Isamu Noguchi: Landscapes of Time

“[Y]ou know one shifts–I do–backwards and forwards. Sometimes I think I’m part of this world today. Sometimes I feel that maybe I belong in history or in prehistory, or that there’s no such thing as time.”
Acclaimed Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) made this statement in a 1972 taped interview in his studio in Queens, New York. There, surrounded by a collection of the most modern industrial tools, and with a silver watch on his wrist, he ruminated on the messy nature of time. He continued, “[I]f you [can] escape from that time constraint, then the whole world…[becomes] someplace where you belong.” This powerful notion of escaping time’s constraints, of moving fluidly through past and present, ran as an undercurrent throughout Noguchi’s prolific and varied six-decade career, during which he created sculptural works with a broad range of materials, from stainless steel to stone, in addition to designing gardens, playgrounds, plazas, furniture, lighting, and stage sets. All of this activity fell within his broad definition of “sculpture.” Noguchi did not approach time as a straight line, but instead cut pathways between disparate temporal points, looking back to prehistory at one moment, gazing towards the future at the next, and attempting to synthesize his findings in the present in a manner both urgent and meaningful.
This non-chronological survey of Noguchi’s work across media presents some of his most compelling engagements with time. The exhibition traces Noguchi’s interventions in the long march of geologic time, his explorations into the life cycles of natural and industrial materials, his meditations on memory and the relationship between the enduring and ephemeral, and his fluid traversals between the Stone Age and Space Age.These explorations follow Noguchi’s timeless search for belonging.
Isamu Noguchi: Landscapes of Time is co-organized by the Clark Art Institute and The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, and curated by the museum’s Curator and Director of Research Matthew Kirsch and Curator Kate Wiener.

Isamu Noguchi with Indian Dancer (1965-1966) in Long Island City, NY, 1981. Photo: David Finn. The Noguchi Museum Archives, 04378. © The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS)