Isamu Noguchi

Carl Solway Gallery, Cincinnati (acquired from the artist)
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1975

New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors and Drawings, February - March 1946 (the 1945 marble)
New York, Architectural League of New York, Modern Sculpture and Architecture, December 1947 (the 1945 marble)
Worcester Art Museum, 20th Century Sculpture, February - March 1948 (the 1945 marble)
Santa Barbara, University of California Art Galleries, 19 Sculptors of the 1940s, April - May 1973, cat. no. 77, p. 69, illustrated (edition no. unknown)
Iowa City, University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1980 - 2008 (extended loan, the present example)
Des Moines, Des Moines Art Center, Iowa Collects, May - July 1985 (the present example)
New York, Pace Gallery, Isamu Noguchi - Bronze & Iron Sculpture, May - June 1988 (edition no. unknown)
Miami, Florida International University, Frost Art Museum, Miro & Noguchi: Selections from the Martin Margulies Collection, September - October 1995 (ed. no. 4/8)

Nancy Grove and Diane Botnick, The Sculpture of Isamu Noguchi 1924-1979: A Catalogue, New York, 1980, cat. no. 219 B, n.p., (illustration of the marble work, cat. no. 219 A)
Bruce Altshuler, Modern Masters: Isamu Noguchi, New York, London and Paris, 1994, p. 109, illustration of the marble work in installation with the artist
Exh. Cat., Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Isamu Noguchi: Master Sculptor, and travelling, 2004, p. 2 and p. 90, illustration of the marble work in installation with the artist
Katherine Hinds, ed., The Margulies Collection, Miami, 2008, p. 217, illustrated in color (ed. no. 4/8)

This sculpture is in very good condition. The work has a warm brown patina, and consists of six interlocking elements that disassemble between installations. In preparation for recent conservation in consultation with the Noguchi Foundation, examination of the sculpture determined that the work had a wax coating which had darkened and dulled over time as is to be expected. Below the wax coating, there is also a surface coating, most likely intended by the artist to create the desired tone of the patina. The wax coating was removed with mineral based solvents to the extent possible without disturbing the underlying toned surface coating. Some areas of the wax coating were less soluble, perhaps due to mixing with other materials such as drying oils during its application. The condition of the underlying coat also varied in consistency between the elements. To enhance the consistency of the varied surface, certain areas were inpainted with a combination of pigment and varnish. A lightly toned wax was then applied to protect the coatings. In raking or strong light, some duller areas of the patina are slightly evident primarily on the upper left "shoulder" and the lower portions of the two "legs" as illustrated in the catalogue.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Isamu Noguchi’s eloquent and sinuous Figure exudes a timelessness and universality, yet as with much of the art born of the post-war years of the mid-20^th century, its clarity, form and presence emerged from the crucible of that turbulent time in modern art and society. Noguchi was a modernist of the New York School who synthesized East and West, expressing dichotomies and tensions between the Asian and European/American cultures, ancient and modern, the practical and the utopian.  Early works such as Figure reveal the influence of the artistic milieu surrounding Noguchi, from Surrealist biomorphic forms to the growing notions of innate, heroic self-expression. Consistent with his beliefs, and not unlike the goals of other artists of the period, Noguchi’s sculptures and public commissions had aspired to achieve social good and moral uplift in the 1930s and early 1940s. Yet by the time he carved the original marble version of Figure in 1945, Noguchi’s aesthetic aims had altered. He had achieved recognition among Surrealist figures such as his friend Arshile Gorky and the dealer Julien Levy and was included in the Museum of Modern Art’s influential exhibition Fourteen Americans in 1946. Yet, as Bruce Altshuler has commented about Noguchi’s statement in that exhibition’s catalogue, “now [Noguchi] addressed more inward needs: the ‘adjustment of the human psyche to chaos’ and the ‘transformation of human meaning into the encroaching void.’ Like many artists of the postwar period, Noguchi had moved from the social to personal issues, seeking existential meaning from art in a world bereft of stable values.” (Bruce Altshuler, Isamu Noguchi, New York, London and Paris, 1994, p. 49)

Conceived in 1945 and later cast in bronze, Figure is a classic paradigm of Noguchi’s aesthetic creed - the concern for his surrounding space, a reinvention of materials, and the elimination of the inessential through formal reduction. Noguchi won a Guggenheim fellowship in 1927 and traveled to Paris, spending six months in the studio of the master sculptor, Constantin Brancusi who transformed the medium. He admired the reductive simplicity and quiet power of Brancusi’s work which often blended natural materials with a primitive sensibility. After leaving Brancusi’s studio, Noguchi’s first sculpture in stone was a marble sphere with a quarter of its mass removed but he soon moved away from such extreme minimalism and began to carve more organic constructions. In the 1930s, Noguchi’s strong desire to put sculpture to social use was soon challenged by the harsh events of the early 1940s. As a Japanese-American, he was deeply affected by World War II, and following Pearl Harbor, Noguchi voluntarily entered the Colorado River Relocation Center in Arizona where he attempted to improve the lives of Japanese-American internees. Beginning in May 1942, he organized woodworking projects and even formulated a plan for park and recreation facilities, none of which were ever realized. Disillusioned, Noguchi gave up attempts to help with the war effort and soon left the camp to return to New York in November of that year. Following this experience, his sculptures of the late 1940s were more contemplative and intimate, evoking a personal significance in the face of senselessness and utilizing Surrealist imagery and the process of "free association" in order to eliminate conscious control and express the workings of the unconscious mind as promoted by artists such as René Magritte and Max Ernst.

The resultant sculptures such as Figure are akin to the anthropomorphic forms that populate the canvases of Yves Tanguy, yet their solidity and multi-planar compositions also relate to the Cubist inventions of Pablo Picasso, particularly in his sculptures of the 1930s. Noguchi began a series of interlocking slab constructions in 1944 – his major sculptural achievement of the decade of which Figure is such an extraordinary example. Metal was in short supply during the war years, so marble and slate served as the choice materials due to their affordability and availability. Noguchi began these works with graph paper studies that he then traced onto stone before cutting them out with a power saw. The assembly of the original marble and slate works heightened their fragility.  Despite their delicateness, the interlocking pieces express a sense of connectivity, at once precarious and cohesive. The elements were not artificially attached; Noguchi used principles of tension and balance, perching the planar slabs on two or three legs. Eastern sensibilities about the fragility of beauty are at the heart of these creations: even cast in bronze, the viewer is challenged to determine how sculptures such as Figure are put together but senses that removing any one piece will destabilize the whole. Noguchi’s primary message in these works is that we are all connected and mutually supporting.