Word: noguchi
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Both were important sculpture exhibitions, and both were by Japanese-Americans: Isamu Noguchi and Ruth Asawa...
...Noguchi, 50, has long been recognized as a leading U.S. sculptor. Born in California, he spent his grammar-school years in Japan, his high-school years...
...most fruitful years of study under Abstract Sculptor Constantin Brancusi in Paris. A consummate technician, Noguchi has variously turned his hand to fashionable portrait busts, abstract stone sculptures cut with a diamond saw, furniture, paper lanterns and stage sets. Since 1950 he has spent half of his time in Japan (where he married Screen Star Yoshiko Yamaguchi), concentrated on deliberately crude ceramic sculptures molded from the native earth, and modeled partly on prehistoric Japanese idols. The ceramics in last week's show were mainly semi-abstractions of figures and faces. They looked lumpish and exuberant at once-like...
Ruth Asawa, 28, is a San Francisco housewife and mother of three. She was born and raised in California, studied under Abstract Painter Josef Albers at Black Mountain College. Her show consists of big, wholly abstract sculptures, made of woven wire and suspended from the ceiling. If Noguchi's ceramics demonstrate a certain grinning bounciness in the Japanese heritage, Asawa's wire constructions show the opposite side: austerity and calm. In their openness, delicacy and symmetry they somewhat resemble blossoms, odorless, colorless, outsize, yet refreshing to contemplate...
...take some doing. Packing up their exhibition in Kamakura last week (for a further display in Manhattan this winter), Noguchi and his wife had no idea whether the show was a success or a flop. "Japanese in general still prefer the traditional," said Shirley. But the crowds were big and the critics seemed to be getting the idea. When one Japanese professor said that he thought all Noguchi's work looked like doughnuts, the art critic for Tokyo's Yomiuri Shimbun rapped back: "I urge him to see this show, because even doughnuts make good...