Barbican Gallery presents Isamu Noguchi: artists, designer, philosopher

Isamu Noguchi, Peru, 1983. Photo Michio Noguchi, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS

‘I’m interested in space and the movement of people and objects within space. There is a certain magic to it. It is as if you are inventing an order of things. I believe there is a secret relationship between space, objects and perceptible and imperceptible movements. Every artist working in this field tries to interpret that relationship in his or her own way. It is the composition and balance of those elements that give rise to the essence of drama and – why not? – the essence of life itself.’ These are the words of Isamu Noguchi, one of the most lyrical artists of the last century.

Known today mostly for his much-copied 1944 Coffee Table (an early edition of which sits here before me) and Akari paper lights, Noguchi tirelessly pushed the boundaries of art and sculpture. Working across almost seven decades and with a multitude of materials and mediums, his carved stones, stage sets, paper lanterns, portrait busts, mobiles, and playgrounds were collectively designed to be tools for understanding our place in the cosmos, and our relationships to history, nature, and one another.

The Barbican gallery in London is hosting ‘Noguchi’, the first of a touring European exhibition which sets out to document the work of this visionary creative. Thematically organised and curated to feature only the words of the artist himself, the exhibition successfully immerses the viewer in the mind and the world of Noguchi. The stripped back béton brut halls of the brutalist Barbican and the advantage of the two levels, allow the 150 works to breathe freely, and with the absence of excessive curation, the viewer is left in an almost meditative state to observe and absorb.

Isamu Noguchi ‘My Arizona’, 1943. Photo by Kevin Noble, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS

Born in Los Angeles in 1904, Noguchi’s mother was an Irish American writer and his father a Japanese poet who had abandoned the family on his birth. At the age of two, his mother took him to Japan to reunite with his father, sending him back to the US and onto Indiana for schooling for fear that the biracial child would receive racism in Japan. Noguchi eventually settled in New York where he trained in traditional sculpture, but his real break came while on an internship at the Paris studio of Constantin Brancusi. Here Noguchi gained a seminal introduction to the modernist principles of abstraction and presumably met the international avant-garde who were gathered in Paris in the 1920s. It was thanks to Brancusi that he became passionate about materials and craft – elements that remained fundamental to his work throughout his career.

By the end of the decade Noguchi was back in New York sculpting portrait busts, mainly to make a living, many of which are on display at the Barbican. They are a curious mix of expressionist and whimsical. He later referred to them jokingly as ‘headbusting’ since it was a useful way to make money and meet people. It seemed to have worked as they attracted the attention of the pioneering choreographers Ruth Page and Martha Graham for whom Noguchi went on to design sets using an interplay of his sculptures. He also befriended the architect and theorist R. Buckminster Fuller, who he referred to as the ‘messiah of ideas’. The two shared a vision for shaping a more equitable world through technology, innovation and design, collaborated on several projects including a futuristic car.

By the 1940s, Noguchi was working with manufacturers Knoll and Herman Miller. He continued to explore the possibilities of material and form with his interlocking marble slab sculptures and Lunars lights, created after his devastating experience of ‘voluntary’ internment at a camp for Japanese Americans in Poston, Arizona in 1942. The Lunars went on to influence some of his best-known works, the sculptural and ethereal Akari light sculptures – a contemporary take on traditional chochin paper lanterns using washi paper and electric bulbs. After the war, Noguchi travelled to Europe and Asia to understand the different uses of sculpture in a spatial and cosmic sense. He wrote at the time, ‘I find myself a wanderer in a world rapidly growing smaller. Artist, American citizen, world citizen, belonging anywhere but nowhere.’

Installation from ‘Noguchi’ at the Barbican Gallery, London © Barbican Centre

Noguchi went on to complete over twenty public works around the world – gardens, fountains, playgrounds, plazas – using space to challenge civic and social life and its intersections with nature and time. His final contribution was Moerenuma Park. Located on a reclaimed municipal dump outside of Sapporo in Japan, it included play sculptures, fields, and fountains, and a revised version of his first-ever play rejected concept, the monumental, stepped pyramid he called Play Mountain (1933). Moerenuma Park was realised two years after Noguchi’s death in 2000.

Ultimately his was a life dedicated to sculpting the world he wished to inhabit. With a deeply humanist perspective, heightened by his prison experience, Noguchi understood the power of art and artists to make sense of the world. His work was political art. Wandering the exhibition, immersed from above and below in his delicate paper lanterns, colourful furniture, architectural playgrounds, and expressive and often funny abstract and figurative sculptures, you get the sense that in life and work, Noguchi remained an explorer with a philosophical and playful eye. In his own words: ‘Art for me is something which teaches human beings how to become more human.’

‘Noguchi’ is at the Barbican Art Gallery in London from 30 September 2021 to 9 January 2022

Gallery images in order: Noguchi assembling his Figure in his studio, 1944. Photo Rudolph Burckhardt, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS / Estate of Rudolph Burckhardt; Noguchi’s Memorials to the Atomic Dead is an unrealised model originally proposed in 1952 for Hiroshima Peace Park © Barbican Centre; Noguchi’s Sculpture To Be Seen From Mars, 1947. Photo Soichi Sunami, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS; Noguchi’s Octetra Play Equipment, Moerenuma Park, Japan. Photo Toshishige Mizoguchi © Toshishige Mizoguchi / INFGM / ARS – DACS; Samrat Yantra, Jantar Mantar, Bollingen Travels, New Delhi, India, 1949. Photo Isamu Noguchi, Noguchi Museum Archives © INFGM / ARS – DACS; Installation from ‘Noguchi’ at the Barbican Gallery, London © Barbican Centre.

Émeric Lhuisset on the power and possibilities of photography

In 1972, Associated Press photographer Nick Ut snapped a nine-year-old naked girl fleeing the Napalm bombing with a group of children. In a single frame, ‘The Terror of War’ captured the horrors and human loss of the Vietnam war. The Pulitzer Prize-winning image helped change the course of history, sparking public outrage around the world. Shortly after the image was published, the war came to an end.

‘Théâtre de guerre’ (Theatre of war) © Émeric Lhuisset

The power of a photograph to influence humanity’s collective consciousness cannot be understated. And, Émeric Lhuisset’s work is a critique of a global culture where fact and truth are in danger of losing all meaning. The French visual artist would like to tell an alternative story to contemporary photojournalism and its often sensationalized images of war and migrants, shocking at first yet quickly vanishing from memory. He wants to use the medium of photography to tell real stories of people – displaced people, the migrant, the refugee, the immigrant, the émigré.

‘L’autre rive’ images using cyanotypes © Émeric Lhuisset

Lhuisset is the latest artist to gain the support of BMW Art & Culture through its photographic residency programme at Gobelins L’École de L’Image. Earlier this month, I met with the artist in the French capital at his latest exhibition ‘L’autre rive’ (The other shore) at the annual Paris Photo. Read my interview with the artist here

V&A displays protest art by climate change activists Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an exciting movement. This progressive collective, calling for urgent action on climate change through acts of non-violent civil disobedience and disruption, has grown into an international force. XR’s first public action was in October 2018, when it urged the UK government to declare an ecological emergency and commit to reducing emissions to net-zero by 2025. Now there are some 363 XR groups active in 59 countries – all with a unified message. XR makes a visual statement wherever they appear thanks to the Art Group, an XR coalition of graphic designers and artists responsible for formulating a visual language that is powerful and works on a global scale.

Now, the V&A in London has acquired a series of XR protest artwork to explore how design, strong graphics and illustration, as well as the use of colour have contributed to the success of this explosive movement. On display in the Rapid Response Collecting gallery, are a collection of symbols and flags including the brilliant ‘extinction symbol’. Originally created in 2011 by the street artist ESP, it has since been adopted by XR featuring a circle to represent earth and a stylised hourglass to signify the end of time. 

The strong graphic impact of the extinction symbol, alongside a clear set of design principles, have ensured that their acts of rebellion are immediately recognisable,’ says Corinna Gardner, senior curator of design and digital at the V&A, who feels design has been a critical component of the group’s success. ‘Punchy colours, woodblock prints, and carefully worded slogans available for download empower members of the public to produce their own creative responses that collectively amplify the XR’s call to action.’

XR’s graphics are characterised by four core design elements: the use of the extinction symbol, the XR logotype, and a colour-palette of 12 playful tones including ‘lemon’ yellow and ‘angry’ pink – influenced by pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi – and the fonts ‘FUCXED’. Theirs has been about balancing joy and anger and with a bold, tongue-in-cheek approach, juxtaposing imagery of the natural world with skulls and bones. Gardner says XR’s design approach stands in relation to earlier protest movements, namely the Suffragettes who encouraged the wearing of purple, green and white to visually communicate their cause.

The V&A’s Rapid Response Collecting programme enables the acquisition and immediate display of design objects that address questions of social, political, technological and economic change. Since 2014, the collection has grown to over thirty objects that chart the impact of contemporary design on the world today.

These latest objects are fascinating in that they collectively reveal how XR has harnessed the power of open-source design to develop a coherent and impactful visual identity. The rebellion to save this planet is a global protest and XR have shown that design can play a crucial role in amplifying the message. The group’s urgent visuals articulate hope, simultaneously outlining the grave consequences of climate change.

All images (c) Chris J Ratcliffe Getty Images for the V&A

BMW and Art Basel tackle identity, migration and the slave route

‘An intercontinental and multinational geography describing the circulation of ideas between Africa, Europe and the Americas,’ is how Jamal Cyrus describes the concept behind his latest work-in-progress. The Houston-based artist is exploring areas of the United States, Europe, Africa and Latin America – tracing the migration of slaves and assessing their cultural impact along their journey on their past, present and future homes. His final research project will become the next BMW Art Journey – the annual scheme with Art Basel established three years ago as a way of discovering and supporting interesting and emerging global artists. I caught up with Cyrus earlier this week on the London-leg of his journey to find out more. Read the full interview here.

All images © Jamal Cyrus for Inman Gallery

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Design Museum opens Hope to Nope, Graphics and Politics

I witness the global financial crash, enter the Arab Spring, observe Barak Obama’s vibrant presidential years, then Trump’s messy aftershock – sit in support of demonstrators in the Occupy movement and Deepwater Horizon oil spill, feel the shock and horror of the Charlie Hebdo attack and face the tragedy that is Brexit. The lack of windows and natural light in the basement gallery space at the Design Museum magnifies this feeling of complete immersion, of being wrapped within the political and social turbulence of the last decade. It also reveals the sheer visual and visceral power of the graphic images that have come to define this era.

This is the premise for the new exhibition here Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008-18 (until 12 August), a study of how political graphic design reached new powers in the turbulent last decade, and how it spread with such speed to steer in the most unpredictable of directions thanks in part to social media. A decade ago, who would have guessed the way new media will completely alter how we view news, see image and digest information. What was then a new medium for communication now sits semi-comfortably with traditional media, as journalists and broadcasters work alongside hashtags and memes and influencers. We are all trying to find a balance but what is evident here at the Design Museum is that new media has completely altered how graphic political messages are made and distributed, and the power of graphic design has arguably never been greater.

Hope to Nope comprises three main sections: power, protest and personality with a large graphic timeline dissecting the gallery space to chart the role of Facebook and Twitter in global events of the last decade. Power explores how graphic design is used by the establishment to assert national and political authority, and how that iconography can be subverted by activists and opponents. Protest displays graphic design by activists and demonstrators, while personality examines the graphic representation of leading political figures. One wall, for instance, is dedicated entirely to Donald Trump, his trademark features caricatured across the covers of more than 50 international magazine covers – including The Economist, TIME, Der Spiegel, The New Yorker.

Cocooned here under the safe architectural walls of the Design Museum, I am transported to my former life, a childhood of war and revolution, of displacement, of composing childlike copy for equally naïve hand-painted political posters, of the excitement of carrying these messages to the streets. Ultimately Hope to Nope exposes the sheer power of arts and ideas to help make change.

Nargess Banks

Design Talks | The Textile Building | 29a Chatham Place | London | E9 6FJ | UK
Design Talks is published by Spinach Design
All rights and labelled images are covered by ©