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A (half) Japanese designer in Queens
The Noguchi Museum in Queens is a really delightful place.
Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) was a Japanese-American designer who spent half his time at his workshop in Queens, the other half in Shikoku, on Japan's Inland Sea. He made organic stone sculpture, gardens, furniture, fountains, funky 70s public monuments, as well as theatre and ballet sets. I mostly went to see his lamps, though, and there are disappointingly few at the museum.
I've been meaning to go to the Noguchi Museum for years, but yesterday was the first day I actually got up the gumption. The garden and the cafe / bookshop were what impressed me most, the garden swaying in sunshine, stirring in the Queens breeze, subtly Japanese, the bookstore full of interesting stuff you could browse while sipping tea (mine came bottled, bought in the Japanese kombini up Astoria Broadway).
In the last few months I've seen two documentaries about Noguchi's life. (The one on show in the museum is amusingly 70s, very loungecore.) One was on French-German network Arte, very crisp, restrained and "designy", with a delicate orientalism; as controlled and dignified as Noguchi's designs, in fact. The other, on Japanese TV, was amazingly tabloidy, with a shouty commentator doing silly voices, lots of text and inset windows on the screen, and flashy, zingy transitions. Here Noguchi was "our man in America", a sort of ambassador for Japanese values, but the Zen spirit of his work was hard to see amidst all the electronic distractions.
Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988) was a Japanese-American designer who spent half his time at his workshop in Queens, the other half in Shikoku, on Japan's Inland Sea. He made organic stone sculpture, gardens, furniture, fountains, funky 70s public monuments, as well as theatre and ballet sets. I mostly went to see his lamps, though, and there are disappointingly few at the museum.
I've been meaning to go to the Noguchi Museum for years, but yesterday was the first day I actually got up the gumption. The garden and the cafe / bookshop were what impressed me most, the garden swaying in sunshine, stirring in the Queens breeze, subtly Japanese, the bookstore full of interesting stuff you could browse while sipping tea (mine came bottled, bought in the Japanese kombini up Astoria Broadway).
In the last few months I've seen two documentaries about Noguchi's life. (The one on show in the museum is amusingly 70s, very loungecore.) One was on French-German network Arte, very crisp, restrained and "designy", with a delicate orientalism; as controlled and dignified as Noguchi's designs, in fact. The other, on Japanese TV, was amazingly tabloidy, with a shouty commentator doing silly voices, lots of text and inset windows on the screen, and flashy, zingy transitions. Here Noguchi was "our man in America", a sort of ambassador for Japanese values, but the Zen spirit of his work was hard to see amidst all the electronic distractions.
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my asian art class took a field trip there and i rolled down the grassy hill. then i convinced them we all needed to go to a local ramen-ya. that was probably the best part.
[also, you were in my dream last night, but only via cell phone.]
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Unfortunately, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, many of these expensive devices were destroyed by irate Americans who refused to have anything with a Japanese name on it (the housing said "Noguchi" in tiny letters). Consequently, surviving examples are rare and expensive.
environments
(Anonymous) 2006-04-22 07:34 pm (UTC)(link)a big coffee-table book of his work at the library. It looks
like a great place to go. While I was looking at the book I
was thinking how his work would have been castigated at the
art school I dropped out of in the late 1980's...not oppositional
enough! mere design!
I haven't seen the Biennial in person;
contrasting the garden environment with your "workspace" must
be interesting...
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another donut
(Anonymous) 2006-04-22 09:41 pm (UTC)(link)http://www.sountain.com/jpg/archives/isamu.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/61/Koolhaas.cctv.jpg/300px-Koolhaas.cctv.jpg
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(Anonymous) 2006-04-22 09:51 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
Back in the USA
(Anonymous) 2006-04-23 02:16 am (UTC)(link)Check out http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0071994/
Terrible reviews but great movie, why I have not figured that out yet :)
Come to Tampa I can let u stay somewhere.
Darth Kronos
"I am in the midst of a society that is very capitalist, and whose values I completely reject. But I, too, become a capitalist. The problem is that by even dealing with the devil, you become devilish to a certain extent. You need the machine. And once you use it, you are a tainted human being." - Brian De Palma*
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I want one of his coffee tables.
My feedback
(Anonymous) 2007-10-05 01:39 am (UTC)(link)