone itself. In this, and in Noguchi’s best work, the sculpture sparks a series of dichotomous relationships, which he said “gather energy between them and talk to each other” (I. Noguchi, quoted in M. Friedman, Noguchi’s Imaginary Landscapes, exh. cat., Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1978, p. 55). He later acknowledged, “There are two parts in all our natures” (I. Noguchi, quoted in D. Ashton, Noguchi: East and West, New York, 1992, p. 286).
The aesthetic of these important stone sculptures of the 1970s and ‘80s were a notable departure from the earlier, smooth-surfaced marble pieces of the 1930s and ‘40s. These earlier works were visually linked to those of Jean Arp and Constantin Brancusi, who the artist had studied with in Paris in the 1920s. Although Noguchi also worked in metal, he turned almost exclusively to stone as his preferred medium in the last decade of his life. Noguchi produced a small handful of sculptures in jasper stone, including Ceremony, 1982, which resides at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Through the expressive power of these granite, basalt and jasper structures, Noguchi attempted to “unlock” the stone. This concept relates back to the Japanese interest in found stones and a reverence for their ancient past. To Noguchi, the very act of carving into the sacred stone was at first an act of “blasphemy.” However, it was necessary to express its latent power. He said, “Breaking the stone gives you possibilities to exploit you wouldn’t get from carving alone. You get the natural gift of the stone itself” (I. Noguchi, quoted in M. Sheffield, “Perfecting the Imperfect: Noguchi’s Personal Style,” Artforum, Vol. 18, No. 8., April 1980, p. 70).
For many years, Noguchi kept a home and studio on the island of Shikoku, Japan, the road to which was littered with the discarded fragments of stone from nearby quarries. “In this village of stonecutters,” Dore Ashton described, Noguchi’s days “were given to a contemplation of stone in its real and venerable life and in its metaphorical implications. Nature itself—the great firs climbing the mountains and the cultivated fields lying beyond his walls—entered his meditation. He had needed the reality of stones…for his increasingly self-contained vocabulary” (D. Ashton, op. cit., p. 247). It was there that Noguchi could commune with the ancient world. He was fascinated by the beautiful ceremonies of the Konpira festival in Shikoku, always surrounded by the ancient stone structures, who watched on as silent witnesses or sentinels in the night.
The 1980s proved to be a busy and rewarding decade for Noguchi. In the year that he created Untitled, he had recently been fêted with a major traveling retrospective of his work that had opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in April of 1978. As the show traveled throughout America, reviewers praised Noguchi as one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century, with The New York Times calling them “some of the simplest and most beautiful sculpture of the modern age” (H. Kramer, “The Purist of Living Sculptors,” The New York Times, May 21, 1978, p. 33).
Throughout his long career, Noguchi tapped into the latent potential of stone, metal, and marble to reveal their underlying symbolic qualities. This long-abiding concept relates to a notion, originally derived from Shintoism, that living spirits inhabit all things. Particularly in the case of Untitled, the rare jasper was an important material in and of itself, representing bravery and wisdom, and historically used in many ancient cultures as a talisman to ward off dark and negative forces.
The enduring symbolism of ancient stone, whose surface is writ with the unfathomable passage of time, evoking ancient rituals and shelter, proved to be a long-abiding interest for the artist Isamu Noguchi. Throughout his career, he was captivated by rock and stone formations, traveling the world to discover new and interesting varieties. In the last decade of his life, he was more active than ever, and working in his outdoor studio in Shikoku, Japan, he tackled large fragments of granite, basalt, and in the present work, a five-foot piece of rare jasper. Standing like an ancient sentinel or guardian, Untitled retains its original, natural shape, but Noguchi has carved a series of incisions into the piece, to introduce negative space to the monolithic stone. It is in these opposing forces—positive vs. negative, man-made vs. organic, light vs. dark—that the power and poetry of Noguchi’s symbolic world comes into its own.
Untitled, 1980, epitomizes the power and gravitas of Noguchi’s late stone sculpture. Although its edges are jagged – the stone is essentially a fragment cleaved out of raw material – the planar cuts were created with absolute technical precision. The central oval form acts as a portal, allowing the viewer to peer into the stone to witness the beautiful mineral formations hiding within. The sculpture’s smooth, outer shell is contrasted with this interesting crystalline interior, and the geometry of the incised cuts plays off the organic shape of the stone itself. In this, and in Noguchi’s best work, the sculpture sparks a series of dichotomous relationships, which he said “gather energy between them and talk to each other” (I. Noguchi, quoted in M. Friedman, Noguchi’s Imaginary Landscapes, exh. cat., Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, 1978, p. 55). He later acknowledged, “There are two parts in all our natures” (I. Noguchi, quoted in D. Ashton, Noguchi: East and West, New York, 1992, p. 286).
The aesthetic of these important stone sculptures of the 1970s and ‘80s were a notable departure from the earlier, smooth-surfaced marble pieces of the 1930s and ‘40s. These earlier works were visually linked to those of Jean Arp and Constantin Brancusi, who the artist had studied with in Paris in the 1920s. Although Noguchi also worked in metal, he turned almost exclusively to stone as his preferred medium in the last decade of his life. Noguchi produced a small handful of sculptures in jasper stone, including Ceremony, 1982, which resides at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Through the expressive power of these granite, basalt and jasper structures, Noguchi attempted to “unlock” the stone. This concept relates back to the Japanese interest in found stones and a reverence for their ancient past. To Noguchi, the very act of carving into the sacred stone was at first an act of “blasphemy.” However, it was necessary to express its latent power. He said, “Breaking the stone gives you possibilities to exploit you wouldn’t get from carving alone. You get the natural gift of the stone itself” (I. Noguchi, quoted in M. Sheffield, “Perfecting the Imperfect: Noguchi’s Personal Style,” Artforum, Vol. 18, No. 8., April 1980, p. 70).
For many years, Noguchi kept a home and studio on the island of Shikoku, Japan, the road to which was littered with the discarded fragments of stone from nearby quarries. “In this village of stonecutters,” Dore Ashton described, Noguchi’s days “were given to a contemplation of stone in its real and venerable life and in its metaphorical implications. Nature itself—the great firs climbing the mountains and the cultivated fields lying beyond his walls—entered his meditation. He had needed the reality of stones…for his increasingly self-contained vocabulary” (D. Ashton, op. cit., p. 247). It was there that Noguchi could commune with the ancient world. He was fascinated by the beautiful ceremonies of the Konpira festival in Shikoku, always surrounded by the ancient stone structures, who watched on as silent witnesses or sentinels in the night.
The 1980s proved to be a busy and rewarding decade for Noguchi. In the year that he created Untitled, he had recently been fêted with a major traveling retrospective of his work that had opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in April of 1978. As the show traveled throughout America, reviewers praised Noguchi as one of the greatest sculptors of the twentieth century, with The New York Times calling them “some of the simplest and most beautiful sculpture of the modern age” (H. Kramer, “The Purist of Living Sculptors,” The New York Times, May 21, 1978, p. 33).
Throughout his long career, Noguchi tapped into the latent potential of stone, metal, and marble to reveal their underlying symbolic qualities. This long-abiding concept relates to a notion, originally derived from Shintoism, that living spirits inhabit all things. Particularly in the case of Untitled, the rare jasper was an important material in and of itself, representing bravery and wisdom, and historically used in many ancient cultures as a talisman to ward off dark and negative forces.