Description
Book SynopsisExploring the complex interweaving of race, national identity, and the practice of sculpture, Amy Lyford takes us through a close examination of the early US career of the Japanese American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988). The years between 1930 and 1950 were perhaps some of the most fertile of Noguchi's career. Yet the work that he produced during this time has received little sustained attention. Weaving together new archival material, little-known or unrealized works, and those that are familiar, Lyford offers a fresh perspective on the significance of Noguchi's modernist sculpture to twentieth-century culture and art history. Through an examination of his work, this book tells a story about his relation to the most important cultural and political issues of his time. By focusing on Noguchi's reputation, and reception as an artist of Japanese American descent, Lyford analyzes the artist and his work within the context of a burgeoning desire at that time to define what modern Amer
Trade Review“Written in animated and lucid prose, this book is that of a seasoned scholar whose intervention in Noguchi criticism performs the tremendous work of critiquing and making socially relevant inroads in the field of art history.” * Society for US Intellectual History *
“Written in animated and lucid prose, this book is that of a seasoned scholar whose intervention in Noguchi criticism performs the tremendous work of critiquing and making socially relevant inroads in the field of art history.” * Society for U.S. Intellectual History *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1. Labor
1. Earthworks, the Depression Economy, and Monument to the Plow
2. Modernism, Public Art, and Sculpture as Social Practice in the 1930s
3. Reinventing Labor in New York
Part 2. Race
4. Negotiating Japanese American Confinement
5. Reimagining Humanity in the 1940s
6. Noguchi, Asian America, and Artistic Identity in Postwar New York
Postscript: Beginnings and Ends at the Venice Biennale
Appendix A. Noguchi’s “A Plan for Government Sponsored Farm and Craft Settlement for People of Japanese Parentage”
Appendix B. Noguchi’s “I Become a Nisei”
Notes
Selected Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
