On Brancusi

The day after my arrival [in Paris on March 30, 1927] I sat at the Cafe Flore and mentioned my admiration for Brancusi. Robert McAlmon, who overheard me, said he would be glad to introduce me. Great good fortune such as this has something of the divine and inevitable. I had not thought of studying with him, yet somehow the words came, and it was understood that I would work in mornings with him, starting the very next day. He spoke no English, and I no French. Communication was through the eyes, through gesture and through the materials and tools to be used. Brancusi would show me for instance precisely how a chisel should be held and how to true a plane of limestone. He would show me by doing it himself, indicating that I should do the same.

Certainly I was no help to him whatsoever in the beginning, and results could have been obtained without being so particular; but, no, it had to be done just his way no matter how long it took me to master it. The large saws he used must not be forced but must gently cut of their own weight. The wide blade of the axe leaves its mark and that is how it should be left -- the direct contact of man and matter. There was this unity throughout. The one thing Brancusi could not stand was lack of absolute concentration, as when he detected that my mind had wandered to the sunny outdoors. I could understand his saying that if I were not at one with the work, do something else, but don't try to be a sculptor.

Thus, I spent my half-days through the summer in the Impasse Ronsin. Some days he would send me off to the Salon des Tuileries to polish his Leda which was then being shown. At other times we would go off to the Rue de la Gaiet to see a movie. One night the floor of his large brick studio caved in, and he moved across the street to adjoining small studios, from which he never moved. Wherever he was, everything had to be all white. He wore white, his beard was then already white. He had two white dogs that he fed with lettuce floating in milk. My memory of Brancusi is always of whiteness and of his bright and smiling eyes.

On Abandoning Abstraction in 1929

The pursuit of art based on reflective leisure had now to be superseded by application to a job. Due to this necessity I did not do a single abstraction for a long time. First I had a small exhibition of the pieces I had done in Paris at Eugene Shoen's gallery. There was a good review in The New York Times, but nothing sold. There was never a denial of making abstractions only a recognition of inadequacy on my part, I was poor and could not afford it. On the other hand, I was too poor inside to insist upon it. How presume to express something from within when it was empty there? I felt myself too young and inexperienced for abstractions: I would have to live first. Besides, all my dreams were left in Paris, and all the tools that I had accumulated.

On Musical Weather Vane, 1933

But I wanted other means of communication-- to find a way of sculpture that was humanely meaningful without being realistic, at once abstract and socially relevant. I was not conscious of the terms ' applied design' or industrial design'. My thoughts were born in despair, seeking stars in the night.

In this frame of mind I designed a Musical Weather Vane. This was to be made of metal, with flutings that would make sounds like those of an aeolian harp. It was also to be wired so as to be luminous at night. The idea may have come from my stay in China, where small flutes made of gourds were attached to pigeons, and made a whooing sound as they flew about.

On the Colorado River Relocation Center, Poston, Arizona, 1942

With a flash I realized I was no longer the sculptor alone. I was not just American but Nisei. A Japanese-American. (I had received a medal from somewhere; 'Nisei of the year' just before leaving New York). I felt I must do something. But first I had to get to know my fellow Nisei; I had had no reason previously to seek them out as a group. Secondly, I sought out those of us who were sympathetic and with whom I thought I could work to counteract the bigoted hysteria that soon appeared in the press. I organized a group called 'Nisei Writers and Artists for Democracy'. All to no avail. With the evacuation command I escaped from California ( I was luckily a New Yorker) and went to Washington, thinking to make myself useful. Instead, I met John Collier of the American Indian Service. One of the projected war relocation camps was to be situated on Indian territory under his jurisdiction at Poston, Arizona, and he suggested that I might be of help there in its development. Thus I willfully became a part of humanity uprooted.

There could have been some question of my position, whether on the side of the administration or of the internees, but with the harshness of camp life came a feeling of mutuality, of identity with those interned and against the Administration, in spite of personal friendships. The desert was magnificent -- the fantastic heat, the cool nights, and the miraculous time before dawn. I became leader of forays into the desert to find ironwood roots for sculpting. 'Though democracy perish outside, here would be kept its seeds,' cried Mr. Collier through clouds of dust. My work for the most part was to design and help develop park and recreation areas.

It soon became apparent, however, that the purpose of the War Relocation Authority was hopelessly at odds with that ideal cooperative community pictured by Mr. Collier. They wanted nothing permanent nor pleasant. My presence became pointless, but as I had voluntarily become an internee, it took me seven months to get out and then on a temporary basis. So far as I know, I am still only temporarily at large.

On Industrial Design, and the Noguchi Coffee Table

My first industrial design was, I suppose, some Italian sugar cake molds that I did when I was twenty. Then there was Measured Time, a clock, and in 1937 The Radio Nurse. There was the time I went to Hawaii in 1939 to do an advertisement (with Georgia O'Keefe and Pierre Roy). As a result of this I had met Robsjohn Gibbings, the furniture designer, who had asked me to do a coffee table for him. ( I had already done a table for Conger Goodyear). I designed a small model in plastic and heard no further before I went west.

While interned in Poston I was surprised to see a variation of this published as a Gibbings advertisement. When, on my return I remonstrated, he said anybody could make a three-legged table. In revenge, I made my own variant of my own table, articulated as the Goodyear Table, but reduced to rudiments. It illustrated an article by George Nelson called 'How to Make a Table'. This is the Coffee Table that was later sold in such quantity by the Herman Miller Furniture Company.

On the Interlocking Biomorphic Sculptures of the Forties

About 1944, I came to realize that the most available form of marble in New York was in slabs, since most of it is cut that way for resurfacing buildings. I had been making some things in wood boards, harking back to my metal sheet work of 1927-28, and I felt it logical to continue my research into space, plus plane, plus void, using marble. Marble in slab form was then relatively cheap in New York, because so many marble yards on the East Side were being condemned. I found marble to be a stable and beautiful medium, too beautiful perhaps. The nature of its stability is crystalline, like its beauty. It must be approached in terms of absolutes; it can be broken, but not otherwise changed.

Unlike working with wood or metals, there could be no temptation to weld or glue. The very limitations of the medium imposed a kind of honesty; to find the minimum means for construction and expression rather than the myriad possibilities that metal welding soon came to involve.

The stone had thickness, too -- an element of volume. This involved carving, which I was able to do with pneumatic tools, after rigging up a diamond saw for the basic cuts. The resultant work was an enclosure of space. Thus I was able to accept an ephemeralization I had previously rejected. The logic was Euclidean. Giving the basic definitions of volume (like a three dimensional cartoon) each sculpture had only to be completed in the eye of the spectator.

I took a particular satisfaction in its fragility, arguing the essential impermanence of life, much as in the Japanese poem. Like cherry blossoms, perfection could only be transient -- a fragile beauty is more poignant.

On Akari

My other preoccupation at this time [1952] was the development of akari, the new use of lanterns that I had conceived on my previous trip. It was a logical convergence of my long interest in light sculptures, lunars, and my being in Japan. Paper and bamboo fitted in with my feeling for the quality and sensibility of light. Its very lightness questions materiality, and is consonant with our appreciation today of the less thingness of things, the less encumbered perceptions.

The name akari which I coined, means in Japanese light as illumination. It also suggests lightness as opposed to weight. The ideograph combines that of the sun and moon. The ideal of akari is exemplified with lightness (as essence) and light (for awareness). The quality is poetic, ephemeral, and tentative. Looking more fragile than they are akari seem to float, casting their light as in passing. They do not encumber our space as mass or as a possession; if they hardly exist in use, when not in use they fold away in an envelope. They perch light as a feather, some pinned to the wall, others clipped to a cord, and all may be moved with the thought.

Intrinsic to such other qualities are handmade papers and the skills that go with lantern making. I believe akari to be a true development of an old tradition. The qualities that have been sought are those that were inherent to it, not as something oriental but as something we need. The superficial shapes or functions may be imitated, but not these qualities.

On Ceramics

The attractions of ceramics lie partly in its contradictions. It is both difficult and easy, with an element beyond our control. It is both extremely fragile and durable. Like 'Sumi' ink painting, it does not lend itself to erasures and indecision. The best is that which is most spontaneous --or seemingly so. I have found it a natural medium to work with in Japan, but not so in America. I associate it with the closeness of earth and wood which is for me Japan and not America today.

On Bent Aluminum Sculptures, 1958

I had returned to New York after making the UNESCO gardens, with the usual mixture of elation and depression. Returning I was always struck by the contrasts of America, Japan, and the rest of the world; the difference is in materiality, or should one say, the concepts of reality, which is not just a question of place but of the modern versus the old world -- the permanent reality of the past and the fluid reality of the present. I found myself a stranger.

Sculpture in the traditional sense is, by definition, something with built-in values of permanence, 'forever beautiful', something of shape and material that 'defy time'. But then there is the other reality of the evanescent new -- that truth born of the moment. Cherry blossoms in old Japan, or one jump ahead of obsolescence in the modern. I have thought of this, too, as sculpture.

Now back in New York after nearly two years of work on the UNESCO garden, I was acutely conscious of these disparities, and of the need to associate myself with the new reality, being born without me. After all, New York was my reality, the surroundings familiar, the materials available common to my living. It seemed absurd to me to be working with rocks and stones in New York, where walls of glass and steel are our horizon, and our landscape is that of boxes piled high in the air.

It is clear why so many sculptors have turned to the welding torch and the scrap heap. The effect of wreckage ties it to time continuity, welding reincarnates it as a creation. And yet, should not a new creation have its own unborrowed virtue? The new materials remake the world. We live in a tensile world of space. It is one of molecular structure and sub-atomic particles. It is the world of the airplane, of speed -- my world.

In this perplexed frame of mind I visited Edison Price, my friend who manufactures lighting equipment, and looking at his machine tools for the handling of light metals, considered the use of such means for sculpture. This would bring me in contact with that industrial apparatus which is the real America.

After some experiments, I asked the Aluminum Company of America to supply me with the necessary sheet aluminum and, thus armed, set to work. Shoji Sadao, who had been Buckminster Fuller's assistant, became my invaluable helper.

What I wanted was a timely and weightless way of expression. With Edison's help we devised a way to bend the thin metal so that the corners came out sharp to give an appearance of solidity (besides giving stiffness to an otherwise too flimsy surface). By way of self-imposed limitation I insisted on deriving each sculpture from a single sheet of metal -- a unity, I thought, was achieved thereby. We impose our own rules of value. I wanted to deny weight and substance.

But each newness must question some value formerly held as sacrosanct. Are there permanent sculptural values? Are there new values or just a change in focus? Do we overcome unwarranted prejudice or are we defeated by a loss of courage? How to deny and yet affirm our dilemma, this must be the everlasting tradition.

In this respect I remember a discussion with Brancusi in New York in 1939 about casting his Endless Column in stainless steel, as I had done with the Associated Press Plaque. Subsequently, Sturgis Ingersol got an offer from the Budd Company in Philadelphia to weld it out of stainless steel plate, but Brancusi was altogether opposed to this on the grounds that welding would eliminate the very qualities of sculpture that he valued. This refusal he maintained till the time of his death. Was the inventor denying the logic of his own invention, or was this the affirmation of a sculptor?

On Noguchi's 1959 Stable Gallery exhibition

I wanted to show my aluminum sculptures in an exhibition already scheduled at the Stable Gallery, but I was told they looked too commercial and would do damage to my reputation. I could, of course, show the iron castings and the Greek marbles if they were finished in time, but I was nevertheless nonplussed. 'What is the good of timely art if not timely shown'?

Very generously Edison permitted me to use the small room in his factory for carving with pneumatic tools, and this is where I set about altering and otherwise extracting, the sculptures that I needed from the very rough approximations which had been sent from Greece. How quickly do I adapt myself to changed visions. This was the totally sensuous realm of tactile values. Nothing to do with mindful decisions. I worked with fury in a cloud of dust and chips, in complete immersion, oblivious to everything but my own confrontation with marble. Out of this came fourteen pristine sculptures, among them Woman with Child, Recurrent Bird and Integral. For the final polishing many friends came to help.

The exhibition was in May 1959. The ground floor was dominated by two large granite elements. The first, which formed part of a composition called Bird Song, was developed from my Lever Brothers Project No. 2 and had been carved over a period of two years with the help of Rene Lavaggi, whose studio I often shared for carving. The second, called Garden Elements, was cut in Japan.

The exhibition was in the nature of a homage to Brancusi, and recapitulated sculptural values I associated with him. Whether it was a victory or defeat, I could not say. I was conscious at the time of having been denied modernity. But then it was also my own volition, and my love and understanding of what was basic to sculpture that led me to do what I did.

On Japan

Why do I continuously go back to Japan, except to renew my contact with the earth? There still remains unbroken the familiarity with earthly materials and the skill of Japanese hands. How exquisitely functional are their traditional tools. Soon these, too, will be displaced by the machine. In the meantime I go there like a beggar or a thief, seeking the last warmth of the earth.

On Sculpture

New concepts of the physical world and of psychology may give insights into knowledge, but the visible world, in human terms, is more than scientific truths. It enters our consciousness as emotion as well as knowledge; trees grow in vigor, flowers hang evanescent, and mountains lie somnolent -- with meaning. The promise of sculpture is to project these inner presences into forms that can be recognized as important and meaningful in themselves. Our heritage is now the world. Art for the first time may be said to have a world consciousness.

On Carving Stone

To work with modern machinery one must schedule in advance the procedure of work. This brings into question the whole concept of sculpturing as we have known it. The frankness of discussion when it comes to stone, is fogged by the mystique we ascribe to its making. This does not apply to the newer mediums where there is a refreshing candor by the younger practitioners.

I should like stone to be treated like a newly discovered medium. Both concepts and execution could then be re-examined. Any medium, after all, is new (or old) in time. Taille directe is simply a part of the economy of execution, the appearance of which we value. However, to fight gravity is a tour de force. The nature of stone is weight. In a sense I am led against my better judgment in attempting out of contradictions to draw a new emphasis. The deepest values are to be found in the nature of each medium. How to transform but not destroy this!

On Stone

Sculpture may be anything and will be valued for its intrinsic sculptural qualities. However, it seems to me that the natural mediums of wood and stone, alive before man was, have the greater capacity to comfort us with the reality of our being. They are as familiar as the earth, a matter of sensibility. In our times we think to control nature, only to find that in the end it escapes us. I for one return recurrently to the earth in my search for the meaning of sculpture -- to escape fragmentation with a new synthesis, within the sculpture and related to spaces. I believe in the activity of stone, actual or illusory, and in gravity as a vital element. Sculpture is the definition of form in space, visible to the mobile spectator as participant. Sculptures move because we move.

They say in Japan that the end interest of old men is stone--just stone, natural stone, ready-made sculptures for the eyes of connoisseurs. This is not quite correct; it is the point of view that sanctifies; it is selection and placement that will make of anything a sculpture, even an old shoe.

On Gardens as Sculpture

In Japan the rocks in a garden are so planted as to suggest a protuberance from the primordial mass below. Every rock gains enormous weight, and that is why the whole garden may be said to be a sculpture, whose roots are joined way below. We are made aware of this 'floating world' through consciousness of sheer invisible mass. At times I am deluded into thinking that the meaning of sculptures may be defined. Is it not the awareness of an inner reality, such as this, of which sculpture is a reflection and a sign? The heavenly bodies floating in the firmament are all connected, by gravitational forces that link them one to the other to attract and repel. Earthbound though we are, we are free to move about its surface, like filings on a magnet.

I like to think of gardens as sculpturing of space: a beginning, and a groping to another level of sculptural experience and use: a total sculpture space experience beyond individual sculptures. A man may enter such a space: it is in scale with him; it is real. An empty space has no visual dimension or significance. Scale and meaning enter when some thoughtful object or line is introduced. This is why sculptures, or rather sculptural objects, create space. Their function is illusionist. The size and shape of each element is entirely relative to all the others and the given space. What may be incomplete as sculptural entities are of significance to the whole.

Such sculpture is eliminative, it is neither this nor that but a thing in space that affects of consciousness --a node in the void -- without content related to or derived from anything exterior to its purpose -- in effect subliminal. These sculptures form what I call a garden, for want of a better name.

Its viewing is polydirectional. Its awareness is in depth. With the participation of mobile man all points are central. Without a fixed point of perspective all views are equal, continuous motion with continuous change. The imagination transforms this into a dimension of the infinite.