Listening to Stone
The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi
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- £24.99
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- £24.99
Publisher Description
Throughout the 20th century, Isamu Noguchi was a vital figure in modern art. From interlocking wooden sculptures to massive steel monuments to the elegant Akari lamps, Noguchi became a master of what he called the 'sculpturing of space'. Combining the personal correspondence of and interviews with Noguchi and those closest to him - from artists, patrons, assistants and lovers - Herrera has created an authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century's most important sculptors.
She locates Noguchi in his friendships with such artists as Buckminster Fuller and Arshile Gorky, and in his affairs with women including Frida Kahlo and Anna Matta Clark. With the attention to detail and scholarship that made her biography of Gorky a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Herrera has written a rich meditation on art in a globalized milieu. Listening to Stone is a moving portrait of an artist compulsively driven to reinvent himself as he searched for his own 'essence of sculpture'.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Herrera (Arshile Gorky) delves into the details of the life of influential and enigmatic American sculptor Isamu Noguchi in this thorough and solid biography. Noguchi was born in Los Angeles in 1904, to an American mother and a Japanese father, the poet Yone Noguchi, who abandoned them before Noguchi was born. Herrera reveals how Noguchi's identity as half-Japanese and half-American shaped his identity as an artist. Describing Noguchi's career from his itinerant youth in LA and Japan to his embattled redesign of Miami's Bayfront Park, Herrera leaves no stone unturned. This critical biography relies extensively on Noguchi's writings and letters, but Herrera's expertise and insight illuminate Noguchi's evolving creative process, as well as the full scope of his personal relationships. In short chapters, Herrera walks readers through every phase of Noguchi's life, including his affair with Frida Kahlo, the design of his iconic table, his collaborations with choreographer Martha Graham, his time at a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during WWII, and his creation of the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York. Herrera adroitly shows that Noguchi was more than just a sculptor he was a skilled craftsman, a heartbreaker, and a philosopher of design. This biography carves a smooth portrait of one of the most prolific and original artists of the 20th century. 132 illus.
