Isamu Noguchi, To Intrude on Nature’s Way, 1971. Basalt sculpture installed in the Noguchi Museum...

To Intrude on Nature’s Way

1971
Basalt
The art of stone in a Japanese garden is that of placement. Its ideal does not deviate from that of nature, except in providing a heightened appreciation. Any manmade divergence is carefully hidden, as by the intercession of time and age, nature’s accidents and residue. But I am also a sculptor of the West. I place my mark and do not hide. The crosscurrents eddy around me. In To Intrude on Nature’s Way, the contradictions between the Eastern and Western approaches are resolved with a minimum of contrivance.
Original Noguchi Collection
Quotations by Isamu Noguchi from The Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1987), unless otherwise noted.