I knew I would kick myself if I missed the Isamu Noguchi exhibition at YSP. The closing date had already been put back once, and with the new end date fast approaching, I took a detour across the Penines on the way back from Old Trafford after the first leg of the Arsenal game.
Noguchi, feted in American and Japan, is little known here, even though anyone who was ever a student probably had a piece derived from his famous Akari lamps in their bedsits; remember those folding paper lampshades you’d hang over any going harsh lone lighbulb?
His work straddled many fields: as well as sculpture he worked in design, furnishings, stage sets and delicate drawings through to giant conceptual theme parks. This partly explains his obscurity in the West, where there is too strong a tendency to dichotomise art and craft. Because so much of his best work was functional, he couldn’t possibly be a serious artist, so the argument went!
This was a wonderful as well as major exhibition, the first ever in Europe, with pieces taken from every era allowing you to follow Noguchi's journey.
For me, the best pieces were the coffee tables. One in particular, in the corridor of the indoor exhibition, totally captivated me. It was a jet black L shaped slab, balanced on a soft coloured stone. The top of the slab was highly polished and two oval pools, one larger than the other, had been cut into the surface and filled to the top with purified water, so that the meniscus traced lines along the edge of the pool. Sublime.
The final and best room indoors was also breathtaking. Here was another coffee table, with part of the slab left unpolished, so that a rough raised crater grew up out of one corner. At the far end, flanked my monumental stones split and put back together again, was a raised wooden bench suggestive of Tori gates, supporting three small torsos. And in the corner, a lovely curvaceous stones, bold, yet carved so delicately.
The exhibition continued outside varying from seemingly barely worked chunks of rocks to a lovely Tori gate shape and a delicate spire.
All in all, marvellous.
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